FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

 v. 

JONATHAN EDWARD CHARLES 

ANDERSON, AKA Johnathan 

Anderson, AKA Johnathan Edward 

Anderson, AKA Jonathan Charles 

Anderson, AKA Jonathan Edward 

Anderson, AKA Jonathan Edward Cha 

Anderson, AKA Jonathon Edward 

Anderson, AKA X Rage, 

Defendant-Appellant.

No. 20-50345 

D.C. No. 

5:20-cr-00071-

RGK-1 

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

R. Gary Klausner, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted En Banc September 21, 2023

San Francisco, California

Filed May 2, 2024
2 USA V. ANDERSON

Before: Mary H. Murguia, Chief Judge, and Consuelo M. 

Callahan, Sandra S. Ikuta, Morgan Christen, John B. 

Owens, Daniel A. Bress, Danielle J. Forrest, Lawrence 

VanDyke, Gabriel P. Sanchez, Salvador Mendoza, Jr. and 

Roopali H. Desai, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Forrest;

Concurrence by Judge Mendoza, Jr.;

Dissent by Judge Bress

SUMMARY*

Criminal Law

The en banc court reversed the district court’s denial of 

a motion to suppress a firearm found during a warrantless 

search of the defendant’s truck in a case that presented the 

question whether an officer’s failure to comply with 

governing administrative procedures is relevant in assessing 

the officer’s motivation for conducting an inventory search. 

The primary question was whether the deputies’ 

deviation from the governing inventory procedure indicates 

that they acted in bad faith or solely for investigative 

purposes. The en banc court held that an officer’s 

compliance (or as is the case here, non-compliance) with 

department policy governing inventory searches is part of 

the totality of circumstances properly considered in 

* This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has 

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.
USA V. ANDERSON 3

determining whether a search satisfies the requirements of 

the inventory-search exception to the warrant requirement. 

Based on the circumstances presented here, the en banc 

court concluded that the deputies who searched the 

defendant’s truck acted solely for investigatory reasons, and 

that the warrantless search therefore violated the Fourth 

Amendment. 

Concurring, Judge Mendoza agreed with the majority’s 

finding that the deputies’ inventory search violated the 

Fourth Amendment. Writing separately to address an issue 

not reached by the majority, Judge Mendoza would reverse 

the district court’s decision on the additional ground that the 

deputies lacked a valid community caretaking justification 

to impound the truck. 

Dissenting, Judge Bress, joined by Judges Callahan, 

Ikuta, Owens, and VanDyke, wrote that the majority distorts 

the legal framework for inventory searches, contravenes 

decades of Supreme Court and circuit precedent, and turns 

hairsplitting distinctions into constitutional rules. Judge 

Bress wrote that although under settled law the validity of an 

inventory search depends on whether officers acted in bad 

faith or for the sole purpose of investigation, the majority 

instead holds that officers violated the Constitution because 

they did not follow the court’s hyper-technical rules for 

filling out forms—which the deputies here had to do in the 

middle of the night after lawfully stopping a career criminal.
4 USA V. ANDERSON

COUNSEL

David R. Friedman (argued) and Elana S. Artson, Assistant 

United States Attorneys; Byron R. Tuyay, Assistant United 

States Attorney, Riverside Branch Office; Bram M. Alden, 

Assistant United States Attorney, Criminal Appeals Section 

Chief; Tracy L. Wilkison, Acting United States Attorney; 

United States Department of Justice, Office of the United 

States Attorney, Los Angeles, California; for PlaintiffAppellee.

Ashwini S. Mate (argued), Deputy Federal Public Defender; 

Cuauhtemoc Ortega, Federal Public Defender; Federal 

Public Defender’s Office, Los Angeles, California; for 

Defendant-Appellant.

OPINION

FORREST, Circuit Judge:

Law enforcement may conduct warrantless inventory 

searches of impounded vehicles. But the Supreme Court has 

instructed that inventory searches are reasonable under the 

Fourth Amendment only if they are motivated by 

administrative purposes, and not solely by investigatory 

purposes. The question here is whether an officer’s failure to 

comply with governing administrative procedures is relevant 

in assessing the officer’s motivation for conducting an 

inventory search. The answer is yes. An officer’s compliance 

(or as is the case here, non-compliance) with department 

policy governing inventory searches is part of the totality of 

circumstances properly considered in determining whether a 
USA V. ANDERSON 5

search satisfies the requirements of the inventory-search 

exception to the warrant requirement. And based on the 

circumstances presented here, we conclude that the deputies 

who searched Defendant Jonathan Anderson’s truck acted 

solely for investigatory reasons. Therefore, we reverse the

district court’s denial of his motion to suppress. 

I. BACKGROUND

At two o’clock in the morning, a San Bernardino County 

Sheriff’s Department (SBCSD) deputy noticed Anderson’s 

truck traveling in a high-crime area with a partially 

obstructed license plate in violation of California Vehicle 

Code § 5201. The deputy turned on his overhead lights to 

initiate a traffic stop, but Anderson accelerated and made a 

series of abrupt turns ending up on a dead-end street. The 

deputy called for backup, and Anderson ultimately pulled 

into a residential driveway and got out of his truck less than 

a minute into the encounter. Believing that Anderson was 

trying to flee, the deputy confronted him at gunpoint. Soon 

after, a second deputy arrived and handcuffed Anderson. 

Anderson said that he was parked in “a friend[’s]” driveway

and that his driver’s license was expired. Dispatch confirmed 

that Anderson’s license was expired and informed the 

deputies that Anderson was a career criminal. The deputies 

remarked that Anderson had a lot of money in his wallet and 

questioned why he had gloves and why his truck was wet. 

Anderson repeatedly told the deputies that they could not 

search his truck. But the deputies responded that they had to 

tow and inventory his truck because he did not have a valid 

license. The parties agree on appeal that the owner of the 

home where Anderson parked did not know Anderson and 

wanted the truck removed. They dispute, however, whether 

the deputies knew this before they searched Anderson’s 
6 USA V. ANDERSON

truck. According to Anderson, the first deputy began 

searching within seconds of learning Anderson’s criminal

history and then spoke with the homeowner after the search. 

The deputies claim they confirmed that the homeowner did 

not know Anderson before the search began. The parties 

agree that the deputies refused Anderson’s request to have a 

friend come retrieve his truck. 

During the purported inventory search, a loaded handgun 

under Anderson’s driver’s seat was found, and the deputies 

arrested Anderson for being a felon in possession of a 

firearm. The record indicates that between three and seven 

minutes elapsed from when the first deputy initiated the stop 

to when the gun was found. 

The SBCSD has a standard procedure governing 

impounding and inventorying vehicles. The SBCSD Manual

directs that deputies “shall[] [c]omplete two (2) CHP 180 

forms . . . , including an inventory of any personal property 

contained within the vehicle.” (Emphasis added.) The form 

requires deputies to record details about the ownership of the 

vehicle, the condition of the vehicle, and the towing 

company used. It also has a separate section entitled: 

“REMARKS (list property, tools, vehicle damage, arrests).” 

The second deputy stayed at the scene to complete the 

CHP 180 Form after the first deputy transported Anderson 

to jail. The second deputy detailed the condition of the truck, 

including, for example, that it had front and rear seats, an 

ignition key, and a battery and that the tires were “worn.” He 

also noted the registered owner and the towing company. But 

even though various items of personal property in addition 
USA V. ANDERSON 7

to the gun was contained in the truck, the “REMARKS” 

section of the form stated only: 

Veh pulled over for obstructed plate. Driver 

found to have expired CDL. Upon inventory 

search firearm located. Driver is convicted 

felon. Veh pulled into driveway to res. Owner 

of res. doesn’t know driver[.] Veh has misc. 

scratches & dents 360°, damage to pass. door 

and tailgate.

(Emphasis added.) Nowhere did the deputy list Anderson’s 

other personal property that included: (1) two pairs of RayBan sunglasses, (2) an iPhone cord, (3) an Android phone 

charger, (4) a bottle of cologne, (5) a watch, (6) an audio 

speaker, and (7) tools. The deputy took photographs of the

inside of the truck that showed some of Anderson’s personal 

property, and the police report documented that a compact 

disc, gun, holster, and ammunition were found in the truck. 

But neither the photographs nor the police report was 

referenced or incorporated into the vehicle inventory form. 

And as the second deputy acknowledged, SBCSD’s

procedure does not allow personal property to be inventoried 

by photographs. 

Anderson was charged with one count of unlawful 

possession of a firearm and ammunition in violation of 18 

U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). He moved to suppress the firearm and 

ammunition, arguing that the inventory search was 

unconstitutional because (1) the deputies lacked a valid 

“community caretaking purpose” when they searched his 

truck, (2) the impoundment violated California law, and 

(3) the deputies violated SBCSD’s inventory procedures and 
8 USA V. ANDERSON

had an impermissible investigatory motive for conducting 

the search. 

The district court heard testimony from the deputies and 

the homeowner and denied Anderson’s motion. It found that 

Anderson did not have a valid driver’s license and that the 

homeowner did not know Anderson or want Anderson’s 

truck on his property. In assessing whether the deputies had 

a valid community caretaking purpose, the district court 

focused on “whether or not [the deputies] searched the car 

before or after they talked to the homeowner” and learned 

that he did not know Anderson. The district court noted that 

“there[] [were] a lot of discrepancies and inconsistencies in 

the testimony,” but based on “credibility and looking at what 

[was] speculative and what [was] the evidence,” it found that 

the record established the deputies did “talk to the 

homeowner before they searched the car.”1 The district court 

concluded that the search was reasonable without addressing 

whether the deputies complied with California law or 

SBCSD’s inventory procedure or whether they had an 

impermissible motive for the search. 

Anderson entered a conditional guilty plea reserving his 

right to appeal the suppression order, and the district court 

sentenced him to 77 months’ imprisonment and three years’ 

supervised release. 

1 The district court noted that even if the deputies did not talk to the 

homeowner first, the doctrine of inevitable discovery “may play a part in 

this.” The Government does not rely on this doctrine on appeal, nor did 

it below. Therefore, because “[i]t is the government’s burden to show 

inevitable discovery, . . . its failure to make the argument prevents us 

from upholding the denial of the suppression motion on that theory.” 

United States v. Ngumezi, 980 F.3d 1285, 1291 (9th Cir. 2020).
USA V. ANDERSON 9

II. STANDARD OF REVIEW

We review a district court’s denial of a motion to 

suppress de novo and its related factual findings for clear 

error. United States v. Fisher, 56 F.4th 673, 682 (9th Cir. 

2022). We reverse a district court’s factual findings that are 

“illogical, implausible, or without support in inferences that 

may be drawn from the record.” Ashker v. Newsom, 81 F.4th 

863, 878 (9th Cir. 2023) (quoting Capistrano Unified Sch. 

Dist. v. S.W., 21 F.4th 1125, 1133 (9th Cir. 2021)). Where, 

as here, the district court does not make specific findings on

a “factual issue relevant to the Fourth Amendment analysis, 

we ‘uphold a trial court’s denial of a motion to suppress if 

there was a reasonable view to support it.’” United States v. 

Magdirila, 962 F.3d 1152, 1156 (9th Cir. 2020) (quoting 

United States v. Gooch, 506 F.3d 1156, 1158 (9th Cir. 

2007)).

III. INVENTORY-SEARCH EXCEPTION

The Fourth Amendment protects “[t]he right of the 

people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and 

effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” U.S. 

Const. amend. IV. This protection was “crafted . . . as a 

‘response to the reviled “general warrants” and “writs of 

assistance” of the colonial era, which allowed British 

officers to rummage through homes in an unrestrained 

search for evidence of criminal activity.’” Carpenter v. 

United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206, 2213 (2018) (quoting Riley 

v. California, 573 U.S. 373, 403 (2014)). “[T]he ultimate 

touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is ‘reasonableness.’” 

Lange v. California, 141 S. Ct. 2011, 2017 (2021) (quoting 

Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 403 (2006)); see also 

Camara v. Mun. Ct. of City & County of S.F., 387 U.S. 523, 

539 (1967). To meet this standard, law enforcement must 
10 USA V. ANDERSON

generally obtain a warrant based on probable cause before 

conducting a search. See Mitchell v. Wisconsin, 139 S. Ct. 

2525, 2534 (2019). “But not always: The ‘warrant 

requirement is subject to certain exceptions.’” Lange, 141 S.

Ct. at 2017 (quoting Stuart, 547 U.S. at 403). 

Vehicles are commonly impounded as part of law 

enforcement’s “community caretaking functions.” South 

Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364, 368 (1976) (quoting 

Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433, 441 (1973)). “The 

authority of police to seize and remove from the streets 

vehicles impeding traffic or threatening public safety and 

convenience is beyond challenge.” Id. at 369. Inventory 

searches of impounded vehicles is a “well-defined exception 

to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment.” 

