Opinion ID: 1191403
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Pre-Incarceration Search

Text: The foregoing principles have broad applicability to all warrantless searches, regardless of the basis for exception to the warrant requirement urged as support for their validity. Nonetheless, the State would have us uphold the search in this case as a valid warrantless search made in preparation for the defendant's incarceration. Under the jail house search exception to the warrant requirement, the State asserts, an arrestee may be searched prior to his imprisonment for two purposes: (1) to prevent the entry into jail of weapons or harmful drugs, and (2) to inventory his belongings to facilitate the processing of subsequent claims for loss or damage to them. See Brett v. United States, 412 F.2d 401 (5th Cir.1969). Of course, a jail house search is no less a search under the federal and state constitutions simply because it may have non-investigatory purposes. It is the fact alone of the government intrusion into individual privacy which invokes constitutional restraints. See Mozzetti v. Superior Court, 4 Cal.3d 699, 706-707, 94 Cal. Rptr. 412, 416, 484 P.2d 84, 88 (1971). While the police have valid reasons to conduct a limited pre-incarceration search, it is clear from the reasoning of the first part of this opinion that such a search should be no broader than necessary in light of those reasons. United States v. Robinson, supra, 94 S.Ct. at 487 n. 7 (Marshall, J., dissenting). In view of the construction given the fourth amendment in the Robinson and Gustafson cases, however, we must rest our decision with respect to the parameters of this exception to the warrant requirement on article I, section 5 of the Hawaii Constitution. We hold that the police have full authority to prohibit the entry of weapons, drugs or other potentially harmful items into jail. To this end, they may require internees to surrender any possible repositories for such items prior to incarceration. However, a concomitant of this wide authority to prohibit the entry of personal belongings which may harbor forbidden contents is a complete absence of authority to conduct a general exploratory search of the belongings themselves. [9] This absence of authority derives from the lack of any justification for such a further search inherent in the exception itself. Once the internee has turned over his possessions for safekeeping it is no longer possible that he may take them into jail. We adhere to the following view expressed in Brett v. United States, supra, 412 F.2d at 406: We are not prepared to say that an accused whose effects are held by the police for safekeeping has, by the single fact alone of the police custody of the property, surrendered his expectations of the privacy of those effects. Accord, United States v. Jones, 317 F. Supp. 856 (E.D.Tenn. 1970). But cf. In re One 1965 Econoline, 109 Ariz. 433, 511 P.2d 168 (1973). Accordingly, once the defendant in this case surrendered her packet to matron Mehau, the interest of the State in preventing its entry into jail was completely satisfied. A subsequent search into the contents of the packet was therefore unwarranted under the rationale of this limited exception to the warrant requirement. Nor did the need to inventory the defendant's possessions serve as a justification for probing the contents of the packet. The government's interest in protecting itself against fraudulent post-incarceration claims of loss or damage to property is at best a tenuous reason for infringing the privacy of an individual's belongings. Consequently, an inventory search should be rigidly circumscribed in scope, perhaps more so than any other type of justified warrantless search. To the extent that the basic purposes of an inventory search can be accomplished by means which are less intrusive on an internee's privacy, then the constitutional rule of reason requires such means to be employed. See Mozzetti v. Superior Court, supra . Certainly matron Mehau could have inventoried the defendant's packet without opening it. For example, all of the defendant's belongings could have been tabulated and placed, unopened, into a sealed envelope at the time of her booking; the police might even have required the defendant to sign a waiver releasing them of responsibility for the contents of unopened items, thereby affording her a choice whether to relinquish her right of privacy in the packet's contents. See United States v. Robinson, supra, 94 S.Ct. at 487 n. 7 (Marshall, J., dissenting). Since probing the contents of the defendant's packet was unnecessary to accomplish the ends of warrantless inventory search, it follows necessarily that that search was unreasonable under the Hawaii Constitution. The suppression order of Judge Lanham is affirmed.