In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 19-3077

RAYMOND MARLING,

Petitioner-Appellee,

v.

FRANK LITTLEJOHN, Deputy Warden, Wabash Valley Correctional Facility,

Respondent-Appellant.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Southern District of Indiana, Terre Haute Division.

No. 2:19-cv-00002-JRS-DLP — James R. Sweeney II, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED APRIL 28, 2020 — DECIDED JULY 13, 2020

____________________

Before EASTERBROOK, RIPPLE, and SCUDDER, Circuit Judges.

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. After Raymond Marling was 

arrested, on a warrant, while driving his car, police in Indiana took an inventory of its contents. The trunk held a 

locked box. An officer opened the box with a screwdriver

and found illegal drugs. Together with other evidence (including the fact that Marling was armed, despite felony convictions that made this unlawful), these drugs played a role 
2 No. 19-3077

in his convictions and 38-year sentence, which includes a 20-

year enhancement for being a habitual criminal.

Marling’s lawyer asked the trial court to suppress the 

contents of the box, arguing that opening it was improper. 

That argument lost in the trial court and lost again on appeal. Marling v. State, 2014 Ind. App. Unpub. LEXIS 1305 

(Sept. 30, 2014). He filed a collateral aeack, this time arguing 

that his trial and appellate lawyers had furnished ineffective 

assistance by not presenting the best reasons for objecting to 

the box’s opening. He contended that counsel should have 

argued that opening his box damaged it, violating the police 

department’s policy. The post-conviction court held a hearing, took evidence, and rejected this contention. The court of 

appeals affirmed, concluding among other things that counsel’s omission was not prejudicial because the record did not 

show that the box had been damaged. 2018 Ind. App. Unpub. LEXIS 610 (May 25, 2018). But a federal district court issued a writ of habeas corpus, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 163777 

(S.D. Ind. Sept. 24, 2019), ruling that a photograph in the record shows damage to the box’s lock. This meant, the judge 

stated, that the state court’s finding had been rebueed by 

clear and convincing evidence. 28 U.S.C. §2254(e)(1).

A factual mistake by a state court does not support collateral relief, unless a correction shows that the petitioner “is 

in custody in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties 

of the United States.” 28 U.S.C. §2254(a). Ineffective assistance of counsel suffices, because it violates the Sixth 

Amendment (applied to the states by the Fourteenth). Indiana has assumed that failure of counsel at trial and on appeal to choose the best argument in support of a motion can 

violate the Sixth Amendment, despite many cases holding 
No. 19-3077 3

that it is essential to evaluate counsel’s overall performance 

rather than find a single error. See, e.g., Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 691–96 (1984); Williams v. Lemmon, 557 F.3d 

534, 538–40 (7th Cir. 2009). Because Indiana has not made 

this potential argument we do not pursue it. See United 

States v. Sineneng-Smith, 140 S. Ct. 1575 (2020). Still, it remains necessary to show that counsel’s decision was both 

substantively deficient and prejudicial. The state’s appellate 

court applied the Strickland standard, and our review of the 

outcome under §2254(d) has been called “doubly deferential”. Knowles v. Mirzayance, 556 U.S. 111, 123 (2009).

The district judge found both deficient performance and 

prejudice because Florida v. Wells, 495 U.S. 1 (1990), holds

that the validity of an inventory search depends on the police department having a policy about when to take inventories. The judge read Wells to say that compliance with this 

policy is essential, which implies that a violation of a local 

policy also violates the Constitution. The judge read the local 

policy at issue to forbid damage to a container, which led 

him to find a constitutional error, which counsel had failed 

to call to the state court’s aeention. We think that the judge 

has misunderstood both Wells and the local policy.

Wells holds that a policy is important, but not because the 

Constitution demands that states suppress evidence acquired through violations of state or local rules. That possibility was rejected in Virginia v. Moore, 553 U.S. 164 (2008), 

among many other decisions. See also, e.g., Wilson v. Corcoran, 562 U.S. 1, 5 (2010) (federal court may not issue a writ 

under §2254 based on an asserted error of state law). Wells

explained why a policy maeers:
4 No. 19-3077

Our view that standardized criteria or established routine must 

regulate the opening of containers found during inventory 

searches is based on the principle that an inventory search must 

not be a ruse for a general rummaging in order to discover incriminating evidence. The policy or practice governing inventory 

searches should be designed to produce an inventory. The individual police officer must not be allowed so much latitude that 

inventory searches are turned into a purposeful and general 

means of discovering evidence of crime.