Colorado v. Bertine, 479 U.S. 367, 371 (1987). The reasons 

why the Supreme Court created this exception are borne out 

in the history leading to its recognition. 

Development of the inventory-search exception began 

with the Supreme Court’s observation that “[c]ommon sense 

dictates . . . that questions involving searches of motorcars 

or other things readily moved cannot be treated as identical 

to questions arising out of searches of fixed structures like 

houses.” Preston v. United States, 376 U.S. 364, 366 (1964). 

In Preston, the defendant and two associates were arrested 

for vagrancy. Id. at 365. Their car was “towed to a garage”

where officers searched it and found evidence of criminal 

activity. Id. at 365–66. In his subsequent bank-robbery 

prosecution, the defendant sought to suppress the evidence 

found in the car. Id. at 366. The government argued that the 

search was reasonable for investigative purposes—either as 

a search incident to a lawful arrest or a search based on 

probable cause that the car was stolen. Id. at 367–68. The 

Court rejected both arguments. Regarding search incident to 
USA V. ANDERSON 11

arrest, the Court explained that where the suspects had been 

taken into custody and the car was in police custody, there 

was neither danger that the suspects could use any weapons 

or destroy any evidence located in the car, nor that the car or 

its contents would be lost to law enforcement. Id. 

A few years later, the Supreme Court recognized that law 

enforcement could search an impounded car without a 

warrant to protect the police. Cooper v. California, 386 U.S. 

58, 61–62 (1967). In Cooper, the defendant was arrested for 

selling heroin and his car was impounded under a California 

law that required all vehicles used in narcotics trafficking to 

be seized pending forfeiture proceedings. Id. at 58, 60. The 

car was searched a week after the defendant’s arrest, and 

evidence was found in the glove box. Id. at 58. California

conceded that the search was not conducted incident to arrest 

but argued it was nonetheless reasonable. Id. at 60. The 

Court noted that, unlike in Preston, the impoundment in 

Cooper was related to the defendant’s drug charge. Id. at 61.

And it instructed that while “lawful custody of an 

automobile does not of itself dispense with constitutional 

requirements of searches thereafter made of it, the reason for 

and nature of the custody may constitutionally justify the 

search.” Id. (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).

The Court further concluded that “[i]t would be 

unreasonable to hold that the police, having to retain the car 

in their custody [pending forfeiture proceedings], had no 

right, even for their own protection, to search it.” Id. at 61–

62.

Next, in Harris v. United States, the Court upheld a 

warrantless vehicle search conducted under a department

policy that sought to protect personal property located in 

impounded vehicles. 390 U.S. 234, 236 (1968). There, the 

defendant’s car was traced after it was seen leaving the scene 
12 USA V. ANDERSON

of a robbery. Id. at 235. The defendant was arrested as he 

was getting in the car, and the car was impounded and towed 

to the police station with its windows open and doors 

unlocked. Id. Department procedure required officers to 

search impounded vehicles “thoroughly,” “remove all 

valuables,” and prepare a “property tag” and place it in the 

vehicle. Id. The arresting officer conducted the required 

search and secured the vehicle’s windows and doors after it 

started to rain. Id. While securing the vehicle, the officer 

discovered evidence related to the robbery victim. Id. The

Court upheld the search because “the discovery of the 

[evidence] was . . . the result of a . . . measure taken to protect 

the car while it was in police custody.” Id. at 236. 

The Court recognized a third administrative justification 

for inventorying impounded cars—concern for public safety. 

Cady, 413 U.S. at 447–48. In Cady, officers arrested the 

defendant for drunk driving after he wrecked his car. Id. at 

435–36. The defendant told the officers that he was a 

Chicago police officer, and the officers believed that 

Chicago police were required to carry their service revolver 

at all times. Id. at 436. They looked for the defendant’s 

revolver on his person and in the front seat and glove 

compartment of the car but did not find it. Id. The car was 

towed to a private, unguarded garage and parked outside. Id.

Following department “standard procedure,” an officer went 

to the garage where the defendant’s car was towed to search 

for the service revolver, and he discovered evidence 

implicating the defendant in a murder. Id. at 436–38. Tying 

this case to Harris and Cooper, the Court again upheld the

warrantless search: 

In Harris the justification for the initial 

intrusion into the vehicle was to safeguard the 
USA V. ANDERSON 13

owner’s property, and in Cooper it was to 

guarantee the safety of the custodians. Here 

the the [sic] justification, while different, was 

as immediate and constitutionally reasonable 

as those in Harris and Cooper: concern for 

the safety of the general public who might be 

endangered if an intruder removed a revolver 

from the trunk of the vehicle. 

Id. at 447. 

The Supreme Court brought all the justifications for 

inventorying impounded vehicles together in Opperman. 

428 U.S. at 368–70. There, the defendant violated a city 

parking ordinance, and police impounded and towed his car

when he was not present. Id. at 365–66. Seeing a watch on 

the dashboard and other personal property inside the car, an 

officer followed standard procedures and inventoried the

property in the car, including the glovebox that contained 

marijuana. Id. at 366. When the defendant attempted to 

retrieve his car, he was arrested on drug charges. See id. The 

Court upheld the search, explaining: “In applying the 

reasonableness standard adopted by the Framers, this Court 

has consistently sustained police intrusions into automobiles 

impounded or otherwise in lawful police custody where the 

process is aimed at securing or protecting the car and its 

contents.” Id. at 373 (emphasis added). The Court further 

explained that the practice of inventorying the contents of 

impounded vehicles “developed in response to three distinct 

needs: [1] the protection of the owner’s property while it 

remains in police custody, [2] the protection of the police 

against claims or disputes over lost or stolen property, and 

[3] the protection of the police from potential danger.” Id. at 

369 (citations omitted). And the circumstances in Cooper, 
14 USA V. ANDERSON

Harris, Cady, and Opperman make clear that the searches 

the officers conducted in those cases were in service of the

recognized administrative justifications for warrantless 

inventory searches. See Illinois v. Lafayette, 462 U.S. 640, 

644 (1983) (“A so-called inventory search is not an 

independent legal concept but rather an incidental 

administrative step.”).

A standard inventory procedure goes a long way in 

determining the reasonableness of a search. Florida v. Wells, 

495 U.S. 1, 3–4 (1990). But the Supreme Court has been 

clear that not just any policy or practice will do. A proper 

“policy or practice governing inventory searches should be 

designed to produce an inventory,” and if the policy or 

practice gives officers the ability to exercise discretion, the 

Fourth Amendment requires that the exercise of such 

discretion be “based on concerns related to the purposes of 

an inventory search.” Id. at 4–5 (emphasis added). It 

naturally follows then that the existence of an inventory

policy or practice is not itself sufficient to justify applying 

the inventory-search exception. Officers relying on a 

standard procedure to justify a search must not “act[] in bad 

faith or for the sole purpose of investigation.” Bertine, 479 

U.S. at 372; see also United States v. Johnson, 889 F.3d 

1120, 1125 (9th Cir. 2018) (“[T]he purpose of the 

[inventory] search must be non-investigative; it must be 

‘conducted on the basis of something other than suspicion of 

evidence of criminal activity.’” (quoting United States v. 

Torres, 828 F.3d 1113, 1118 (9th Cir. 2016))). This is the 

rare context where the Fourth Amendment analysis is not 

purely objective—subjective motivations are material. See 

Kentucky v. King, 563 U.S. 452, 464 (2011) (“[W]e have 

never held, outside limited contexts such as an ‘inventory 

search or administrative inspection . . . , that an officer’s 
USA V. ANDERSON 15

motive invalidates objectively justifiable behavior under the 

Fourth Amendment.’” (quoting Whren v. United States, 517 

U.S. 806, 812 (1996))); Johnson, 889 F.3d at 1125 

(recognizing that “actual motivations do matter” in the 

inventory search context (citation omitted)). Plainly stated, 

“the exemption from the need for probable cause (and 

warrant), which is accorded to searches made for the purpose 

of inventory or administrative regulation, is not accorded to 

searches that are not made for those purposes.” Whren, 517 

U.S. at 811–12 (emphasis added).

IV. DISCUSSION

The parties presented two questions relevant to the 

search of Anderson’s truck: (1) whether the deputies had a 

valid community-caretaking reason for impounding the 

truck, and (2) whether the inventory search was reasonable 

under the Fourth Amendment. We do not address the first 

question because we conclude that the Government did not 

meet its burden to show that the deputies conducted an 

inventory search.

It is the government’s burden to prove that the Fourth 

Amendment is satisfied and the criteria for the inventorysearch exception are met. See Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U.S. 

753, 759–60 (1979), abrogated on other grounds by

California v. Acevedo, 500 U.S. 565 (1991) (“[T]he few 

situations in which a search may be conducted in the absence 

of a warrant have been carefully delineated and the burden 

is on those seeking the exemption to show the need for it.” 

(internal quotation marks and citation omitted)); see also 

Torres, 828 F.3d at 1118 (“The government bears the burden 

of establishing that a vehicle’s impoundment and search are 

justified under an exception to the warrant requirement.”). 

Anderson argues that the inventory search of his truck was 
16 USA V. ANDERSON

invalid because the deputies’ failure to create an inventory 

of his personal property, as required under SBCSD policy, 

evidences that they searched his truck for purely 

investigative reasons, not administrative reasons. Where a 

defendant challenges law enforcement’s motivations for 

conducting an inventory search, the defendant must point to 

“objective evidence to suggest that the intrusion was not 

made for the purpose of enforcing the administrative 

inspection scheme.” Johnson, 889 F.3d at 1126 (citation 

omitted). This production requirement does not, however,

shift the ultimate burden of proof regarding application of 

the inventory-search exception to the defendant. Instead, 

when a defendant produces objective evidence of pretext, the 

court must assess the officers’ subjective intent to determine 

whether the requirements of the inventory-search exception

are met. Id.

A.

The primary question is whether the deputies’ deviation 

from the governing inventory procedure indicates that they

acted in bad faith or solely for investigative purposes. The 

parties agree that SBCSD had a standard procedure for 

inventorying impounded vehicles. Anderson does not 

challenge the validity of this procedure per se. Rather, he 

argues that the deputies failed to follow the procedure to 

such a degree that they did not “produce an inventory” and, 

therefore, are not entitled to rely on the inventory-search 

exception. Wells, 495 U.S. at 4. The Government, on the 

other hand, argues that the deputies substantially complied 

with SBCSD’s standard procedure, relying on our precedent 

upholding imperfect inventories. The Government also 

argues that “something more” than administrative error is 

necessary to prove that the deputies relied on the inventorysearch exception as a pretext.
USA V. ANDERSON 17

As explained, the inventory-search exception applies 

“where the process is aimed at securing or protecting the car 

and its contents.” Opperman, 428 U.S. at 373. “[A]n 

inventory search must not be a ruse for a general rummaging 

in order to discover incriminating evidence.” Wells, 495 U.S. 

at 4. And because an officer’s subjective motivations have 

constitutional significance in this context, an officer’s degree 

of compliance with the governing procedure is relevant in 

determining whether the officer acted in furtherance of 

administrative purposes or solely for investigatory purposes 

under the guise of conducting an inventory. The Supreme 

Court has explained that whether an officer conducts an 

inventory search “in accordance with standard procedures 

in the local police department . . . [is] a factor tending to 

ensure that the intrusion would be limited in scope to the 

extent necessary to carry out the caretaking function.”

Opperman, 428 U.S. at 375; see also United States v. Garay, 

938 F.3d 1108, 1111 (9th Cir. 2019) (explaining that 

department “policies . . . assist courts to determine whether 

an inventory search is legitimate, as opposed to pretextual”). 

This is a matter of common sense. But it is not just the 

existence of a standard procedure, but also its application,

that informs an officer’s motives. It matters not that there is 

a standard procedure that cabins an officer’s discretion if it 

is not followed.

Of course, inventory procedures need not “be conducted 

in a totally mechanical ‘all or nothing’ fashion.” Wells, 495 

U.S. at 4. An officer may exercise reasonable discretion in 

conducting inventory searches so long as such discretion is 

“exercised according to standard criteria” that serve the 

administrative goals of inventory searches, rather than solely 

to search for evidence. Id. (quoting Bertine, 479 U.S. at 375); 

Torres, 828 F.3d at 1120 (same). And perfect compliance 
18 USA V. ANDERSON

with standard criteria is not required. We previously have 

held that “minor noncompliance with department policies 

does not invalidate an otherwise lawful inventory search.” 

Magdirila, 962 F.3d at 1157. But there is a limit to how far 

an officer can stray from a standard procedure that is adopted 

to serve the recognized administrative purposes underlying 

the inventory-search exception and still justify the search as 

a good-faith, administrative action. Id. The circumstances of 

this case force us to wrestle with the established principle 

that an inventory search that “materially deviate[s] from 

department policy can be invalid.” Id.

