Opinion ID: 2061668
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Gym Bag Search

Text: The first issue is whether the police intrusion into defendant's gym bag constituted a prohibited unreasonable search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Resolution of this issue is guided by Cady v. Dombrowski (1973), 413 U.S. 433, 439, 93 S.Ct. 2523, 2527, 37 L.Ed.2d 706, 713, which also involved a warrantless automobile search: The ultimate standard set forth in the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness. In construing this command, there has been general agreement that except in certain carefully defined classes of cases, a search of private property without proper consent is `unreasonable' unless it has been authorized by a valid search warrant. [citation omitted] One class of cases which constitutes at least a partial exception to this general rule is automobile searches. In Cady, the United States Supreme Court approved a police search of an automobile disabled as a result of an accident, wherein police opened a locked trunk which the police officer reasonably believed to contain a revolver vulnerable to intrusion by vandals. As in the present case, the officer in Cady was not using the search as a subterfuge for criminal investigation. The Framers of the Fourth Amendment have given us only the general standard of unreasonableness as a guide in determining whether searches and seizures meet the standard of that Amendment in those cases where a warrant is not required.    Where, as here, the trunk of an automobile, which the officer reasonably believed to contain a gun, was vulnerable to intrusion by vandals, we hold that the search was not unreasonable within the meaning of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. Id. at 448, 93 S.Ct. at 2531, 37 L.Ed.2d at 718. Indiana law requires an officer to make an accident report obtaining specified information if it is available. Ind. Code § 9-3-1-2. A person in control of a motor vehicle must have the car registration in the vehicle or on his person. Ind. Code § 9-1-4-5. In Muegel v. State (1971), 257 Ind. 146, 151, 272 N.E.2d 617, 620, police officers were permitted to investigate abandoned vehicles including the right to search for a registration certificate in those areas of a vehicle where it would reasonably be expected that such a certification of registration might be found. Similarly, in South Dakota v. Opperman (1976), 428 U.S. 364, 368, 96 S.Ct. 3092, 3097, 49 L.Ed.2d 1000, 1005, the United States Supreme Court observed: In the interests of public safety and as part of what the Court has called community caretaking functions,    automobiles are frequently taken into police custody. Vehicle accidents present one such occasion. To permit the uninterrupted flow of traffic and in some circumstances to preserve evidence, disabled or damaged vehicles will often be removed from highways or streets at the behest of police engaged solely in caretaking and traffic-control activities. The United States Supreme Court has expressly approved warrantless inventory searches as reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Colorado v. Bertine (1987), 479 U.S. 367, 107 S.Ct. 738, 93 L.Ed.2d 739; Illinois v. Lafayette (1983), 462 U.S. 640, 103 S.Ct. 2605, 77 L.Ed.2d 65; and Opperman, supra . In describing the nature of the inventory search exception, Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote in Bertine: In the present case, as in Opperman and Lafayette, there was no showing that the police, who were following standardized procedures, acted in bad faith or for the sole purpose of investigation. In addition, the governmental interests justifying the inventory searches in Opperman and Lafayette are nearly the same as those which obtain here. In each case, the police were potentially responsible for the property taken into their custody. By securing the property, the police protected the property from unauthorized interference. Knowledge of the precise nature of the property helped guard against claims of theft, vandalism, or negligence. Such knowledge also helped to avert any danger to police or others that may have been posed by the property. 479 U.S. at ___, 107 S.Ct. at 742, 93 L.Ed.2d at 746. The facts disclosed by the record do not permit us to characterize Officer Morgan's actions as falling within the inventory search exception. His admitted sole purpose in opening the gym bag was to search for registration documents. He was not making a list of property taken into police custody. While a wrecker had been called, the police had not impounded the vehicle, and it remained the owner's choice to designate where it was to be towed. While the police could have impounded the vehicle in similar situations as a proper exercise of caretaking and traffic control activity and thereafter to inventory its contents, the fact remains that they did not do so here. While the present case thus does not present an inventory search as authorized in Opperman, the initial question here is the reasonableness of the police activity in unzipping and searching the gym bag. The officer's conduct was a routine administrative function. There is no claim that Officer Morgan's initial search of the gym bag was a subterfuge for criminal investigation. Common sense dictates that the officer was not unreasonable under the circumstances in looking for the vehicle registration in the gym bag. The evidence resulting from the gym bag search was not erroneously admitted.