Case Title: Farrie v. State

Citation: 255 Ind. 681, 266 N.E.2d 212

Docket Number: 470S77

State: indiana

Court: Indiana Supreme Court

Date: 1971-02-10T00:00:00Z

Document:
255 Ind. 681 (1971)
266 N.E.2d 212
FARRIE
v.
STATE OF INDIANA.
No. 470S77.

Supreme Court of Indiana.
Filed February 10, 1971.
Daniel A. Roby, Thomas L. Ryan, of Fort Wayne, for appellant.
Theodore L. Sendak, Attorney General, Robert F. Hassett, Deputy Attorney General, for appellee.
No petition for rehearing filed.
ARTERBURN, C.J.
On November 22, 1967, defendant was arrested for possession of narcotics. Defendant surrendered certain valuable articles of personal property for safekeeping purposes to the police intake officer, Albert J. Bragalone, among which was a certain wristwatch later identified and admitted as State's Exhibit Number 1. After the wristwatch was accepted for safekeeping, Officer Bragalone turned it over to Captain Edwards of the Detective Bureau of the Fort Wayne Police Department. Appellant was charged with second degree burglary and found guilty as charged.
*682 Appellant urges on this appeal that he was compelled to give possession of his valuables to the Fort Wayne Police Department, which was merely a bailment for the safekeeping of defendant's valuables during his incarceration. Appellant argues that the warrantless seizure of the watch was not incidental to the arrest on the charge of Second Degree Burglary. As the fruits of an alleged illegal seizure, defendant claims it should not have been admitted into evidence over his objection.
We find that regardless of whether or not a bailment situation existed, there was no illegal seizure of defendant's watch. When Officer Bragalone gave the watch to Captain Edwards there was merely a transfer of the watch within the Fort Wayne Police Department.
Our decision in this case is compatible with similar cases in our neighboring states of Ohio and Illinois and in certain Federal district courts. In People v. Hambrick (1968), 98 Ill. App.2d 481, 240 N.E.2d 696, the Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, Second Division, held that marijuana found during the ordinary course of inventorying the defendant's effects for safekeeping should have been admitted into evidence. Recently, the Supreme Court of Ohio held that it is not unreasonable to search a person in a routine stationhouse search, without a warrant, before he is locked in a cell or room. This would normally require an inventorying and safekeeping of such personal effects. The fruits of such a search were held admissible into evidence. State v. Dempsey (1970), 22 Ohio St.2d 219, 259 N.E.2d 745.
In Baskerville v. United States (10th Cir.1955), 227 F.2d 454, the court held that a lawful search occurred where the defendant was arrested, taken into custody, and then searched by jail officers who placed his personal property in an envelope. About two weeks later incriminating evidence was found in said envelope by a United States Secret Service agent. The court held it was properly admitted into evidence. Similarly, in Cotton v. United States (9th Cir.1967), 371 F.2d 385, 393, *683 the court stated, concerning evidence found upon searching the defendant at the jail after his arrest:
A search incidental to a valid arrest is lawful regardless of what it reveals. In the case at bar defendant does not challenge the validity of the arrest. A search is no less valid when conducted by a jailer when an accused is booked and is to be confined in a cell in the jail or stationhouse.
We thus find that the search was not unreasonable and that therefore the evidence was properly admitted.
Judgment affirmed.
Givan and Prentice, JJ., concur; Hunter, J., concurs in result; DeBruler, J., dissents with opinion.
DEBRULER, J.
The defendant here was arrested for violation of the Uniform Narcotics Act, and was taken to the Fort Wayne City Jail. There, as part of the routine of admitting prisoners to the jail, he was required to turn over valuables on his person to the admitting officer for safekeeping. He handed his wristwatch to the admitting officer and received a receipt for it. The receipt was admitted in evidence at trial and appears as follows:
After having been received by the admitting officer, at a time not disclosed by the record before us, the admitting officer took the watch to the detective bureau at the request of one of the detectives. Thereafter, the watch was identified by its owner as having been stolen in a burglary. The appellant was then charged with the burglary and convicted. At the trial of the burglary charge the appellant objected to the admission of the watch into evidence on the ground that it had been seized in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights.
The search at the police station cannot be justified as a valid search incident to an arrest because it was not contemporaneous with the arrest. In Preston v. U.S. (1964), 376 U.S. 364, 84 S. Ct. 881, 11 L. Ed. 2d 777, the United States Supreme Court said:
See Wisconsin v. Stevens (1965), 26 Wis.2d 451, 132 N.W.2d 502.
The search of this appellant and the seizure of his wristwatch for inventory and safekeeping in the police property room, made by the police routinely at the time of appellant's admission to the jail, is a legitimate police procedure, necessitated by the following considerations:
However, the scope of a warrantless search and seizure is limited by the justifiable purposes which free the police from first obtaining a search warrant. In Paxton v. State (1970), 255 Ind. 264, 263 N.E.2d 636, quoting from Terry v. Ohio (1968), 392 U.S. 1, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 20 L. Ed. 2d 889, we said, "[T]he scope of [a] search must be `strictly tied to and justified by' the circumstances which rendered its initiation permissible". Again, this Court, quoting from Sibron v. New York (1968), 392 U.S. 40, 88 S. Ct. 1912, 20 L. Ed. 2d 917, said, "The search was not reasonably limited in scope to the accomplishment of the only goal which might conceivably have justified its inception  the protection of the officer by disarming a potentially dangerous man." See also Preston v. U.S., supra; Chimel v. Calif. (1969), 395 U.S. 752, 89 S. Ct. 2034, 23 L. Ed. 2d 685. Therefore, the scope of the search and seizure here for inventory and safekeeping purposes is limited to achieving those three purposes outlined above which necessitate such search and seizure. Those purposes were not being served when the appellant's wristwatch was removed from *686 the property room and made the subject of a general investigation intended to establish whether or not it had been stolen.
A case, precisely on point, which supports this dissenting opinion is Brett v. U.S., 412 F.2d 401 (5th Cir.1969).
There the defendant was convicted of unlawful importation and concealment of heroin. The defendant was involved in a scheme in which heroin was mailed into the United States from Mexico in letters. The defendant was arrested but was not thoroughly searched at the time of the arrest and was taken to the United States Commissioner and then to jail. He was booked into jail in the customary manner and was required to remove all of his clothing and personal effects and to don prison garb and his clothing and effects were placed in the property room. Three days later an agent thoroughly searched the clothing in the property room and there discovered some cellophane papers in the pocket of his trousers containing heroin. This heroin was admitted into evidence at the trial. The Fifth Circuit held that this search was invalid and that the fruits not admissible for any purpose, the state having failed in their burden to show that this warrantless search came within one of the exceptions to the Fourth Amendment requirement of a warrant. The court said:
*687 I dissent to the holding of the majority that the Fourth Amendment does not constitute a limitation upon the right of the police in the use and handling of items routinely taken from the person of the arrestee for safekeeping. I cannot accept an interpretation of the Fourth Amendment which would permit the police to search an arrestee, let us say arrested and in the process of being incarcerated for a minor traffic offense, and seize the contents of his pockets, briefcase and car for safekeeping purposes, and then to use these items in a general investigation for evidence of criminal conduct unrelated to the offense for which the person was arrested. I would hold that the officers in this case had ample opportunity to obtain a warrant and the Fourth Amendment requires them to do so in cases of this type.
NOTE.  Reported in 266 N.E.2d 212.