It cannot be forgotten that the “purpose of [an inventory] 

search is to ‘produce an inventory’ of the items in the car, in 

order ‘to protect an owner’s property while it is in the 

custody of the police, to insure against claims of lost, stolen, 

or vandalized property, and to guard the police from 

danger.’” Johnson, 889 F.3d at 1125 (emphasis added) 

(quoting Wells, 495 U.S. at 4). An officer’s failure to create 

an inventory can, but may not always, suggest that 

something else drove the search. Id. at 1127–28. In the 

Fourth Amendment context, the facts matter. See, e.g.,

Lange, 141 S. Ct. at 2018 (considering the totality of the 

circumstances when analyzing a warrantless intrusion). And 

our prior decisions upholding imperfect inventories are 

distinguishable from this case. 

In Garay, the defendant led law-enforcement officers on 

a high-speed chase that ended when he crashed in a ditch. 

938 F.3d at 1110. Before towing the defendant’s totaled 

vehicle, the officers conducted an inventory search and 

found two loaded firearms, ammunition, and cell phones that 

they removed and booked into evidence. Id. Although the 

applicable inventory procedure required the officers to list 

the property found in the car on an inventory form, id. at 
USA V. ANDERSON 19

1111, they listed only the firearms, id. at 1110–11. But the 

officers noted on the form “that items of potential value were 

in the car before identifying and booking the items recovered 

from the car as ‘evidence/property.’” Id. at 1112. The 

defendant challenged the inventory search because the 

officers failed to provide a complete property list, as required 

by their department procedure. Id. at 1111.

We disagreed, concluding that the officers had complied 

with the department procedure “in material respects.” Id. at 

1112. Where “the site was in effect a crime scene, the items 

in the car were sensibly treated as evidence.” Id. at 1111–12. 

And we noted that the purposes of the inventory-search 

exception were served because “remov[ing] and 

safeguard[ing]” the contents of an impounded vehicle “is the 

essence of an inventory search.” Id. at 1111. Because the 

officers recorded the required information about the tow,

obtained an inventory file number, and “checked a box on 

the relevant inventory form indicating that items of potential 

value were in the car before identifying and booking the 

items recovered from the car as ‘evidence/property,’” we 

concluded that the failure to prepare a complete list of the 

defendant’s property on the inventory form “[wa]s not, on 

its own, a material deviation from policy.” Id. at 1112. 

Similarly, in Magdirila, officers impounded and 

searched a vehicle after the defendant admitted that he did 

not have a driver’s license. 962 F.3d at 1154–55. The 

relevant department inventory procedure required officers to 

make an “accurate” inventory of the vehicle’s contents on an 

inventory form, to list “[a]ll property,” and to “be as 

thorough and accurate as practical in preparing an itemized 

inventory.” Id. at 1155 (alteration in original). In the 

“REMARKS” section of the inventory form, the officer 

listed “IPHONE/APPLE WATCH” and cross-referenced the
20 USA V. ANDERSON

police report. Id. On the referenced police report, the officer 

listed several more items, “including, but not limited to, a 

black backpack, air pistol, ink cartridges, USB flash drive, 

and an American Express credit card.” Id. Although the 

officers did not provide a complete inventory on the 

inventory form itself, we held that they “complied 

substantially” with department procedure by incorporating 

the police report into the inventory report. Id. at 1158. 

Taken together, these decisions establish that an

incomplete inventory form is not inherently fatal. An 

incomplete inventory is valid if other actions taken by the 

officers indicate that they were acting, at least in part, for 

administrative reasons. See Opperman, 428 U.S. at 373 

(noting the “Court has consistently sustained police 

intrusions into automobiles impounded . . . where the process 

is aimed at securing or protecting the car and its contents”);

Whren, 517 U.S. at 811–12 (noting the inventory exception 

from warrant requirement only extended to searches made 

for administrative purposes). 

Turning to the present case, we must determine if the 

facts demonstrate that the Government met its burden to 

show that the deputies were at least partially motivated by 

administrative purposes to search Anderson’s truck, or 

whether they acted solely for investigative purposes. See 

Johnson, 889 F.3d at 1127. To begin with, it cannot 

reasonably be disputed that the deputies failed to inventory 

Anderson’s personal property as mandated by SBCSD’s 

standard procedure. SBCSD’s procedure requires deputies to 

record “any personal property contained within the 

vehicle.”2 This is important because this policy, unlike 

2 The inventory report form also expressly instructs deputies to “list 

property[] [and] tools.”
USA V. ANDERSON 21

others that have been considered, does not afford deputies 

discretion to pick and choose what to inventory. Cf. United 

States v. Garner, 181 F.3d 988, 992 (8th Cir. 1999) (holding 

officer’s failure to create an inventory list was not indicative 

of bad faith where the applicable procedure did not require 

the inventory search “be conducted in a particular manner”).

Yet, the only item that the deputies here recorded and 

safeguarded was the firearm used as evidence against 

Anderson. They did not inventory a speaker, tools, two pairs 

of sunglasses, a watch, cologne, and other miscellaneous 

items. And unlike in Garay and Magdirila, the inventory 

report here did not otherwise record this omitted property. 

See Garay, 938 F.3d at 1112 (“[The officer] checked a box 

on the relevant inventory form indicating that items of 

potential value were in the car before identifying and 

booking the items recovered from the car as 

‘evidence/property.’”); Magdirila, 962 F.3d at 1158 

(officers listed some items and incorporated the police report

listing additional items); see also Garner, 181 F.3d at 991–

92 (upholding inventory search where policy did not dictate 

manner of the inventory and the officer “did not complete a 

specific inventory form to document the items seized” 

because “the vehicle’s contents were recorded in other 

ways,” including “a towing report” and “property record”). 

Moreover, the deputies’ identification of the firearm and 

ammunition taken from Anderson’s truck as “evidence” on 

the crime report indicates that these items “were seized and 

treated specifically as evidence of a crime—not as property 

held for safekeeping.” Johnson, 889 F.3d at 1128.

To begin with, the dissent dismisses our attention to 

SBCSD’s policy because it contends that the governing 

inventory-search policy is irrelevant apart from its mere 

existence because such policies “do not define constitutional 
22 USA V. ANDERSON

rights.” Dissent at 48. The dissent further contends that an 

officer’s failure to comply with the terms of the governing 

policy cannot establish bad faith or pretext. These 

propositions are untenable as a matter of precedent and logic. 

If these propositions were true, the administrative purposes 

that an inventory policy must serve to be valid, see Wells, 

495 U.S. at 4, would be rendered meaningless so long as the 

policy permitted an impoundment and inventory under the

factual circumstances presented. This is inconsistent with the 

clear direction that an inventory policy’s application, as well 

as its existence, is relevant to whether the inventory-search 

exception justifies a warrantless search. See Opperman, 428 

U.S. at 375–76. And if courts ignore whether law 

enforcement officers comply with their department’s policy

“designed to produce an inventory,” then officers will not 

have to serve the administrative purposes for which the 

inventory-search exception was created in conducting 

warrantless searches and instead will have a license to use 

inventory searches as “a ruse for a general rummaging in 

order to discover incriminating evidence.” Wells, 495 U.S. 

at 4. 

The Government and the dissent further argue that the 

lack of a complete property list on the inventory form the 

deputies prepared is immaterial because one of the deputies 

took photographs of the inside of Anderson’s truck, which 

depict personal property found in the truck. SBCSD’s 

procedure does not contemplate inventory-by-photograph, 

but regardless, the photographs did not record all the 

property found in the truck. And different from Garay and 

Magdirila, there is no indication that the photographs were 

made part of the administrative inventory record. Rather, the

photographs were part of the separate investigative police 
USA V. ANDERSON 23

report,3 which was not referenced in the inventory report.

This is not a meaningless technicality, as the dissent 

suggests. It is relevant in assessing the deputies’ motivation 

because it indicates that the photographs were treated as 

evidence. See Johnson, 889 F.3d at 1127–28 (the officers 

and government attorneys’ actions made clear the search was 

investigatory). There is no indication that SDCSD’s crime 

reports are maintained in a manner to ensure the safekeeping 

of personal property and to protect the department against 

claims of theft or loss, and we cannot assume that they are. 

The Government also argues that the incomplete 

inventory report is immaterial because the deputy who

prepared the form could have decided to list only the firearm 

because he saw nothing else of “significant value” in the 

truck. This is unpersuasive. As discussed, SBCSD’s 

inventory-search policy does not give deputies discretion to 

decide what property should be listed. Additionally, the 

record belies the Government’s argument that Anderson’s 

property was not inventoried because it was deemed not to 

have sufficient value. The deputy who prepared the 

inventory form in this case listed tools and other items like 

those he found in Anderson’s truck on inventory reports that 

he prepared in other cases. 

Finally, the dissent contends that our analysis of the 

inventory search is inconsistent with Bertine, where the 

Supreme Court upheld an inventory search that omitted

valuable items from the inventory. The inventory policy at 

issue in that case “mandated a detailed inventory involving 

3 The property listed in the police report also was limited to items with 

apparent evidentiary value—a holster, a firearm, and ammunition. And 

the police report describes the photographs as “digital photographs of the 

vehicle, the obstructed license plate and the firearm located.” 
24 USA V. ANDERSON

the opening of containers and the listing of [their] contents,”

and the primary question posed was whether officers could 

open closed containers as part of an administrative inventory 

search. Bertine, 479 U.S. at 370 (alteration in original). The 

Court concluded that closed containers could be searched in 

an inventory and further noted that “there was no showing 

that the police, who were following standardized procedures, 

acted in bad faith or for the sole purpose of investigation.” 

Id. at 372. No doubt, the inventory prepared in that case was 

far from complete. See id. at 383 (Marshall, J., dissenting). 

But the point is not that the deputies here prepared an

incomplete inventory, as in Bertine and other cases that we 

have discussed. The point is that they inventoried only the 

evidence used to convict Anderson. Those were not the 

circumstances in Bertine. There, the officers did inventory

non-evidentiary “items found in the vehicle,” including 

“jumper cables, a tire, a shovel, and some sandbags.” People 

v. Bertine, 706 P.2d 411, 413 (Colo. 1985) (en banc), rev’d,

479 U.S. 367 (1987). Stated another way, our concern with 

the deputies’ inventory here does not go to their competence, 

but to their purpose.

4 See Johnson, 889 F.3d at 1125–26. 

4 The dissent reads Bertine as suggesting that major deviations from 

governing inventory policy are permissible, but that was not the issue the 

Supreme Court confronted in that case. While the Colorado lower courts 

addressed whether the “somewhat slipshod” manner of the inventory 

search comported with federal and state constitutional requirements, the 

Colorado Supreme Court premised its ruling on the federal constitution 

alone and concluded that searches of closed trunks and containers 

violated the Fourth Amendment. Bertine, 479 U.S. at 369–70. In 

reversing the Colorado Supreme Court, Bertine held that an officer, 

pursuant to a standard inventory policy, may open closed containers 

during a routine inventory search. Id. at 374 (“We conclude that here, as 

in Lafayette, reasonable police regulations relating to inventory 
USA V. ANDERSON 25

The bottom line is simple: the deputies’ recording of a 

single item used as evidence, despite SBCSD’s procedure 

requiring that they inventory “any personal property 

contained within the vehicle” was not mere “minor” or 

“slipshod” noncompliance. Bertine, 479 U.S. at 369; 

Magdirila, 962 F.3d at 1157. It was a material deviation 

from SBCSD’s standard inventory procedure, see 

Magdirila, 962 F.3d at 1157, and the “inventory” that they 

produced was incapable of serving the non-investigative

purposes of protecting an owner’s personal property and 

protecting officers against accusations of theft or loss of an 

owner’s property, see Opperman, 428 U.S. at 369. This 

combination is relevant in assessing the deputies’ motives 

for searching Anderson’s truck and strongly suggests that 

they acted for purely investigatory reasons.

5

procedures administered in good faith satisfy the Fourth Amendment.”); 

see id. at 376 (Blackmun, J., concurring). Justice Marshall dissented 

because in his view there was no standardized criteria to guide the 

officers’ discretion in deciding whether to impound the vehicle or allow 

it to be parked and locked, and no criteria guiding what items need to be 

inventoried. Id. at 379–81 (Marshall, J., dissenting). The disputed 

question, therefore, was whether the governing department policy 

allowed for unfettered police discretion. Id. When Justice Marshall 

discussed the slipshod inventory, id. at 382, he did so to make the point 

that only one of the three governmental interests described in 

Opperman—protecting an owner’s property in police custody—might 

justify any automobile inventory search, and that even that factor did not 

justify the search in Bertine because of how deficient it was, id. at 384. 

In short, the Bertine court did not confront the question presented here—

whether major deviations from the governing administrative policy 

inform the officers’ subjective motivations.

5

It is undisputed that the deputies searched Anderson’s truck for 

investigatory reasons. The dispute is whether this was their sole reason 
26 USA V. ANDERSON

B.