But in forbidding uncanalized discretion to police officers conducting inventory searches, there is no reason to insist that they 

be conducted in a totally mechanical “all or nothing” fashion. 

“[I]nventory procedures serve 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.” A police officer may be allowed sufficient latitude to 

determine whether a particular container should or should not 

be opened in light of the nature of the search and characteristics 

of the container itself. Thus, while policies of opening all containers or of opening no containers are unquestionably permissible, it would be equally permissible, for example, to allow the 

opening of closed containers whose contents officers determine 

they are unable to ascertain from examining the containers’ exteriors. The allowance of the exercise of judgment based on concerns related to the purposes of an inventory search does not 

violate the Fourth Amendment.

495 U.S. at 4 (cleaned up). Thus “open all containers” is a 

valid policy. So is “exercise discretion”. What maeers is that 

there be some policy that makes the inventory something 

other than a search based on belief that it will turn up evidence of crime. The Justices did not suggest that every departure from any policy violates the Fourth Amendment.

Suppose a local policy calls for opening a locked box with a 

hammer and chisel, while one officer uses a lockpick instead. 

Or suppose a policy says that items are to be stored in evidence bags, while one officer put them in boxes. Such depar-
No. 19-3077 5

tures from a policy lack constitutional significance under the 

rationale of Wells.

The North Vernon Police Department, whose officers 

stopped Marling’s car and opened the box, has an inventory 

policy. Section 49.3.2 of General Order 49 provides:

Inventory the contents of suitcases, boxes, and other containers. 

...

Closed and/or Locked Containers - Inventory all closed or locked 

containers. If a situation exists that requires extreme measures 

(extensive time, manpower and equipment), and/or unreasonable potential damage to property, the officer should avoid opening the container, but should document why the container was 

not opened.

This says that all locked containers are to be opened and inventoried, though the officer “should avoid” opening a container when that would cause “unreasonable potential damage” to property. The policy is valid under Wells: it combines 

a presumptive rule of opening everything with a discretionary (“should”) exception when the damage would be “unreasonable” in the officer’s judgment. And because the policy is valid, the search is valid too. A federal judge’s disagreement with how an officer exercises discretion under a 

local policy does not make a search unconstitutional in retrospect. See United States v. Cartwright, 630 F.3d 610, 616 (7th 

Cir. 2010). Any other understanding would amount to using 

the Constitution to enforce the details of local law, which

Moore and many other decisions say is improper.

It follows that the district judge’s disagreement with the 

state judiciary about whether the officer followed the local 

policy is not a sufficient ground for collateral relief. And, for 

what it is worth, we do not see a violation of the local policy.
6 No. 19-3077

The judge included in his opinion a picture showing 

some damage to the box’s lock. That was enough, he 

thought, to establish the policy’s violation, even though Marling did not draw this picture to the aeention of the state’s 

appellate court. Let us suppose that the judges should have 

examined the picture anyway. Still, the policy does not forbid all damage; it forbids unreasonable damage. This box was 

intact, and the lock could have been fixed or replaced. Why 

was the damage “unreasonable”? The judge did not say. 

Then there is the discretionary language in the General Order. The judge apparently understood Wells to forbid the use 

of discretion, such as evaluating when a potential for damage would be “unreasonable”. Yet the principal holding of

Wells is that discretion about inventory searches is compatible with the Fourth Amendment. The Justices wrote:

Nothing in South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364 (1976), or Illinois v. LafayeLe, 462 U.S. 640 (1983), prohibits the exercise of police discretion so long as that discretion is exercised according to 

standard criteria and on the basis of something other than suspicion of evidence of criminal activity.

Wells, 495 U.S. at 3–4 (cleaned up), quoting from Colorado v. 

Bertine, 479 U.S. 367, 375 (1987). The officer who opened and 

inventoried the contents of this box acted within the scope of 

discretion granted by General Order 49. As Wells requires, 

discretion under the policy is unrelated to beliefs about the 

container’s contents. If the officer did too much (“unreasonable”) damage, that could have been the basis for a tort claim 

under state law. It is not a basis for a conclusion that the 

Fourth Amendment required the suppression of incriminating evidence. It follows that counsel did not violate the Sixth 

Amendment by omieing this line of argument.

REVERSED