Court Opinion

ID: 9498657
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:24:13.737409+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:59.193083
License: Public Domain

POSNER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Police who lawfully impound a car or other vehicle have a right to search it stem to stern in order to take an inventory of its contents, because they’re responsible for those contents for as long as the car and its contents are in their custody. Colorado v. Bertine, 479 U.S. 367, 373, 107 S.Ct. 738, 93 L.Ed.2d 739 (1987) (“by securing the property, the police protected the property *776from 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”); South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364, 372-73, 96 S.Ct. 3092, 49 L.Ed.2d 1000 (1976); United States v. Pittman, 411 F.3d 813, 817 (7th Cir.2005) (“warrantless inventory searches of vehicles are lawful if conducted pursuant to standard police procedures aimed at protecting the owner’s property — and protecting the police from the owner’s charging them with having stolen, lost, or damaged his property”). Whatever they see in the course of a lawful inventory search, as in any other lawful search, they can seize and use as evidence against the car’s owner.
Cherry was stopped by police for speeding and for changing lanes without signaling. A stop for a routine traffic offense (as distinct from a lawful custodial arrest of the driver or an occupant, Thornton v. United States, 541 U.S. 615, 617, 124 S.Ct. 2127, 158 L.Ed.2d 905 (2004); United States v. Pittman, supra, 411 F.3d at 815-16) does not justify a search of the car. Knowles v. Iowa, 525 U.S. 113, 117-18, 119 S.Ct. 484, 142 L.Ed.2d 492 (1998); United States v. Garcia, 376 F.3d 648, 650 (7th Cir.2004); Ochana v. Flores, 347 F.3d 266, 270 (7th Cir.2003). But one police officer testified that when he approached the car after pulling it over he saw a bag of marijuana, and a second officer testified that he smelled marijuana; so the police searched the car and in the trunk found a gun. The district judge disbelieved the testimony of the officer who said he had seen a bag of marijuana, but without considering the credibility of the other officer held the seizure of the gun legal on the ground that the police would have impounded the car after stopping it for the traffic offenses because Cherry had no proof of liability insurance, and that having impounded it the police would have conducted a lawful inventory search, which would have turned up the gun.
Florida v. Wells, 495 U.S. 1, 110 S.Ct. 1632, 109 L.Ed.2d 1 (1990), holds that inventory searches are proper only when they are conducted pursuant to “standardized criteria” or “established routine.” Id. at 4, 110 S.Ct. 1632; see also Colorado v. Bertine, supra, 479 U.S. at 374 n. 6, 375-76, 107 S.Ct. 738; South Dakota v. Opperman, supra, 428 U.S. at 374-76, 96 S.Ct. 3092; United States v. Wilson, 938 F.2d 785, 788-90 (7th Cir.1991); United States v. Bullock, 71 F.3d 171, 177-78 (5th Cir.1995); United States v. Marshall, 986 F.2d 1171, 1175 (8th Cir.1993). That makes it sound as if the constitutionality of the search depends on whether the police have complied with local law. But that can’t be right. If the local law violates the Constitution, compliance with the local law cannot justify the search; and if a search is reasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, the fact that it violates local law does not give the defendant a federal remedy. United States v. Delaporte, 42 F.3d 1118, 1119 (7th Cir.1994); Gordon v. Degelmann, 29 F.3d 295, 300-01 (7th Cir.1994); United States v. Clyburn, 24 F.3d 613, 616-17 (4th Cir.1994). An inventory search might not be authorized by a policy, but if the search conducted by the police was in fact a reasonable inventory search — maybe they searched the car because they feared being accused of stealing the owner’s property — there would be no basis for a constitutional objection.