Other circumstances surrounding the search, considered 

in the totality, also suggest that the deputies were not 

motivated to search Anderson’s truck for administrative 

purposes. See Lange, 141 S. Ct. at 2018. The deputies 

decided to impound Anderson’s truck because he did not 

have a valid license. Before the search began, the deputies 

had discovered what they viewed as a “[l]ot of . . . money” 

in Anderson’s wallet (around two hundred dollars), 

questioned why Anderson had gloves and why his truck was 

wet, and learned from dispatch that he was a career criminal. 

The deputies clearly were suspicious that Anderson had 

engaged in criminal behavior. 

When the search was conducted, the deputies had not 

arrested Anderson, although he was detained in handcuffs in 

one of the deputy’s vehicles. These circumstances are 

different from those presented in the Supreme Court’s cases

upholding inventory searches where law enforcement 

arrested the defendant before searching the vehicle. See, e.g.,

Cooper, 386 U.S. at 58, 60–62 (vehicle impounded at arrest 

and searched days later); Harris, 390 U.S. at 235 (vehicle 

impounded at arrest and searched after it was towed to the 

police precinct); Cady, 413 U.S. at 435–36 (defendant was 

arrested and jailed for DUI before his wrecked car was 

impounded); Bertine, 479 U.S. at 368–69 (search conducted 

after defendant arrested for DUI); see also Garay, 938 F.3d 

for searching. Much of what the dissent focuses on in concluding that the 

deputies acted for an administrative purpose relates to the impoundment 

of the truck—a seizure. But here we are concerned with the search of the 

truck. A seizure and a search are different acts, which implicate different 

interests. See Segura v. United States, 468 U.S. 796, 806 (1984) (“A 

seizure affects only the person’s possessory interests; a search affects a 

person’s privacy interests.”). 
USA V. ANDERSON 27

at 1110 (car impounded after defendant crashed following a 

high-speed chase).

Additionally, the deputies conducted the search almost 

immediately after they discovered a basis for impounding

Anderson’s truck. Cf. Cooper, 386 U.S. at 60–62; Harris, 

390 U.S. at 235; Cady, 413 U.S. at 436–37 (search was 

conducted after vehicle was towed); Wells, 495 U.S. at 2

(same); Johnson, 889 F.3d at 1123 (search conducted after 

tow ordered). And the deputies did not remove or otherwise 

secure Anderson’s personal property for safekeeping. Cf.

Harris, 390 U.S. at 235 (closed the vehicle’s windows to 

protect against rain per departmental procedure and saw 

evidence of a crime in plain view); Opperman, 428 U.S. at 

366 (deputy inventoried and removed defendant’s personal 

property for safekeeping).

By themselves, these facts have limited force, but where 

Anderson was secured in the back of a patrol car and there 

was no immediate exigency related to securing the truck and 

its contents, they are part of the totality informing whether 

the “inventory” search conducted here was an excuse “to 

rummage for evidence.” Garay, 938 F.3d at 1111. There 

may be cases where the surrounding circumstances are 

inconsistent with the conclusion that law enforcement was 

acting for investigatory purposes such that the lack of a

property inventory may be insufficient to demonstrate a 

purely investigative motive, but that is not this case.

The dissent argues that the ordering of events is of no 

moment because there are numerous cases where inventory 

searches were upheld when the search occurred before the 

defendant was arrested. None of the authority the dissent 

cites on this point is from the Supreme Court. And the 

dissent is incorrect to suggest that the ordering of events 
28 USA V. ANDERSON

surrounding an inventory search is irrelevant. In Opperman, 

for example, the Supreme Court specifically noted in support 

of its conclusion that the officers were searching for 

administrative purposes that “[t]he inventory was conducted 

only after the car had been impounded” and the owner was 

not present to arrange “for the safekeeping of his 

belongings.” 428 U.S. at 375. The Fourth Amendment 

inquiry is always based on the totality of the 

circumstances—inventory searches are no exception. 

For these reasons, the district court’s conclusion that the

deputies’ warrantless inventory search was valid is not 

supported by the record. Ashker, 81 F.4th at 878; see also 

Magdirila, 962 F.3d at 1156 (absent specific factual findings 

related to the Fourth Amendment issue, there must be a 

reasonable view to support a district court’s denial of a 

motion to suppress).

* * * * *

The Fourth Amendment, not policies governing 

administrative searches, defines the constitutional right

against unreasonable searches and seizures. But given the 

nature of the inventory-search exception to the warrant 

requirement, law enforcement’s compliance with the 

governing inventory procedure or policy can be material. To

satisfy the Fourth Amendment, an inventory search must 

serve administrative, not solely investigatory, goals. Bertine, 

479 U.S. at 371–72. And whether law enforcement officers 

have complied with their governing inventory procedure can 

inform their motivations for conducting an inventory search. 

See Opperman, 428 U.S. at 376 (“[I]n following standard 

police procedures, . . . the conduct of the police was not 

‘unreasonable’ under the Fourth Amendment.”); Garay, 938 

F.3d at 1111 (“If [an inventory search is] done according to 
USA V. ANDERSON 29

standardized criteria and not in ‘bad faith or for the sole 

purpose of investigation,’ police inventory procedures 

satisfy the Fourth Amendment.” (quoting Bertine, 479 U.S. 

at 372)). Accordingly, deviation from the governing

inventory policy can evidence bad faith or that officers were 

acting solely for investigative purposes. 

The dissent laments that Anderson “goes free” as a result 

of our decision. Dissent at 38. But, of course, one does not 

lose his Fourth Amendment rights upon being convicted of 

a felony—or even multiple felonies. And we do not enforce

the Fourth Amendment based on whether an underlying 

conviction will be invalidated. See Riley, 573 U.S. at 401 

(“We cannot deny that our decision today will have an 

impact on the ability of law enforcement to combat 

crime. . . . Privacy comes at a cost.”).

REVERSED and VACATED. 

MENDOZA, Circuit Judge, concurring:

After pulling Jonathan Anderson over, police officers 

performed a warrantless inventory search of his truck and 

found a firearm underneath his driver’s seat. Mr. Anderson 

maintains that this search violated the Fourth Amendment 

because (1) the deputies lacked a valid community 

caretaking justification to impound Mr. Anderson’s truck, 

and (2) their subsequent inventory search was unreasonable 

under the Fourth Amendment. The majority only reaches 

the latter issue, addressing whether the deputies’ inventory 

search violated the Fourth Amendment, correctly finding 

that it did. I write separately to address the community 

caretaking question. As with so many Fourth Amendment 
30 USA V. ANDERSON

issues, determining whether the community caretaking 

exception applies in this case is a fact-intensive inquiry. 

Although we owe great deference to the trial court’s finding 

of fact, when it makes a clear error that impacts its legal 

analysis, we are obligated to correct it. Here, the trial court 

made such an error, and I would reverse its decision on this 

basis as well.

I.

Deputy Daniel Peterson noticed Mr. Anderson driving 

with a partially obstructed license plate at around 2:00 a.m. 

on November 13, 2019. After Mr. Anderson sped into a 

residential neighborhood, the deputy initiated a traffic stop 

and called for back-up. Mr. Anderson drove about a 

thousand feet, pulled into a driveway, exited his truck, and 

tossed his keys onto the front lawn. Deputy Peterson drew 

his gun and ordered Mr. Anderson to get on his knees. While 

Mr. Anderson complied with the deputy’s orders, a second 

officer, Deputy Kyle Schuler, arrived and placed 

Mr. Anderson in handcuffs. Mr. Anderson told the deputies 

that he was parked in “a friend[’s]” driveway and that his 

driver’s license was expired. Deputy Peterson called 

dispatch, which relayed that Mr. Anderson was a “career 

criminal.” Meanwhile, Deputy Schuler searched through 

Mr. Anderson’s wallet; asked him why he had a “lot of 

. . . money” in it; questioned him about his truck, which 

appeared freshly washed, and commented on the gloves that 

Mr. Anderson was wearing.1 All this interaction and 

discussion occurred before any contact was made with the 

1 As the majority notes, the clear implication of these questions was that 

Deputy Schuler suspected Mr. Anderson of criminal behavior, well 

before the search of his truck. 
USA V. ANDERSON 31

owner of the home where Mr. Anderson had parked, 

Mr. Michael Wallace.

At some point later, Deputy Schuler spoke with 

Mr. Wallace who asked the deputies to remove 

Mr. Anderson’s truck from his driveway. According to 

Mr. Anderson, this conversation occurred after Deputy 

Peterson had already searched his truck and found the 

firearm. But the government contends that Deputy Schuler 

spoke to Mr. Wallace before the search began. The district 

court resolved this factual dispute in favor of the 

government, noting that the “only evidence before [it] at 

[the] time, other than speculation, from the testimony of the 

witnesses, is that [the deputies] did talk to the homeowner 

before they searched the car.” For the reasons explained 

below, this finding is clearly erroneous. 

II.

Although we owe great deference to a trial court’s 

factual findings—particularly when, like here, the district 

court takes testimony on the subject, United States v. 

Craighead, 539 F.3d 1073, 1082 (9th Cir. 2008)—we need 

not affirm a “clearly erroneous” decision if we are “left with 

the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been 

committed,” United States v. Hinkson, 585 F.3d 1247, 1260

(9th Cir. 2009) (en banc) (cleaned up). We reverse a district 

court’s finding if it is “illogical, implausible, or without 

support in inferences from the record.” Oakland Bulk & 

Oversized Terminal, LLC v. City of Oakland, 960 F.3d 603, 

613 (9th Cir. 2020). We should not cosign a district court 

finding that is contradicted by objective evidence and 

common sense. 

The court’s finding that the officers spoke to the 

homeowner before searching Mr. Anderson’s car is clearly 
32 USA V. ANDERSON

erroneous for two reasons. First, the court’s finding requires 

us to believe that the deputies questioned Mr. Anderson, 

placed him in the back of the patrol car, spoke with the 

homeowner, located the firearm, and called it in to dispatch 

in roughly two minutes. In my view, this is an implausible 

timeline of events, given the testimony and verifiable 

dispatch log and audio recording. Second, the district 

court’s proffered explanation—that there was no 

nonspeculative evidence that the deputies searched the

vehicle before speaking to Mr. Wallace—is unsupported by 

the record. See, e.g., Reber v. United States, 951 F.2d 961, 

969 (9th Cir. 1991) (finding that mischaracterization of 

evidence constitutes clear error). Contrary to the district 

court’s suggestion, there was more than mere speculation in 

the record that the officers searched the vehicle before 

speaking to Mr. Wallace. 

Based on Deputy Peterson’s audio recording and 

dispatch log,2 we know that Deputy Schuler could not have 

spoken to Mr. Wallace until after 2:06:36 a.m.3 We also 

know that Deputy Peterson found the gun in Mr. Anderson’s 

car and reported its serial number to dispatch at 2:08:46 a.m. 

2 To construct an accurate timeline of events, we reviewed (1) Deputy 

Peterson’s audio-belt recording, which was translated into a roughly 

five-minute transcript, and (2) the dispatch log bearing a timestamp for 

Deputy Peterson’s calls to dispatch. Viewing these two records together, 

we can deduce the timing of events that are heard in the belt recording.

3 The record reflects that Deputy Peterson called dispatch to inquire 

about Mr. Anderson’s expired license two minutes and thirty-nine 

seconds (2:39) into Deputy Peterson’s belt recording—which 

corresponds with the 2:04:48 a.m. mark of the dispatch log. Using these 

datapoints as a baseline, and running the clock concurrently, we know 

that Deputy Schuler spoke to Mr. Anderson until around 2:06:36 a.m., 

before leaving to speak with Mr. Wallace. 
USA V. ANDERSON 33

If we were to adopt the district court’s factual finding—that 

Deputy Schuler spoke with Mr. Wallace before Deputy 

Peterson searched the truck—then the following events 

would have had to occur in a two minute and ten second 

window: (1) the deputies lead Mr. Anderson, who was 

vocally objecting to the search of his truck, to the back of the 

patrol car; (2) Deputy Schuler walked up the driveway to the 

front door of Mr. Wallace’s house; (3) he knocked twice on 

the door; (4) he woke Mr. Wallace in the middle of the night; 

(5) he waited for Mr. Wallace to wake up and answer the 

door; (6) he spoke to Mr. Wallace, who confirmed that he 

did not know Mr. Anderson; (7) he signaled to Deputy 

Peterson to search the truck; (8) Deputy Peterson 

acknowledged the signal, and searched Mr. Anderson’s 

truck; (9) Deputy Peterson found a gun underneath the 

driver’s seat; (10) he located the car’s serial number and read 

it, at night; and (11) he called the serial number in to 

dispatch. 

