finding unconstitutional a five-day delay in the delivery of a USPS parcel which was diverted from Chicago to St. Louis
How later courts described this case
- finding unconstitutional a five-day delay in the delivery of a USPS parcel which was diverted from Chicago to St. Louis
- suspected postal package was sent from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport to a postal inspector in Missouri for a canine sniff; court held the movement was unreasonable because the ensuing delay in delivery could have been reduced if the police would have acted more diligently in conducting the test in Chicago
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
JUSTICE MILLER, dissenting:
Unlike the majority, I believe that the brief detention effected by authorities of the package in this case did not contravene the defendants’ constitutional rights, and therefore I dissent.
The majority makes much of the decision by postal authorities to reroute the package from Chicago to St. Louis for purposes of investigation. The majority insists that the detour contributed significantly to the delay in the delivery of the package. I do not agree. The package was initially pulled from the stream of mail on Thursday, January 19, 1995. The postal inspector assigned to the case, Stephen Atterbury, received the package the next day, January 20, in St. Louis. Atterbury then learned from his counterparts in Oregon that the return address on the package was fictitious, and Atterbury also obtained the services of a specially trained dog, who detected narcotics in the package. That same day, Atterbury presented a request for a search warrant to a federal magistrate in St. Louis, and a warrant was issued at 2:38 that afternoon. Atterbury then opened the package and found inside 3 1 /2 pounds of a material containing psilocybin, a controlled substance.
The relevant period here begins with the initial seizure of the package on January 19 and ends with the issuance of the search warrant the next day. It is not clear from the record how much delay, if any, was caused by the decision to transfer the package to St.
Louis on its southward journey from Chicago to Champaign. The extra time could not have exceeded part of a day, however, and Atterbury acted expeditiously in conducting his investigation and obtaining the warrant. It should be noted that most of the five-day delay in the delivery of the package, mentioned by the majority, occurred after the warrant was obtained and the package was opened. Indeed, the record shows that, prior to the delivery of the package on Tuesday, January 24, Atterbury made several attempts to deliver the package on Monday, January 23, after the weekend, but no one at the residence answered the door that day.
Because I believe that the initial period of detention was reasonable, I respectfully dissent from today’s decision.