Title: The People v. Victor Gomez

State: new-york

Issuer: New York Appellate Court

Document:

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This opinion is uncorrected and subject to revision before
publication in the New York Reports.
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No. 119  
The People &c.,
            Appellant, 
        v. 
Victor Gomez,
            Respondent.
Jung Park, for appellant.
Christopher C. Land, for respondent.
JONES, J.:
The issue before us is whether the People met their
initial burden of establishing a valid inventory search.  We hold
that they have not.
On June 23, 2005, at approximately 12:45 a.m., two New
York City Police Department (NYPD) officers were on patrol in a
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No. 119
1 On or about June 22, 2005, when one of the arresting
officers responded to a domestic dispute at the home of
defendant’s mother, defendant made these threats.  Although this
officer neither searched for nor recovered a gun, he took
defendant to Bellevue Hospital for treatment.
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marked police car in Manhattan (area of 107th Street and
Amsterdam Avenue) when one officer noticed a 1999 Dodge Stratus
driving erratically.  This officer conducted a computer search of
the vehicle's license plate and found that defendant Victor Gomez
owned the vehicle, but that his driver's license (and driving
privileges) had been suspended.  The officers stopped the
vehicle, confirmed that defendant, the sole occupant of the
vehicle, was driving with a suspended license, arrested defendant
for same and impounded the vehicle.  Defendant was cuffed and
placed in the patrol car.  
One of the arresting officers, who recognized defendant
from a prior incident in which defendant had threatened to shoot
the officer and himself,1 and other officers began searching the
car.  Because the door on the driver’s side was blocked due to
the way it was parked, an officer accessed the car through the
passenger side and conducted a cursory search of the car’s
interior, recovering nothing.  The police also searched the trunk
of defendant's car and found a paper bag containing a powdered
substance that appeared to be cocaine, a plastic bag with white
residue, an electric scale and a small manilla envelope
containing red pills.  Because a crowd was gathering at the
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No. 119
2 According to the People, defendant has completed his
sentence and is at liberty.
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scene, it was decided that the search would be continued at the
precinct.  While driving defendant's car to the station, an
officer discovered 45 empty plastic “baggies” in the driver's
side door panel.
Defendant, who was charged with criminal possession of
a controlled substance in the third degree and criminally using
drug paraphernalia in the second degree, moved to suppress the
items recovered during the search of his vehicle.  After a
combined Mapp, Huntley, Dunaway hearing in which the arresting
officer who searched defendant’s car testified, Supreme Court
denied defendant’s motion, finding that it was reasonable, under
the circumstances, for the police to conduct an inventory search
of defendant’s vehicle.  Subsequently, defendant, in satisfaction
of the indictment, pleaded guilty to criminal possession of a
controlled substance in the third degree and was sentenced, as a
second felony offender, to a determinate prison term of three and
one-half years.2
In a 4-1 decision, the Appellate Division reversed the
conviction, granted defendant’s motion to suppress the evidence
and dismissed the indictment.  According to the majority, the
People failed to (1) “establish the content of any standardized
procedure for inventory searches promulgated by the [NYPD]," (2)
come forward with evidence that the search of defendant's car was
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No. 119
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conducted in accordance with any such standardized procedure and
(3) establish that the police created any meaningful inventory
list -- “the hallmark of an inventory search” (People v Johnson,
1 NY3d 252, 256 [2003]) –- of the items found in defendant’s car. 
The dissenting Justice argued that defendant's claims were not
preserved for appellate review and that even if they were, the
People met their initial burden of establishing a valid inventory
search.  A Justice of the Appellate Division granted the People
leave to appeal, and we now affirm.
In People v Galak (80 NY2d 715 [1993]), this Court
noted:
“The analysis of what constitutes a
reasonable inventory search begins with the
language of the Fourth Amendment, which
protects citizens not from all searches by
governmental actors but only from those that
are ‘unreasonable.’  In its modern Fourth
Amendment jurisprudence, the Supreme Court
has held that the reasonableness of a search
is calculated by weighing the governmental
and societal interests advanced by the search
against the individual's right to be free
from arbitrary interference by law
enforcement officers (United States v
Brignoni-Ponce, 422 US 873, 878 [1975]
[remaining citations omitted])”
(Galak, 80 NY2d at 718).  Further, 
“[a]n inventory search is . . . designed to
properly catalogue the contents of the item
searched.  The specific objectives of an
inventory search, particularly in the context
of a vehicle, are to protect the property of
the defendant, to protect the police against
any claim of lost property, and to protect
police personnel and others from any
dangerous instruments (Florida v Wells, 495
US 1, 4 [1990]). . . .  ‘[A]n inventory
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No. 119
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search must not be a ruse for a general
rummaging in order to discover incriminating
evidence’ (id.).  To guard against this
danger, an inventory search should be
conducted pursuant to ‘an established
procedure clearly limiting the conduct of
individual officers that assures that the
searches are carried out consistently and
reasonably’ (People v Galak, 80 NY2d 715, 719
[1993]).  The procedure must be standardized
so as to ‘limit the discretion of the officer
in the field’ (id.).  While incriminating
evidence may be a consequence of an inventory
search, it should not be its purpose”
(Johnson, 1 NY3d at 256).  In short, when determining the
validity of an inventory search, “two elements must be examined: 
first, the relationship between the search procedure adopted and
the governmental objectives that justify the intrusion and,
second, the adequacy of the controls on the officer's discretion”
(Galak, 80 NY2d at 718-719).
As relevant to the particular case, courts may take
judicial notice of the standardized search procedure.  While this
procedure need not be offered into evidence, a description of
what the procedure requires must be proffered.
Here, the People did not sustain their initial burden
of establishing a valid inventory search.  Although the NYPD has
a standardized, written protocol governing inventory searches in
its Patrol Guide and the arresting officer testified that he was
familiar with it, the People offered no evidence that the police
officers conducted this search in accordance with the protocol. 
Even assuming it was reasonable for the officers to search the
immediate area of the passenger compartment of defendant’s car
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No. 119
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for contraband to ensure the safety of the officer driving the
car back to the police precinct, the People did not establish the
circumstances under which opening and searching a closed trunk or
a door panel would be justified under the protocol.  
Moreover, our jurisprudence requires that a police
officer prepare a meaningful inventory of the contents of an
accused's car (see Johnson, 1 NY3d at 256; Galak, 80 NY2d at
720).  Here, although the arresting officer filled out a
voucher–-a form police officers use to list items held as
evidence–-and forfeiture paperwork, the People failed to
establish that no other items aside from the contraband were
found in defendant's vehicle.  Our determination is not based on
the officer’s failure to prepare the inventory search form
prescribed under the Police Guide protocol.  Such an inflexible
rule could unnecessarily hamstring police officers in the
exercise of their duties.  Thus, the failure to use an inventory
search form, while a technical defect, is not fatal to the
establishment of a valid inventory search as long as (1) the
search, in accordance with the “standardized procedure,” is
designed to produce an inventory and (2) the search results are
fully recorded in a usable format.  Simply put, the search at bar
was not designed to produce an inventory.
Accordingly, the order of the Appellate Division should
be affirmed.     
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No. 119
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*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
Order affirmed.  Opinion by Judge Jones.  Judges Ciparick,
Graffeo, Read, Smith and Pigott concur.  Chief Judge Lippman took
no part.
Decided June 30, 2009