Even after giving special deference to the district court’s 

credibility determinations, Craighead, 539 F.3d at 1082, that 

timeline of events is, simply put, implausible. Particularly 

when Mr. Wallace testified that it took him at least a minute 

or two to wake up and answer the door. He also testified that 

he spoke to Deputy Schuler for approximately three to five 

minutes, and that he did not see Deputy Schuler signal to 

Deputy Peterson. After being questioned about the accuracy 

of his recollection of these details, Mr. Wallace stated: “I’m 

positive, I’m sure.” Even if Mr. Wallace overestimated the 

length of time it took him to wake up and answer the door, 

which is certainly possible, the district court’s finding of fact 

inexplicably allots a matter of seconds for Mr. Wallace to 

jump out of bed in the middle of night to give officers the 

green light to search Mr. Anderson’s truck. His testimony is 
34 USA V. ANDERSON

direct, non-speculative evidence that the deputies did not

speak to him before searching Mr. Anderson’s truck. 

The record also shows that Deputy Peterson called 

dispatch to inquire about Mr. Anderson’s expired license at 

2:04:48 a.m. Mr. Anderson submitted an affidavit attesting 

that Deputy Peterson entered and searched his truck without 

permission at 2:06:19 a.m.4 According to the district court’s 

finding of fact, the deputies had not yet spoken to 

Mr. Wallace at this point. In fact, Deputy Schuler can still 

be heard speaking to Mr. Anderson, and it would be another 

two minutes and twenty-seven seconds before Deputy 

Peterson called dispatch to report the firearm at 2:08:46 a.m. 

There are two explanations for why Mr. Anderson can 

be heard objecting to a search of his truck prior to the 

moment when the court determined that the deputies had 

spoken to Mr. Wallace: either the deputies had 

predetermined that they would search Mr. Anderson’s truck 

before confirming whether it was in fact legally parked, or 

they had already begun to search the truck and the court’s 

factual finding is incorrect. Either way, Mr. Anderson’s 

declaration, combined with the belt recording and dispatch 

log, is direct, non-speculative evidence that the search 

occurred before the officers spoke to Mr. Wallace, and that 

the officers were motivated by investigatory rather than 

administrative purpose. 

Taken together, the direct, disinterested testimony of 

Mr. Wallace and the unimpeachable dispatch log and audio 

4 This is an imputed time, based on Mr. Anderson’s declaration that the 

search began four minutes and ten seconds (4:10) into the belt recording, 

around the same time Mr. Anderson can be heard objecting to a search 

of his truck. 
USA V. ANDERSON 35

recording amount to more than mere speculation. Even if 

the court discredits Mr. Wallace’s testimony and 

Mr. Anderson’s attestations, the court is still left with a 

finding of fact that leads to an implausible timeline of events. 

For all these reasons, I am left with the “firm conviction” 

that the district court’s finding that the deputies spoke to 

Mr. Wallace before searching the truck is clearly erroneous. 

Hinkson, 585 F.3d at 1260. 

III.

The district court’s factual finding led to the conclusion 

that the deputies had a valid exception to the warrant 

requirement to seize and search Mr. Anderson’s truck. 

Finding that the deputies spoke to Mr. Wallace after 

searching Mr. Anderson’s truck compels us to conclude 

otherwise. Warrantless searches and seizures “are per se 

unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment—subject only to 

a few specifically established and well-delineated 

exceptions.” Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357 

(1967). The community caretaking exception is one such 

exception, allowing officers to seize vehicles that pose a 

hazard to other drivers, impede the flow of traffic, or are 

targets of vandalism or theft. See Miranda v. City of 

Cornelius, 429 F.3d 858, 864 (9th Cir. 2005). Officers may 

not use this exception, however, as a pretext to investigate 

suspected criminal activity, see Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 

U.S. 433, 441 (1973), because “[t]he police’s authority to 

search and seize property when acting in its role as 

‘community caretaker’ has a different source than its 

authority to search and seize property to investigate criminal 

activity,” Miranda, 429 F.3d at 863. As is true in the case of 

any warrantless search and seizure, “the government bears 

the burden” of proving an exception applies, United States 

v. Cervantes, 703 F.3d 1135, 1141 (9th Cir. 2010), and this 
36 USA V. ANDERSON

burden is a “heavy” one, United States v. Howard, 828 F.2d 

552, 555 (9th Cir. 1987) (reasoning that the government’s 

burden cannot be “satisfied by speculation”); see also

Cervantes, 703 F.3d at 1142 n.1 (collecting cases). 

The government contends that Deputy Schuler spoke to 

Mr. Wallace before the search began. Adopting this version 

of events, the district court held that the deputies had a valid 

community caretaking justification to impound 

Mr. Anderson’s truck, search his vehicle, and locate the 

firearm underneath the driver’s seat. See United States v. 

Torres, 828 F.3d 1113, 1119 (9th Cir. 2016) (holding that a 

community caretaking seizure is justified to “promote other 

vehicles’ convenient ingress and egress to the parking 

area”). But the court’s factual finding is clearly erroneous 

for the reasons explained above, and based on the facts in the 

record, I find that the officers did not speak to Mr. Wallace 

until after searching the vehicle. Thus, at the time deputies 

searched Mr. Anderson’s truck, they had no basis to disprove 

Mr. Anderson’s claim that he was parked at a friend’s house, 

and therefore, had no community caretaking reason to 

impound and search his truck. See Miranda, 429 F.3d at 866 

(holding that a community caretaking seizure is unjustified 

when “the location of the vehicle does not create any need 

for the police to protect the vehicle or to avoid a hazard to 

other drivers”). 

Though the deputies later discovered a valid community 

caretaking purpose to seize the truck, the facts show that the 

deputies did not have a valid administrative purpose at the 

moment they decided to search Mr. Anderson’s truck.5 See 

Miranda, 429 F.3d at 864 (holding that in assessing whether 

5 As the majority correctly notes, the doctrine of inevitable discovery is 

waived. 
USA V. ANDERSON 37

a seizure was justified by the community caretaking 

exception, “we must examine whether this seizure is 

reasonable based on all of the facts presented”). The 

government may not rely on post-hoc justifications to meet 

its heavy burden of proving an exception to the warrant 

requirement; particularly when the deputies were 

purportedly acting under a community caretaking function, 

which the Supreme Court has described as being “totally 

divorced from the detection, investigation, or acquisition of 

evidence relating to the violation of a criminal statute.” 

Cady, 413 U.S. at 441. Permitting otherwise would endorse 

a search-first-and-find-ample-justification-later approach 

that is incompatible with our well-established precedent. 

See Byars v. United States, 273 U.S. 28, 29 (1927) (“A 

search prosecuted in violation of the Constitution is not 

made lawful by what it brings to light[.]”); United States v. 

Taheri, 648 F.2d 598, 600 (9th Cir. 1981) (holding that to 

permit “post hoc justification[s] for using information that 

had [] been illegally obtained . . . would encourage police 

officers to ignore the dictates of the fourth amendment in 

conducting initial investigations”). 

IV.

By the time the deputies began their investigatory relay 

race, Mr. Anderson was safely handcuffed, posing no threat 

to himself or others, his car was turned off and safely parked 

in a driveway, and the deputies were under full control of the 

situation. The district court found that the deputies spoke to 

the homeowner before they searched the truck, leading the 

court to conclude that the community caretaking exception 

applied. That finding was erroneous, and counter to witness 

testimony, the verifiable evidence, and, frankly, common 

sense. Thus, lacking a factual edifice, the government failed 

to meet its burden of demonstrating that the deputies’ 
38 USA V. ANDERSON

subsequent search was motivated by a valid community 

caretaking purpose. In addition to the reasons outlined in the 

majority, I would reverse the district court’s decision below 

on the ground that the government also failed to establish 

that the community caretaking exception applied. 

BRESS, Circuit Judge, with whom CALLAHAN, IKUTA, 

OWENS, and VANDYKE, Circuit Judges join, dissenting:

Jonathan Anderson, a six-time convicted felon, had a 

loaded gun in his truck. This meant serious federal charges 

and a surefire conviction. But today Anderson goes free. 

The en banc court holds that evidence of the gun should be 

suppressed because police violated the Fourth Amendment 

when preparing the inventory form for Anderson’s validly 

impounded vehicle. In so ruling, the court distorts the legal 

framework for inventory searches, contravenes decades of 

Supreme Court and circuit precedent, and turns hairsplitting 

distinctions into constitutional rules. 

Under settled law, the validity of an inventory search 

depends on whether officers acted in bad faith or for the sole 

purpose of investigation. With an inspector’s clipboard, the 

majority instead holds that officers violated the Constitution 

because they did not follow the court’s new hyper-technical 

rules for filling out forms—which the deputies here had to 

do in the middle of the night after lawfully stopping a career 

criminal. The touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is 

reasonableness. In scrutinizing the minutiae of officer 

paperwork, the majority loses sight of this core 

constitutional principle. This decision is not only wrong as 

a matter of law but will seriously jeopardize public safety, 
USA V. ANDERSON 39

invalidating entirely lawful searches and resulting 

convictions, just like those here. 

I respectfully dissent.

I

I begin with the majority’s warping of the legal 

standards. Until today’s decision, those standards were very 

clear.

Inventory searches of automobiles are a longstanding 

exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. 

Colorado v. Bertine, 479 U.S. 367, 371 (1987). When police 

lawfully impound a vehicle, as they did here, they may 

conduct an inventory search pursuant to a standardized 

policy. Id. at 375–76; see United States v. ManceraLondono, 912 F.2d 373, 375–76 (9th Cir. 1990). In this 

context, an individual’s expectation of privacy as to the 

contents of his vehicle—which is a “diminished expectation 

of privacy” to begin with—is outweighed by the “strong 

governmental interests” in “protect[ing] an owner’s property 

while it is in the custody of the police,” “insur[ing] against 

claims of lost, stolen, or vandalized property,” and 

“guard[ing] the police from danger.” Bertine, 479 U.S. at 

372; see also Illinois v. Lafayette, 462 U.S. 640, 647 (1983); 

South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364, 369 (1976).

When officers act pursuant to a valid standardized 

policy—which they indisputably did here—an inventory 

search will be upheld unless it is conducted “in bad faith or 

for the sole purpose of investigation.” Bertine, 479 U.S. at 

372. That is the legal standard that has governed us for 

many, many years. “[R]easonable police regulations 

relating to inventory procedures administered in good faith 

satisfy the Fourth Amendment,” the Supreme Court has held. 
40 USA V. ANDERSON

Id. at 374. As we have said, “[i]f done according to 

standardized criteria and not in ‘bad faith or for the sole 

purpose of investigation,’ police inventory procedures 

satisfy the Fourth Amendment.” United States v. Garay, 938 

F.3d 1108, 1111 (9th Cir. 2019) (quoting Bertine, 479 U.S. 

at 372). 

Critically, because “a department’s policies do not define 

constitutional rights,” we have held that “the failure to 

complete an inventory form does not invalidate an inventory 

search.” Id. at 1111–12. Instead, to establish bad faith there 

must be “something else” beyond the asserted noncompliance with an inventory policy’s administrative 

requirements. Id. at 1112 (quotations omitted). And 

because police are prohibited only from conducting 

inventory searches for the “sole purpose” of investigation, a 

search is not vitiated simply because a motive for the search 

is crime detection: “Importantly, ‘the mere presence of a 

criminal investigatory motive or a dual motive—one valid, 

and one impermissible—does not render’” an inventory 

search invalid. United States v. Magdirila, 962 F.3d 1152, 

1157 (9th Cir. 2020) (quoting United States v. Johnson, 889 

F.3d 1120, 1126 (9th Cir. 2018) (per curiam)). These are the 

principles and foundations on which the bad faith inquiry 

rests.

Curious then, that the majority does not recite the usual 

“bad faith” test until almost halfway into its opinion. The 

majority opinion instead begins by claiming that “[t]he 

question here is whether an officer’s failure to comply with 

governing administrative procedures is relevant in assessing 

the officer’s motivation for conducting an inventory search.” 

But that facially modest question is not at all the question the 

majority goes on to answer. Instead, the majority treats the 

deputies’ compliance with department inventory search 
USA V. ANDERSON 41

policies—and the specific requirement to write items on an 

inventory form—as dispositive. The majority tells us that 

“[t]o satisfy the Fourth Amendment, an inventory search 

must serve administrative, not solely investigatory, goals.” 

And because the deputies did not list enough items on the 

inventory form, the majority concludes that “the ‘inventory’ 

that they produced was incapable of serving the noninvestigative purposes of protecting an owner’s personal 

property and protecting officers against accusations of theft 

or loss of an owner’s property.” All of this explains why 

despite opening with an unassuming question of 

“relevance,” we are later told midway through the opinion 

that the question is actually much different: “The primary 

question is whether the deputies’ deviation from the 

governing inventory procedure indicates that they acted in 

bad faith or solely for investigative purposes.” 

