Court Opinion

ID: 9678508
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:21:23.818832+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:05.061340
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Judge,
dissenting.
I concur in the dissenting opinion of Judge Donnelly.
In addition, even if the interpretation given the Opperman case by the principal opinion is correct, the facts here do not fit. Opperman mentions three police needs that justify making an inventory of the contents of an automobile: the protection of the owner’s property; the protection of the police from potential danger; and the protection of the police against claims or disputes that property has been lost or stolen while in police custody. Thus, in Opperman, the Supreme Court found that on the record before it, which showed that the search was indisputably conducted as a caretaking search of a car lawfully impounded for multiple parking violations, the owner was not present to make arrangements for its safety, the inventory was prompted by the presence of a number of valuables in plain view, and there was no claim that the inventory was a pretext covering an investigatory police motive, the search was reasonable. Id., 428 U.S. at 375-76, 96 S.Ct. 3092.
*100In the case at bar, the police made no claim that the search was conducted for the safety of the officers. In fact, the transcript of the suppression hearing shows that the officer specifically disclaimed any fear for his safety, and that the defendant was safely in the custody of another officer at the time of the search. Thus, the search, to be valid, must have been conducted to protect the owner’s property or to inventory it to protect the police from a claim that items were lost or stolen.
In this case, the officer testified that he simply searched the car prior to towing it because it was standard police procedure to do so. When asked by the prosecution: “Did you make an inventory of that car when you searched it of the things you found?”, the officer answered “Not a written inventory, no”, but that he had made “a report” about it. There is no evidence as to what was in the report.
An “inventory” is “a detailed list of articles of property; a list or schedule of property, containing a designation or description of each specific article; . . Black’s Law Dictionary 959 (4th rev. ed. 1968). Nothing of this sort occurred here. Rummaging through the car of another cannot be justified simply on the basis that it is standard police procedure to do so. There is no showing that what the officer did was in an effort to protect the owner’s property or to protect the police against false claims of loss. Therefore, we are upholding this warrantless search without requiring the state to justify its action as being within the exception relied on, even if there should be such an exception. If all it takes to support a search is a leading question from the prosecutor suggesting that the officer was making an inventory, the way is open for complete disregard of the Fourth Amendment with respect to automobile searches.