Opinion ID: 987102
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Motion to Reopen the Suppression Hearing

Text: Tyler moved to reopen the suppression hearing to introduce evidence of an e-mail that Deputy Anglin wrote that Tyler contends supports his claim that the search was pretextual. Evidently Tyler obtained this e-mail between the date he moved for reconsideration of his motion to suppress and the date of his motion to reopen. The trial court denied this motion and Tyler's motion for reconsideration in the same ruling. The Court of Appeals affirmed this ruling, finding no abuse of discretion. The subject line of the e-mail states: RE: Search incident to arrest and Anglin sent it to other sheriffs department personnel in an attempt to persuade them that he 3 He had 10 years' experience. 12 No. 87104-3 should be trained as a K-9 officer. CP at 36. Six paragraphs of the e-mail address reasons why another K-9 unit would be useful, practicalities of costs and other burdens involved in training for and maintaining a second unit, and ways to mitigate these problems. The first paragraph, Tyler contends, shows that Deputy Anglin was predisposed to conduct pretextual inventory searches in order to circumvent the decision in Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332, 129 S. Ct. 1710, 173 L. Ed. 2d 485 (2009). 4 This paragraph contains an apparent reference to Gant: This unfortunate ruling hinders our ability to continue the efforts that have been enforce [sic] for some time. The obvious way to circumvent this is impounding the vehicle and performing an inventory search. The problem with this is that we must afford the person the chance to contact someone else and determine if it is safely off of the roadway or not. It also obviously limits what we can search as well. The other way around this case and that is [sic] the use of a K-9. CP at 36. Tyler's pretext theory rests on the idea that an inventory search can be substituted for the search incident to arrest search that was allowed prior to Gant. 5 4 Gant contains two principal holdings under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, both involving the search incident to arrest exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement. The first is that a warrantless search of a vehicle incident to arrest of a recent occupant is authorized only when the arrestee is unsecured and within reaching distance of the passenger compartment of the vehicle at the time of the search. Gant, 556 U.S. at 344. Second, a search incident to a lawful arrest is justified when it is 'reasonable to believe evidence relevant to the crime of arrest might be found in the vehicle.' !d. at 343 (quoting Thornton v. United States, 541 U.S. 615, 632, 124 S. Ct. 2127, 158 L. Ed. 2d 905 (2004) (Scalia, J., concurring)). In Gant, the United States Supreme Court rejected the widely applied rule that a vehicle search incident to arrest was constitutional when conducted contemporaneously with the arrest ofthe occupant, regardless of whether the arrestee had been physically removed from the vicinity of the vehicle's passenger compartment. 5 Gant does not alter the analysis applicable under other recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement. Id. at 351(when the justifications for a search incident to arrest are absent, a 13 No. 87104-3 In denying the motions for reconsideration and to reopen, the trial court explained that it had determined the impound was reasonable and then said that once the impoundment occurred Anglin had no alternative but to conduct an inventory search to protect himself, his department, and the tow company from possible future claims. The court said that to do an impound without doing an inventory would be inappropriate, if not foolish. CP at 41. The trial court also said that the impound occurred before Gant was filed. But as Mr. Tyler correctly says, the impound in fact occurred months after Gant was filed. 6 Thus, the second reason the court gave is incorrect. However, despite this error, denying the motion to reopen is sufficiently justified by the first reason the court gave, as the Court of Appeals held. State law required that Anglin list the inventory of the vehicle before turning it over to the private towing company. In addition, Anglin testified that cataloguing the contents is done to protect the contents and to protect the sheriffs office and tow company from accusations of theft. He also testified that sheriffs office policies required him to conduct an inventory search once a vehicle was impounded; cataloguing the contents of the vehicle was standard and done every time a vehicle was impounded. Verbatim Report of Proceedings at 22. Although he testified that he was unaware of any written policies, he testified that he had been trained in the standards he used and these standards had remained the same for the 10 years he had been with the department. search of an arrestee's vehicle will be unreasonable unless police obtain a warrant or show that another exception to the warrant requirement applies). 6 The trial court's mistake evidently occurred because the State erroneously stated in its response to the motion to reopen that the offenses were committed in February 2009, prior to the Gant decision, when they actually were committed in November. 14 No. 87104-3 The point of the e-mail was not to try to circumvent Gant or encourage the department to disobey the law (or express his own intentions to do so), but to try to convince the sheriffs department to send Anglin for K-9 training. The first paragraph of the e-mail does not say what Tyler urges in any event. The paragraph actually explains that inventory searches themselves are more restrictive than the searches possible under the search incident to arrest searches that were permissible prior to Gant. Anglin says in the first paragraph that an inventory search will require the officer to explore whether someone other than the driver can move the vehicle and that the scope of the search is more restrictive (closed containers and trunks cannot be searched). Thus, contrary to Tyler's apparent claim, Anglin recognized that a vehicle search cannot simply be substituted for a search incident to arrest as it existed prior to Gant. The Court of Appeals properly concluded that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion to reopen. We hold that the Court of Appeals correctly held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion to reopen the suppression hearing.