What is happening here is a not-so-subtle shifting of the 

legal inquiry. In orienting its analysis around deputies’ 

compliance with one part of their department’s inventory 

search policy, the majority’s opinion massively alters the 

long-established “bad faith” test. By marrying the officers’ 

non-compliance with departmental policy with whether the 

resulting inventory “serve[s] the administrative purposes for 

which the inventory-search exception was created,” the 

majority has effectively turned non-compliance with 

inventory search procedures into the test for bad faith. The 

majority is not requiring a showing that the deputies acted in 

bad faith through actions beyond non-compliance with their 

department’s administrative procedures. But see Garay, 938 

F.3d at 1112 (making clear that “something else” is 

required). The majority is instead examining whether an 

inventory that results from such non-compliance is serving
42 USA V. ANDERSON

the purposes of the administrative search exception. That 

has never been the inquiry.

Indeed, it contradicts long-settled law. In Bertine, the 

Supreme Court’s seminal precedent on inventory searches, 

police prepared a “somewhat slipshod” inventory, 479 U.S. 

at 369, that, among other things, “failed to list $150 in cash 

found in respondent’s wallet or the contents of a sealed 

envelope marked ‘rent,’ $210, in the relevant section of the 

property form,” made “no reference to other items of value, 

including respondent’s credit cards, and a converter, a 

hydraulic jack, and a set of tire chains, worth a total of $125,” 

and failed to include the “$700 in cash found in respondent’s 

backpack, along with the contraband.” Id. at 383 (Marshall, 

J., dissenting). 

If the test were whether this inventory served the noninvestigative purposes of an inventory search, as the 

majority here claims, Bertine should have come out the other 

way. Indeed, that was the view of the Bertine dissent, which 

followed the majority’s same rationale in concluding that the 

officer’s “inventory . . . would not have protected the police 

against claims lodged by respondent, false or otherwise.” Id. 

But this was decidedly not the view of the Bertine majority, 

which held that “reasonable police regulations relating to 

inventory procedures administered in good faith satisfy the 

Fourth Amendment.” Id. at 374. The test, in other words, is 

whether the officers acted in good faith, not whether (as the 

majority claims) the inventory they produced serves the 

purposes of the inventory search exception.

By reorienting the inquiry into the officers’ compliance 

with departmental policy, the majority runs roughshod over 

our longstanding precedent—which the majority does not 

expressly overrule—as well as the precedent of the other 
USA V. ANDERSON 43

circuits. As we previously held, “[t]hat [an] officer did not 

complete the inventory list that ordinarily would be 

completed as part of a department inventory search is not, on 

its own, a material deviation from policy.” Garay, 938 F.3d 

at 1112. Instead, “[t]here must be something else; something 

to suggest the police raised ‘the inventory search banner in 

an after-the-fact attempt to justify’ a simple investigatory 

search for incriminating evidence.” Id. (quoting United 

States v. Rowland, 341 F.3d 774, 780 (8th Cir. 2003)). 

Indeed, as we favorably pointed out in Garay, “[o]ther 

circuits have expressly recognized that the failure to 

complete an inventory form does not invalidate an inventory 

search.” Id. (citing, e.g., United States v. Loaiza-Marin, 832 

F.2d 867, 869 (5th Cir. 1987) (per curiam); United States v. 

Trullo, 790 F.2d 205, 206 (1st Cir. 1986); United States v. 

O’Bryant, 775 F.2d 1528, 1534 (11th Cir. 1985)); see also, 

e.g., United States v. Williams, 777 F.3d 1013, 1016 (8th Cir. 

2015); United States v. Cartwright, 630 F.3d 610, 616 (7th 

Cir. 2010). “[I]t is a long leap from the proposition that 

following regular procedures is some evidence of lack of 

pretext to the proposition that failure to follow regular 

procedures proves (or is an operational substitute for) 

pretext.” Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 816 (1996). 

But it is that latter proposition that the court embraces today.

The majority also commits a further legal error in 

holding that “[i]t is the government’s burden to prove that 

the Fourth Amendment is satisfied and the criteria for the 

inventory-search exception are met.” This statement is 

overbroad and only partially correct as it pertains to this 

case. It is the government’s burden to show that the 

threshold criteria for the inventory search exception are met, 

namely, that there was a sufficient community caretaking 

reason for impounding the vehicle and that the police 
44 USA V. ANDERSON

department had a sufficiently standardized inventory search 

policy. See, e.g., United States v. Cervantes, 703 F.3d 1135, 

1141 (9th Cir. 2012) (government must establish community 

caretaking function for the impoundment); United States v. 

Johnson, 936 F.2d 1082, 1084 (9th Cir. 1991) (government 

must establish the existence of a sufficiently standardized 

inventory search policy). 

But when the allegation is that the officers who 

performed the inventory search did so in bad faith, we have 

said that it falls to the defendant to “produce[] evidence that 

demonstrates the officers would not have searched and 

seized items from the car he was driving but for an 

impermissible motive.” Johnson, 889 F.3d at 1126; see also 

id. at 1135 (Paez, J., specially concurring) (a defendant “may 

only succeed in challenging the [inventory] search . . . by 

showing that [the officer’s] search was motivated by an 

‘investigatory police motive’”) (quoting United States v. 

Banks, 482 F.3d 733, 741 (4th Cir. 2007)); see also United 

States v. Orozco, 858 F.3d 1204, 1213 (9th Cir. 2017) 

(permitting, in analogous administrative search context, 

inquiry into an officer’s subjective motivations “where the 

defendant has come forward with objective evidence to 

suggest that the intrusion was not made for the purpose of 

enforcing the administrative inspection scheme”). As the 

First Circuit has recognized, our circuit holds that “the 

burden is on the defendant” to prove pretext. United States 

v. Sylvester, 993 F.3d 16, 24 n.6 (1st Cir. 2021) (citing, inter 

alia, the Ninth Circuit’s decisions in Johnson and Orozco); 

see also Banks, 482 F.3d at 741 (explaining that “Banks may 

only succeed in challenging the search of the bags, then, by 

showing that Det. Gunn’s search was motivated by an 

‘investigatory police motive,’” and upholding the inventory 

search because “Banks presented no evidence that Det. Gunn 
USA V. ANDERSON 45

initiated the search of the bags or conducted the inventory 

search because he suspected that he would find incriminating 

evidence therein”); United States v. Maestas, 2 F.3d 1485, 

1491 (10th Cir. 1993) (explaining that for border checkpoint 

stops, which are administrative searches in which officer 

subjective motivation is relevant, “the defendant bears the 

burden of proving that a legally sufficient basis asserted as a 

justification for a search or seizure was pretextual”); 6 

Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure: A Treatise on the 

Fourth Amendment § 11.2(b) (6th ed. 2022) (explaining that 

most Fourth Amendment pretext cases suggest that the 

defendant has the burden to show pretext).

The majority opinion cites the standard rule that “the 

burden is on those seeking the exemption [from the warrant 

requirement] to show the need for it.” Arkansas v. Sanders, 

442 U.S. 753, 760 (1979) (quoting United States v. Jeffers, 

342 U.S. 48, 51 (1951)). But that default rule does not 

extend to what the majority agrees is the rare context in 

which an officer’s subjective motivations are relevant. See 

Kentucky v. King, 563 U.S. 452, 464 (2011) (“[W]e have 

never held, outside limited contexts such as an ‘inventory 

search or administrative inspection . . . , that an officer’s 

motive invalidates objectively justifiable behavior under the 

Fourth Amendment.’”) (quoting Whren, 517 U.S. at 812). In 

that situation, it is the party making the claim of bad faith 

who should naturally bear the burden of proving it. It is not, 

as the majority appears to suggest, the burden of law 

enforcement officers to prove a negative.

The majority acknowledges our precedents holding that 

the defendant must “come forward with objective evidence 

to suggest that the intrusion was not made for the purpose of 

enforcing the administrative inspection scheme.” Johnson, 

889 F.3d at 1126 (quoting Orozco, 858 F.3d at 1212–13). 
46 USA V. ANDERSON

But the majority then asserts, without any citation, that 

“[t]his production requirement does not, however, shift the 

ultimate burden of proof regarding application of the 

inventory-search exception to the defendant.” We have 

never suggested there is any distinction in this area between 

the defendant’s burden of proof and his burden to come 

forward with evidence showing pretext. It is unclear from 

the majority opinion if the burden of proof on the bad faith 

issue now lies with the government or with no one. But it is 

clear it no longer lies with the person who always bore it 

until today: the defendant. This is yet another point of law 

in the majority opinion where our previously clear legal 

standards have now become scrambled. 

II

Applying the proper legal standards, it is obvious that the 

deputies complied with the Fourth Amendment and that the 

gun found during the search of Anderson’s truck should not 

be suppressed. Deputies validly detained Anderson after he 

sped away from a lawful traffic stop and upon learning that 

Anderson had an expired license and was a career criminal 

(he had six prior felony convictions). Deputies had a valid 

basis for impounding Anderson’s vehicle because Anderson 

lacked a valid driver’s license and was parked in the 

driveway of a random home on a dead-end street, with the 

homeowner telling deputies he wanted Anderson’s truck 

removed. The truck had to be towed, and so deputies, under 

department policy, had to perform an inventory search. 
USA V. ANDERSON 47

Indeed, they explicitly told Anderson this was what they 

were doing before commencing the search.1 

There is no indication that the deputies conducting the 

inventory search were operating “in bad faith or for the sole 

purpose of investigation.” Bertine, 479 U.S. at 372. And it 

is simply remarkable for the majority to conclude that the 

deputies’ search was not even “at least partially motivated 

by administrative purposes”—that everything the deputies 

did that night in searching the truck and documenting their 

findings was somehow a giant ruse to cover up an improper 

investigatory objective. 

None of this is consistent with law. The majority’s 

holding turns on fine-grained criticisms of how the deputies 

documented what was in the truck and the order in which 

they handled matters. But the Fourth Amendment does not 

elevate such technicalities into constitutional prohibitions. 

In blaming the officers for their skills in filling out 

paperwork in the middle of the night, the majority ushers in 

1 Anderson also challenges the inventory search on the ground that the 

officers, in the first place, lacked a valid community caretaking purpose 

for impounding his vehicle. He claims that deputies searched his truck 

before talking to the homeowner on whose driveway the truck was 

parked. The deputies, in contrast, maintain they did not search the truck 

until after the homeowner told them he did not know Anderson and 

wanted the truck removed. Because the majority does not reach this 

issue, I do not address it further except to note that I would hold that the 

impoundment of Anderson’s vehicle was valid. After hearing testimony 

at a suppression hearing, the district court found that the deputies spoke 

to the homeowner before searching the truck. The district court’s factual 

finding was not clearly erroneous. United States v. Hylton, 30 F.4th 842, 

846 (9th Cir. 2022). “Review under the clearly erroneous standard is 

significantly deferential, requiring for reversal a definite and firm 

conviction that a mistake has been committed.” Id. That standard is not 

met here.
48 USA V. ANDERSON

a jurisprudence of silly faults that will confound courts and 

impede the valid enforcement of our criminal laws.

A

The majority’s central problem with the officers’ 

conduct is the degree to which they deviated from 

departmental policy in preparing the inventory form. It bears 

repeating that the majority’s intense focus on this issue is 

seriously misplaced and contrary to precedent that the 

majority never says it is overturning. A department’s 

inventory policies “do not define constitutional rights,” so 

“the failure to complete an inventory form does not 

invalidate an inventory search.” Garay, 938 F.3d at 1111–

12. And because “administrative errors should not, on their 

own, invalidate inventory searches,” “there must be 

something else” to suggest that the inventory search was 

pretextual. Id. at 1111–12 (quoting Rowland, 341 F.3d at 

780). That is the clear teaching of Bertine, Garay, and so 

many other cases. The majority therefore seriously errs in 

claiming that the “primary question” in this case concerns 

“the deputies’ deviation from the governing inventory 

procedure.” 

But even under the majority’s misguided view that 

compliance is king, the government should still prevail. The 

San Bernadino County Sheriff’s Department policy requires 

officers when impounding vehicles to fill out a California 

Highway Patrol (CHP) 180 vehicle report. I am attaching as 

Appendix A to this dissent the form that was filled out in this 

case. The deputies who prepared the form took substantial 

efforts in doing so. 

On the CHP 180 form, which indicates that it was filled 

out shortly after 2:00 a.m., deputies checked numerous 

boxes reflecting the condition and contents of Anderson’s 
USA V. ANDERSON 49

truck. They noted, for instance, that the truck contained 

front and rear seats, two radios, and a battery, but lacked a 

tape deck, tapes, a registration form, or a camper. Deputies 

initially marked down that Anderson’s truck contained an 

ignition key, but then revised the form to reflect that it did 

not. Deputies complied with the department’s requirement 

to “[o]btain the signature, date, and time of the arrival of the 

tow truck driver,” recording those details on the form. In the 

form’s “Remarks” section, which directs officers to “List 

Property, Tools, Vehicle Damage, Arrests,” deputies wrote 

that Anderson’s vehicle displayed “misc. scratches & dents 

360°” and “damage to pass. door and tailgate,” sketching the 

location of those imperfections on graphics of a generic 

vehicle that are printed at the bottom of the form. In the 

same section, in addition to chronicling the circumstances of 

Anderson’s arrest, they also wrote: “upon inventory search 

firearm located.” Did the officers write all of this down as a 

cover for their pretext and bad faith?

