Opinion ID: 417957
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Inapplicability of the Inventory Search Exception

Text: 36 The second theory advanced by the Government is that the activity that resulted in the discovery of Lyons' gun was not a search at all, but rather an inventory of his belongings incident to their lawful impoundment by the police. The Government insists that such a procedure, designed to protect the arrestee's property rather than to gather information for use in a criminal prosecution, requires no prior judicial approval. 37 It should be noted, at the outset, that there can be no serious question that the acts of gathering together Lyons' belongings, reducing them to police custody, and inventorying them constituted a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Though the Supreme Court has not specifically so held, 14 it seems indisputable that such a serious invasion of a citizen's expectations of privacy must be governed by the strictures of the Fourth Amendment; the fact that the intrusion was not motivated by a desire to unearth evidence of criminality does not render the Constitution inapplicable. See United States v. Lawson, 487 F.2d 468, 472 (8th Cir.1973); 2 W. LAFAVE, SEARCH AND SEIZURE 564-65 (1978). 15 Nevertheless, warrantless inventory searches have, in some contexts, been held to satisfy the Fourth Amendment standard of reasonableness. 16 To assess the Government's theory, we must decide whether the considerations that justify the use of such a procedure in other situations are sufficiently implicated by the activities of the police in the instant case to enable their conduct to pass constitutional muster. 38 The seminal decision in this area is South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364, 96 S.Ct. 3092, 49 L.Ed.2d 1000 (1976). The Supreme Court there upheld an inventory search of a lawfully impounded car. The Court pointed to four factors to support its conclusion that the practice was reasonable for constitutional purposes. First, a citizen is entitled to only a diminished expectation of privacy in his automobile--significantly less than that relating to [his] home or office. Id. at 367-68, 96 S.Ct. at 3096. 17 Second, inventories of the contents of cars to be kept in police custody promote important public and private interests--the protection of the owner's property while it remains in police custody; the protection of the police against claims or disputes over lost or stolen property; and the protection of the police from potential danger. Id. at 369, 96 S.Ct. at 3097 (citations omitted). Third, in the case before the Court, the owner of the car was not present to make other arrangements for the safekeeping of his belongings. Id. at 375, 96 S.Ct. at 3100. 18 Fourth, the inventory was conducted in accordance with a standard police procedure, essentially like that followed throughout the country, and there was no evidence that utilization of the procedure was a pretext concealing an investigatory police motive. Id. at 369, 376, 96 S.Ct. at 3097, 3100. 39 In situations involving similar complexes of concerns, inventory searches of other belongings or containers impounded by the police have been upheld. See, e.g., United States v. Grill, 484 F.2d 990, 991-92 (5th Cir.1973) (police may search a suitcase lawfully taken into custody, to make an inventory of the contents and to see if it contained explosive devices or other materials that might pose a danger to the warehouse or other stored items), cert. denied, 416 U.S. 989, 94 S.Ct. 2396, 40 L.Ed.2d 767 (1974); United States v. Diggs, 544 F.2d 116, 125 (3d Cir.1976) (en banc) (opinion of Gibbons, J. [which controlled the result in the case] (federal agents lawfully in possession of a locked box [transferred to them by a gratuitous bailee without the knowledge or consent of the owner] have constitutional authority to make an inventory search of its contents), subsequent disposition aff'd, 569 F.2d 1264 (3d Cir.1977). 40 To date, however, no federal court has upheld a warrantless search of a place of abode on the ground that the police had a legitimate interest in inventorying and impounding its contents. Only two cases might, at first glance, appear to support such an extension of the inventory search doctrine; upon examination, however, each proves to have involved a search justified by unrelated considerations. In United States v. Lacey, 530 F.2d 821 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 845, 97 S.Ct. 125, 50 L.Ed.2d 115 (1976), the Eighth Circuit ruled that money discovered by the police in the defendant's apartment was lawfully taken into custody for the sole purpose of safekeeping, since the apartment door could not be secured after it had been forced during entry. Id. at 823. But the money had not been discovered initially through an inventory search, but, rather, through a concededly lawful search undertaken pursuant to a valid warrant. Id. Similarly, in United States v. Lipscomb, 435 F.2d 795 (5th Cir.1970), cert. denied, 401 U.S. 980, 91 S.Ct. 1213, 28 L.Ed.2d 331 (1971), the Fifth Circuit held (using language superficially pertinent to the instant case) that it was reasonable for the police officers to take all the arrested couple's personal belongings to headquarters, for the hotel management could not reasonably have been expected to permit those belongings to remain indefinitely in the vacated room. Id. at 801. In justifying this conclusion, however, the court stressed the facts that Deering herself requested that [the belongings] be taken along, and Lipscomb did not offer any objection or suggest any other arrangement for the safekeeping of their possessions. Id. In short, collection of Lipscomb's property was justified by the consent of someone who at least appeared to be a co-owner. 19 In the only case in which the Government argued that the need to protect and inventory an arrestee's belongings, without more, justified a search of his hotel room, the contention was rejected out of hand; in United States v. Griffith, the Seventh Circuit held that the inventory search exemption could not be invoked when the arrestee's belongings were in his permanent or temporary dwelling. 537 F.2d at 905. 20 41 To uphold the application of the inventory search theory to the facts of the instant case would thus entail a substantial doctrinal innovation. Taking into account the four factors identified by the Supreme Court as the basis for its decision in Opperman, we conclude that such an extension of the theory would be improper. 42 For the sake of argument, we assume that the second and fourth of the considerations relied upon by the Court in Opperman are equally telling in the present context. In other words, we assume that, by collecting and inventorying Lyons' belonging, the police reduced the likelihood that those goods would be lost or stolen, shielded themselves from possible civil liability, and protected themselves from any inherently dangerous objects that might have been contained in his property. 21 And we accept, arguendo, the Government's allegation that the procedure was required by police regulations. 22 We observe, however, that, in terms of the first and third factors, this case differs radically from Opperman. We have demonstrated that the space invaded by the police in the course of the inventory was Lyons' temporary dwelling--in which he had a legitimate privacy interest equivalent to that of a homeowner in his bedroom. See Part II, supra. As the Supreme Court has repeatedly noted, citizens' interests in the privacy of their homes may be overridden only upon a showing of public interests considerably more compelling than those necessary to justify intrusion into automobiles. Compare, e.g., United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, 561, 96 S.Ct. 3074, 3084, 49 L.Ed.2d 1116 (1976), and Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U.S. 583, 590-91, 94 S.Ct. 2464, 2469, 41 L.Ed.2d 325 (1974) (plurality opinion), with, e.g., Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. at 511, 81 S.Ct. at 682, and McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451, 455-56, 69 S.Ct. 191, 193, 93 L.Ed. 153 (1948). Equally importantly, in this case the owner of the goods was present at the time of the search and easily could have been asked whether he wished the police to collect them or whether he wanted to make other arrangements for their safekeeping. 23 43 The foregoing differences between Opperman and the instant case seem to us decisive. We conclude that, given the importance of the privacy interests at stake, the failure of the police to consult with Lyons before assembling and searching his belongings was inconsistent with their constitutional obligations. 24