Syllabus | Opinion [ Thomas ] | Concurrence [ Souter ] | Dissent [ Stevens ] |
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FLORIDA, PETITIONER v. TYVESSEL
TYVORUS WHITE
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF FLORIDA
[May 17, 1999]
Justice Souter, with whom Justice Breyer joins, concurring.
I join the Courts opinion subject to a qualification against reading our holding as a general endorsement of warrantless seizures of anything a State chooses to call contraband, whether or not the property happens to be in public when seized. The Fourth Amendment does not concede any talismanic significance to use of the term contraband whenever a legislature may resort to a novel forfeiture sanction in the interest of law enforcement, as legislatures are evincing increasing ingenuity in doing, cf., e.g., Bennis v. Michigan, 516 U.S. 442, 443446 (1996); id., at 458 (Stevens, J., dissenting); United States v. James Daniel Good Real Property, 510 U.S. 43, 8182, and n. 1 (1993) (Thomas, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (expressing concern about the breadth of new forfeiture statutes). Moreover, G. M. Leasing Corp. v. United States, 429 U.S. 338 (1977), (upon which we rely today) endorsed the public character of a warrantless seizure scheme by reference to traditional enforcement of government revenue laws, id., at 351352, and n. 18 (citing, e.g., Murrays Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 18 How. 272 (1856)), and the legality of seizing abandoned contraband in public view, 429 U.S., at 352 (citing Hester v. United States, 265 U.S. 57 (1924)).