And that was just the CHP 180 form. A deputy also took 

five photos of the interior of Anderson’s truck, which he 

testified were taken in part for the purpose of inventorying 

the contents of the vehicle. I am attaching these photos as 

Appendix B to this dissent. The photos depict the front seats 

and back seats of the truck, with close-ups of the driver and 

passenger sides. The photographs depict a speaker, an 

iPhone cord, a Ray-Ban sunglasses box, a lint roller, a box 

of tampons, stray papers, and various pieces of trash, 

including empty water bottles, a Dr. Pepper can, and a halffinished glass bottle of Starbucks Frappuccino. Officers 

referenced the photos in their police report prepared on the 

same day, describing them as “several digital photographs of 

the vehicle.” Officers also booked as “property/evidence” a 

CD containing the photographs, along with the holster of 
50 USA V. ANDERSON

Anderson’s gun. They booked the gun itself and the 

ammunition it contained under the separate category of 

“gun.” Was it pretextual and in bad faith for the officers to 

take photos documenting the interior of Anderson’s truck 

and to then note, in a formal police report, that they had done 

so? 

Looking for fault wherever it can be found, the majority 

finds some. The majority first seizes upon the fact that the 

department’s policy states that officers should include on the 

CHP 180 form “an inventory of any personal property 

contained within the vehicle.” See, says, the majority: “any 

property.” We know this is critical to the majority because 

its opinion italicizes the word “any” three times, every time 

it quotes the policy. We are thus told it is significant that the 

CHP 180 form omitted other property in Anderson’s truck, 

such as a speaker, an iPhone cord, tools, an Android phone 

charger, sunglasses, a watch, cologne, and “other 

miscellaneous items.” 

The majority’s analysis is fundamentally misdirected. Is 

the majority opinion really suggesting that officers acted in 

bad faith because they did not include every item in the truck 

on the inventory form? The answer appears to be yes 

because the majority explicitly rejects the theory that the 

inventory search policy has any value limitation, because, 

after all, it does say “any personal property.” So it would 

apparently be just as problematic if officers had listed the 

sunglasses but neglected to include the lint roller, if they had 

mentioned the cologne but not the box of tampons. What 

about all the trash? Like many people, Anderson had a lot 

of stuff in his vehicle. The message to convicted felons in 

San Bernadino is that if they want to drive armed, it is best 

to have a very messy car. But is the officers’ failure to 

inventory every single item at two o’clock in the morning 
USA V. ANDERSON 51

truly the basis for a finding of bad faith, by which a sixtimes-over convicted felon will avoid a 77-month federal 

sentence for unlawfully possessing a loaded gun? This 

vision of the Fourth Amendment is unrecognizable to me.

Of course, a closer inspection of the items that the 

majority lists shows that many were in fact accounted for. 

The speaker and iPhone cord are clearly visible in the 

photographs that a deputy took of the interior of Anderson’s 

truck. Although the sunglasses are not themselves shown in 

the photographs, a Ray-Ban sunglasses box plainly is. 

Another photo may depict a bag of tools (the bag is in the 

distinctive shape of a jack handle set for removing tires). 

The majority criticizes the deputies for not listing on the 

form “other miscellaneous items,” but many such items are 

seen in the photographs. The deputy who prepared the form 

testified that he did not recall seeing a watch. Anderson’s 

fiancée, who the next day accompanied him to the tow yard 

to pick up the truck, did not recall a watch being in the truck 

when they retrieved it, nor did she allege a watch was 

missing. 

That leaves us with an Android charger (Anderson’s 

fiancée didn’t recall that either) and a bottle of cologne 

(which, by the way, was partially empty). These items were 

of minimal value. The majority’s rejoinder is, once again, 

that the department’s policy requires “any” property to be 

inventoried and “does not give deputies discretion to decide 

what property should be listed.” But the test here is not 

whether officers failed to comply with the inventory policy. 

See Garay, 938 F.3d at 1111–12. The items we are talking 

about wouldn’t go for much at a garage sale. Yet they are 

now Fourth Amendment linchpins.
52 USA V. ANDERSON

But let’s return to the photographs that the deputy took. 

The photos clearly show the deputy’s effort to document 

items contained in the truck. The photos are not limited to 

illegal items (i.e., the gun), and they depict items that the 

majority faults the officers for omitting from the CHP 180 

form. But the photographs, too, turn out to be wholly 

insufficient. The problem, the majority tells us, is that the 

photographs “did not record all the property found in the 

truck,” the department’s procedure “does not contemplate 

inventory-by-photograph,” and “there is no indication that 

the photographs were made part of the administrative 

inventory record.” 

But the simple answer to this under the Fourth 

Amendment is: who cares? The question we are trying to 

answer is whether deputies conducting the inventory search 

acted in bad faith or for the sole purpose of investigation. 

Bertine, 479 U.S. at 372. Taking imperfect photos in the 

dark does not violate the Constitution. That deputies 

recorded items through photographs rather than jotting them 

down is also of zero constitutional significance. The 

department policy that the majority references does not say 

inventories can be performed through photography, but 

neither does it say photographs may not be used. Indeed, 

photographs are often the best way to memorialize things 

(think how many times we pull out our phones and snap 

quick photos). The majority takes pains to point out that the 

deputies did not formally reference the photos on the CHP 

180 form. But can this case really turn on the deputies’ 

supposedly grave misdeed of not scribbling the notation “see 

photos” on the form? Nothing in the Fourth Amendment 

requires that officers creating vehicle reports use the 

majority’s preferred citation conventions.
USA V. ANDERSON 53

Equally misplaced is the majority’s treatment of the 

police report. The majority claims that “the deputies’ 

identification of the firearm and ammunition taken from 

Anderson’s truck as ‘evidence’ on the crime report indicates 

that these items ‘were seized and treated specifically as 

evidence of a crime—not as property held for safekeeping.’” 

(quoting Johnson, 889 F.3d at 1128). Although the majority 

implies this shows deputies were not conducting a true 

inventory search and were merely rooting for evidence, the 

very crime report on which the majority relies specifically 

states a page earlier that the gun and ammunition were found 

“[w]hile conducting a vehicle inventory.” The majority’s 

description of the police report as conveying that the gun and 

ammunition were obtained “specifically as evidence of a 

crime” is simply inaccurate. 

Regardless, once the deputies located the gun and 

ammunition, they were of course fully entitled to treat them 

as evidence of a crime, which they were. The majority’s 

suggestion that deputies would only be performing an 

inventory search if they later held all items for 

“safekeeping,” but not as evidence, is clearly wrong. The 

deputies validly treated as evidence of a crime those items 

that Anderson could not lawfully possess. The rest of the 

items in the truck were held for “safekeeping,” and there is 

no suggestion any of these items were lost. The majority is 

thus incorrect in claiming that “the only item” the deputies 

“safeguarded” was Anderson’s firearm. All of Anderson’s 

items were safeguarded. That they were safeguarded in 

different ways is of no constitutional moment.

The majority further concludes that the deputies’ 

attachment of the photographs to the crime report is evidence 

of “the deputies’ motivation because it indicates that the 

photographs were treated as evidence.” But the photographs 
54 USA V. ANDERSON

we are talking about did not contain direct evidence of any 

crime. They were simply photographs of Anderson’s 

personal effects—a photographic inventory of the inside of 

the truck. Indeed, the deputies specifically testified that the 

photographs were taken for “both” inventory and evidentiary 

purposes. Photographs of items located during an inventory 

search will often have evidentiary value for a criminal 

investigation. If the entirely commonplace referencing of 

those photographs in a crime report implies that the 

precipitating search was not a true inventory search, 

countless inventory searches are now infirm.

The majority assures us that “an incomplete inventory 

form is not inherently fatal”—phew!—and that “[a]n 

incomplete inventory is valid if other actions taken by the 

officers indicate that they were acting, at least in part, for 

administrative reasons.” The majority’s own stated test is 

easily met here. How can the majority possibly maintain that 

the deputies were not acting, even in part, for administrative 

reasons? The truck had to be towed. Before that, it could be 

searched. Deputies filled out the CHP 180 form and took 

photos of Anderson’s personal property when inventorying 

the truck. The photos were then referenced in the police 

report. And the police report itself referenced the CHP 180 

form and the fact of the inventory search. If all this 

legitimate law enforcement activity is not even evidence of 

a partial administrative purpose, what would be?

The majority focuses on the fact that the CHP 180 form 

did not reference the photos or the police report. But the idea 

that the outcome of this case depends on which records 

reference the other has no basis in principle or precedent. A 

Fourth Amendment doctrine that turns on such minutiae fails 

to respect Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit precedent, 

elevating dead-of-night box-checking, document cross-
USA V. ANDERSON 55

referencing, and the like into legal mandates, and, 

improbably, telltale signs of officer bad faith. Trivial 

distinctions are now the difference in whether the criminal 

laws may be enforced against guilty violators. That is both 

legally unsound and a dangerous state of affairs.

B

It should be clear that the majority’s decision is not 

consistent with precedent. Indeed, it is a major departure 

from existing law. 

In Bertine, which I discussed above, the police 

department’s policy “require[d] a detailed inspection and 

inventory of impounded vehicles.” 479 U.S. at 369. Yet the 

Supreme Court upheld the inventory search even though the 

officer failed to list over $1,000 in cash found in three 

separate locations in the vehicle, as well as credit cards and 

various types of tools. See id. at 383 (Marshall, J., 

dissenting). In the Supreme Court’s view, however, “there 

was no showing that the police, who were following 

standardized procedures, acted in bad faith or for the sole 

purpose of investigation.” Id. at 372 (emphasis added).

The majority in a lengthy footnote tries to argue that 

Bertine involved other issues. But there is no escaping the 

basic point that by the logic of today’s opinion, Bertine was 

wrongly decided. If, as the majority says, a highly 

significant “major deviation” from department policy 

occurred here, how could that not be true in Bertine, too? By 

the majority’s reasoning, the constitutional infirmity in the 

Bertine inventory search should have been glaring. Indeed, 

it was—to the Bertine dissent. See id. at 383 (Marshall, J., 

dissenting). 
56 USA V. ANDERSON

Here, moreover, the majority’s departure from Bertine 

extends not only to Bertine’s bottom-line result but to its 

basic reasoning. Bertine reiterated that the Fourth 

Amendment does not turn on “fine and subtle distinctions,” 

and that “the real question is not what [officers] could have 

. . . achieve[d] but whether the Fourth Amendment requires 

such steps.” Id. at 374, 375 (quotations omitted). The 

majority opinion is at odds with these basic precepts of 

Fourth Amendment law, elevating deficient form-filling to 

grounds for suppression, a “last resort” remedy. Hudson v. 

Michigan, 547 U.S. 586, 591 (2006).

The majority opinion also contradicts our prior (and not 

overruled) decisions in Garay and Magdirila. The majority 

implies that this case is unique because deputies “inventoried 

only the evidence used to convict Anderson.” That is of 

course not even true: the majority can make this assertion 

only by ignoring the photographs, which the deputies 

testified were taken as part of the inventory process and 

which depict most of the personal items at issue in the truck. 

But even setting that aside, officers listing only the illegal 

firearms on the inventory form was the very factual situation 

in Garay, our leading precedent in this area.

In Garay, as here, an officer listed only firearms on an 

inventory form, even though the department’s policy 

required a listing of all the property found inside the vehicle. 

938 F.3d at 1110–11. We refused to find bad faith or pretext 

because the officer “obtained the tow truck driver’s signature 

and noted the date and time of the driver’s arrival,” 

“obtained a file number for the inventory,” “checked a box 

on the relevant inventory form indicating that items of 

potential value were in the car,” and booked “the items 

recovered from the car as ‘evidence/property.’” Id. at 1111–

12. 
USA V. ANDERSON 57

Similarly, in Magdirila, the department’s policy required 

an “accurate” inventory of “all property in a stored or 

impounded vehicle,” but we were again unphased by the 

officer’s non-compliance. 962 F.3d at 1155. We instead 

found it “considerably” clear that the officer did not act in 

bad faith when the inventory form “included some of the 

property” in the defendant’s car and when the form 

mentioned the police report, which recorded the rest. Id. at 

1158. 

The majority purports to distinguish Garay and 

Magdirila because the officers in those cases alluded to other 

items on the inventory form—in Garay by checking a box 

on the form indicating there were items of potential value in 

the car, and in Magdirila by referencing a police report, 

which listed the items. But the majority thereby makes the 

classic mistake of taking facts from other cases and 

converting them into a legal rule—here one that is in fact 

contrary to the basic logic of the decisions from which the 

supposed rule emerged.

That officers in Garay and Magdirila checked boxes or 

referenced other documents was in those cases supportive of 

a lack of bad faith, but these ways of filling out forms are by 

no means constitutional imperatives. Indeed, Garay treated 

the officer’s failure to list anything but the guns on an 

inventory form as a mere “administrative error[],” finding it 

inconsequential because “the failure to complete an 

inventory form does not invalidate an inventory search.” 

