United States v. Michael S. Bouffard

BAILEY ALDRICH, Senior Circuit Judge,

concurring.

I accept, albeit reluctantly, Judge Cyr’s opinion and consequences. If the opinion had ended with footnote 7, and a resulting affirmance, I would have agreed more wholeheartedly. However, my brother Cyr does have a point that the government’s repeated stipulation of the defendant’s “standing” muddied the waters. From this he concludes that, in all fairness, though defendant failed, he should now have a chance to prove a case. Given the record facts, the sister-in-law’s call to the police and the registration, I have great difficulty in seeing how defendant can prove a right of privacy, or, perhaps more to the point, within the recent case of Illinois v. Rodriguez, — U.S. -, 110 S.Ct. 2793, 111 L.Ed.2d 148 (1990), police unreasonableness. The legal distinction between embezzlement, a wrongful claim to possession, if he did claim it, and the police word “stolen,” seems inconsequential. However, I will not seriously quarrel with my brother’s feelings that the defendant should have another try, my final decision to await the event.