938 F.3d at 1112. As Judge Berzon has explained, “Garay 

held that the lack of any inventory is an insufficient reason 

to invalidate the inventory search.” Magdirila, 962 F.3d at 

1159 (Berzon, J., concurring). The majority opinion instead 

reimagines Garay and Magdirila to support its intense focus 
58 USA V. ANDERSON

on the specific way in which inventory forms are filled out, 

ignoring the core principle of those cases. 

In this case, of course, the deputies did comply with their 

department’s inventory search policy in material respects: 

among other things, and as in Garay, they filled out the CHP 

180 forms, documented the arrival of the tow truck driver, 

and submitted the forms. See Garay, 938 F.3d at 1112. And 

even working off the majority’s misguided belief that 

photographs are not permitted under the department’s 

inventory policy, if the purpose of the inventory form is to 

know what items are in the vehicle, it cannot be disputed that 

the photographs did, in fact, produce an inventory of items 

in the truck. It was not a perfect inventory. But the majority 

agrees perfection is not required. 

Contrary to the majority opinion, I do not discount the 

relevance of the deputies’ compliance with inventory search 

procedures as part of the overall bad faith inquiry. There is 

nothing new in that basic point; we said it in Garay. See id.

at 1111. But what the majority is hyper-scrutinizing is not

the deputies’ broader compliance with the inventory search 

policy, but their technical non-compliance with one aspect 

of it: listing items on the form. 

The majority holds that the officers’ failure to list items 

on the form was “a material deviation” from department 

policy. But in Garay, we said the opposite: “That the officer 

did not complete the inventory list that ordinarily would be 

completed as part of a department inventory search is not, on 

its own, a material deviation from policy.” 938 F.3d at 1112 

(emphasis added). The majority says that when the deputies 

here did not fully fill out the form, “the ‘inventory’ that they 

produced was incapable of serving the non-investigative

purposes of protecting an owner’s personal property and 
USA V. ANDERSON 59

protecting officers against accusations of theft or loss of an 

owner’s property.” Setting aside that the photographs 

accomplished those same objectives, Garay is again to the 

contrary. In Garay, we affirmed that “the failure to complete 

an inventory form does not invalidate an inventory search,” 

and that to establish bad faith there must be “something else” 

beyond the asserted non-compliance with an inventory 

policy’s administrative requirements. Id. at 1111–12 

(emphasis added; quotations omitted). The majority thinks 

this is “untenable” as a matter of logic, but the logic here is 

elemental: “a department’s policies do not define 

constitutional rights.” Id. at 1111. By word and by deed, the 

majority opinion holds otherwise.

The majority’s entire analysis therefore betrays the 

supposedly soft question of “relevance” that it claims to be 

resolving. By the majority’s reasoning, deputies’ 

compliance with the inventory search policy—and with the 

specific requirement that items in a vehicle be written down 

on a form—is now the be-all and end-all of the constitutional 

analysis. How else to explain the pages upon pages of 

dissection into what information was recorded on what form, 

why the photographs are insufficient, and how different 

documents that the deputies prepared do not expressly 

reference others? Why else are we considering the supposed 

constitutional significance of half empty bottles of cologne, 

stray tools, cell phone chargers, and random trash? 

Adjudging officer pretext on such trifles—and by that 

metric, overturning valid convictions—is a grave mistake of 

law.

C

Perhaps recognizing the infirmity of its analysis of the 

CHP 180 form and photographs, the majority opinion briefly 
60 USA V. ANDERSON

attempts to claim there are “other circumstances” in this case 

that “suggest” improper pretext. The majority does not tell 

us that this analysis is necessary to its decision, even though 

our case law is clear that “[t]here must be something else” 

besides non-compliance with department inventory search 

policy to invalidate an inventory search. Garay, 938 F.3d at 

1112 (emphasis added; quotations omitted). Even so, the 

majority’s limited analysis of the “other circumstances” only 

confirms the degree to which the majority is departing from 

established law. 

The majority first asserts that this case is unique because 

by the time the deputies searched the truck, they “clearly 

were suspicious that Anderson had engaged in criminal 

behavior.” But the majority opinion completely ignores that 

in the inventory search context, settled precedent holds that 

“the mere presence of a criminal investigatory or dual 

motive—one valid, and one impermissible—does not 

render” the search invalid. Magdirila, 962 F.3d at 1157 

(quoting Johnson, 889 F.3d at 1126); see also, e.g., Garay, 

938 F.3d at 1112; United States v. Bowhay, 992 F.2d 229, 

231 (9th Cir. 1993); United States v. Feldman, 788 F.2d 544, 

552 (9th Cir. 1986), as amended. As we said in Garay, 

“[g]iven the circumstances leading up to the search, the 

officers no doubt expected to find evidence of criminal 

activity inside the vehicle[,] [b]ut that expectation would not 

invalidate an otherwise reasonable inventory search.” 938 

F.3d at 1112. The test is not whether officers had a criminal 

investigatory purpose, but whether this was their “sole

purpose.” Bertine, 479 U.S. at 372 (emphasis added). This 

test is not remotely met here. In chastising officers for their 

entirely human and permissible dual purpose, the majority 

opinion contravenes clearly established law.
USA V. ANDERSON 61

The majority also claims that this case is different from 

prior cases because the deputies did not arrest Anderson until 

after they completed the inventory search. Some past 

inventory search cases did indeed involve post-arrest 

searches. But many other cases have upheld inventory 

searches when they were conducted before the defendant 

was arrested—just like here. In Magdirila, for instance, the 

officers performed the inventory search while the defendant 

was detained, only arresting him after finding drugs in the 

car. 962 F.3d at 1154–55. This search-preceding-arrest fact 

pattern is true of other cases upholding inventory searches. 

See, e.g., United States v. Rivera, 988 F.3d 579, 580–81 (1st 

Cir. 2021) United States v. Nevatt, 960 F.3d 1015, 1018–19 

(8th Cir. 2020) (per curiam); United States v. Mundy, 621 

F.3d 283, 286 (3d Cir. 2010); United States v. Maier, 691 

F.2d 421, 422 (8th Cir. 1982). 

The majority ironically claims that the Supreme Court’s 

decision in Opperman supports its sequencing theory, but 

there too officers conducted the inventory search before

making the arrest. See Opperman, 428 U.S. at 366–37 

(describing how an inventory search was conducted and 

“[r]espondent was subsequently arrested”). To be sure, the 

search in Opperman was conducted after the car was 

impounded and the owner not present. Id. at 375. But the 

Supreme Court certainly did not hold this was a necessary 

sequencing of things, or that this sequencing mattered at all. 

Once again, the majority is taking the facts of a case and 

implying a legal rule that does not exist.

In short, the majority cites no case inferring pretext from 

the ordering of the inventory search vis-à-vis the arrest, for 

the likely reason that nothing about that sequencing is so 

inevitably revealing. The majority seems to imply that 

officers would be motivated to conduct an inventory search 
62 USA V. ANDERSON

to enable an arrest. But if officers had already arrested a 

person, one could imagine them rummaging through his 

vehicle to bolster the arrest just made or out of a settled belief 

that the defendant was a criminal wrongdoer. Courts have 

upheld inventory searches regardless of whether the arrest 

was made before or after the inventory search, underscoring 

that no single inference from the ordering of events is more 

appropriate than the other.

Equally misplaced is the majority’s focus on the fact that 

deputies conducted the search “almost immediately” after 

deciding to impound the vehicle, before towing Anderson’s 

truck. The decision to tow here was no afterthought. It was 

made at the outset, with deputies telling Anderson they were 

going to have his vehicle towed before they began searching 

it. That the deputies conducted the inventory search soon 

after deciding to impound the truck is also not indicative of 

any kind of nefarious intent on the deputies’ part. To the 

extent the majority is suggesting that deputies had to call in 

the tow before doing anything else, no law or departmental 

policy required that. See United States v. Woolbright, 831 

F.2d 1390, 1395 (8th Cir. 1987) (“Reasonableness, and not 

any rigid chronological formula, is the hallmark of a proper 

inventory search.”). And once Anderson’s vehicle could be 

properly impounded, nothing required the officers to wait 

around before conducting the inventory search. The truck 

was parked on a stranger’s driveway at night in a residential 

neighborhood. The deputies could decide it would be best 

to resolve the situation as quickly as possible. 

In addition, and although the majority gives it little play, 

the government has a legitimate interest in conducting 

inventory searches to promote safety, see Bertine, 479 U.S. 

at 372; Cooper v. California, 386 U.S. 58, 61–62 (1967), and 

no rule of law prevented deputies from furthering that 
USA V. ANDERSON 63

interest in a prompt manner. In this case, that interest was 

fully validated: deputies found a loaded gun with the safety 

turned off. It is entirely unclear why the majority is implying 

it would have been better if the readied firearm had remained 

undetected in the truck for longer, including until the tow 

truck driver arrived. See Feldman, 788 F.2d at 553 

(upholding inventory search when it “ensure[d] the 

immediate protection of the public’s safety”). 

The majority cites our decision in Johnson as an example 

of a case where the search was conducted after the tow was 

ordered, see 889 F.3d at 1123, the appropriate ordering of 

things, in the majority’s view. It is not clear that the 

majority’s description of the facts of Johnson is even 

accurate (the case made nothing of the supposed distinction 

that the majority finds relevant). But in Johnson, we 

determined (based on damning officer admissions) that the 

challenged search was pretextual. Id. at 1127–28. This only 

confirms that the majority is drawing entirely unwarranted 

significance from the fact that deputies searched the truck 

before ordering the tow.

The same can be said of the majority’s reliance on the 

fact that deputies “did not remove or otherwise secure 

Anderson’s personal property for safekeeping.” Here, of 

course, the property was secured: it was kept in the vehicle, 

and the majority does not suggest any property was lost. Nor 

were officers required to remove the property from the car. 

In a case about an allegedly unlawful search, it is somewhat 

ironic for the majority to be recommending that the property 

be more intrusively seized as well. But the basic answer to 

this, as with so much of the majority opinion, is that the 

Fourth Amendment is not an edict of inventory search 

etiquette. The deputies certainly could have removed the 
64 USA V. ANDERSON

items from the truck. But they did not act in bad faith by not 

doing so.

Of course, the real tell of the entire last part of the court’s 

opinion is that even the majority admits that “by 

themselves,” the “other circumstances” it points to “have 

limited force.” The majority nonetheless thinks these “other 

circumstances” have more than limited force here because 

“Anderson was secured in the back of a patrol car and there 

was no immediate exigency related to securing the truck and 

its contents.” But “immediate exigency” is not a 

requirement for an inventory search. And there clearly was 

some exigency here: the car was blocking a random person’s 

home in the middle of the night and a tow truck was coming. 

I fail to understand why the majority is insisting that a truck 

containing a loaded gun with the safety turned off first be 

transported to an impound lot, where it could become lost or 

stolen or present any manner of danger. Nor can we infer 

pretext from the fact that the deputies detained Anderson. 

The detention was quite understandable: Anderson had just 

fled from police during a lawful traffic stop, requiring a 

deputy to stop him at gunpoint. 

“In the Fourth Amendment context, the facts matter,” the 

majority intones. But what guidance does today’s opinion 

give when facts that have concededly “limited force” take on 

outsized significance based on events that, from a Fourth 

Amendment perspective, are themselves otherwise 

unremarkable? The majority’s “other circumstances” are the 

kind that occur every day in the field. They have never been 

regarded as evidence that officers engaged in a pretextual 

inventory search. 

And if we need further proof of that, the majority’s own 

analysis confirms it. For all the discussion of “other 
USA V. ANDERSON 65

circumstances,” by the logic of the majority’s decision, if the 

deputies had just listed more items on the inventory form, 

taken better photos, or referenced the photos in the 

“remarks” section of their write-up, none of these “other 

circumstances” would matter: the search would apparently 

be proper. That only underscores the infirmity of the 

analytical foundation on which the court’s opinion rests.

* * *

In imposing new constitutional prohibitions premised on 

hairline distinctions, the court’s opinion breaks with 

established precedent, replacing Fourth Amendment 

reasonableness with a new matrix of judicially created 

inventory search rules unmoored from the traditional bad 

faith inquiry. Vexing for the courts who will need to apply 

it, the majority’s decision will prove even more unfortunate 

for communities that depend on the even-handed 

enforcement of the criminal laws.
Appendix A 

CHP 180 Form 

3-ER-359 
Case 5:20-cr-00071-RGK Document 23-13 Filed 06/29/20 Page 2 of 3 Page ID #:219

3-ER-359

3-ER-359

(362 of 408)
Appendix B 

Photographs of Anderson’s Truck 

3-ER-362, 3-ER-366, 3-ER-370, 3-ER-374, 3-ER-378