The cases like Wells that emphasize standardized criteria, standard procedures, established routine, and the like worry that in the absence of formal procedures determining the metes and bounds of inventory searches, police officers would search cars at will for evidence of crime and if challenged say they were conducting *777an inventory search. The inventory search would then be “a pretext concealing an investigatory police motive.” South Dakota v. Opperman, supra, 428 U.S. at 376, 96 S.Ct. 3092. “[A]n inventory search must not be a ruse for a general rummaging in order to discover incriminating evidence.” Florida v. Wells, supra, 495 U.S. at 4, 110 S.Ct. 1632. Compliance with established procedures is merely a ruse antidote. “[A] locally followed practice gives some assurance that a particular car was not singled out for special searching attention. Absent such assurance some special reason for the taking of safeguarding or security precautions that are not customarily taken should exist if the intrusion resulting from the taking of such precautions is to be rendered reasonable under the fourth amendment.” United States v. Hellman, 556 F.2d 442, 444 (9th Cir.1977).
In other words, the absence of a rule creates a presumption that the search was not a bona fide inventory search. There is no need to go further and insist that inventory searches always violate the Fourth Amendment unless they comply with a preexisting rule, and thus to supplement, Miranda-like, the Constitution in order to make it easier for the courts to detect constitutional violations. That an inventory search can violate such a rule without violating the Fourth Amendment is shown by United States v. Lomeli, 76 F.3d 146, 149 (7th Cir.1996). The inventory-search rule required that inventory searches be conducted at the scene of the arrest, but the search of Lomeli’s vehicle was conducted at the police station instead. The court held that the search complied with the Fourth Amendment because the motive for violating the rule was simply that the superior lighting at the police station would enable the police to better account for and secure any valuables they might find in the vehicle. The inventory search was not a pretext for investigation.
Whether the requirement of a preexisting rule is rigid, as Wells implies, or, as we thought in Lomeli and the Ninth Circuit thought in the Hellman case, can bend, we must examine the Joliet Police Department’s policy governing the impoundment of vehicles to make sure that an inventory search would have been the expected sequel to Cherry’s inability to prove that he had liability insurance; for if not the inevitable-discovery rule cannot save the search.
This is a difficult inquiry because the department’s policy, a written policy (it need not be to pass muster, United States v. Duguay, 93 F.3d 346, 351-52 (7th Cir.1996); United States v. Walker, 931 F.2d 1066, 1068 (5th Cir.1991), but the only policy to which we have been directed in this case is written), is a mess. The provision that appears to govern this case is General Order 17-18 § 5.2(B), which provides that if the driver of a vehicle stopped by the police can’t produce proof of liability insurance, the police shall either “cause the vehicle to be left legally parked, or, at the request of the operator, notify a tow company of the operator’s choice, if the operator has a valid driver’s license. If, however, the driver does not have a valid driver’s license and does not have proof of insurance, [the police officer] must tow and impound the vehicle.” Cherry had a valid driver’s license but his car was not legally parked, having been stopped by the police at the side of a busy highway, so the first clause of the first sentence in paragraph 5.2(B) was not applicable. But the second one was, and it says nothing about im-poundment. The car has to be towed, but why to a police lot unless the police want to search it on the basis of “suspicion of evidence of criminal activity”? — an improper motive (unlike the motive in Lomeli) for an inventory search, Colorado v. Bertine, supra, 479 U.S. at 375, 107 S.Ct. 738, as it has nothing to do with the purposes, *778quoted from Bertine above, of such a search. See also United States v. Duguay, supra, 93 F.3d at 353-54; United States v. Ibarra, 955 F.2d 1405, 1410 n. 5 (10th Cir.1992).
Granted, we may have gone too far when we said in United States v. Duguay, supra, 93 F.3d at 353, that “the decision to impound an automobile, unless it is supported by probable cause of criminal activity, is only valid if the arrestee is otherwise unable to provide for the speedy and efficient removal of the car from public thoroughfares or parking lots.” The Supreme Court’s decision in Bertine suggests that a rule that all towed vehicles shall be impounded is reasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment; the owner need not be given an opportunity to make alternative arrangements even if they would protect the valid interest of the police in shielding themselves from charges of theft or damage to the owner’s property as well as from the danger that the vehicle may contain weapons that might be used against them. Colorado v. Bertine, supra, 479 U.S. at 373-74, 107 S.Ct. 738.
But Joliet has not gone to the outer limits permitted by the Court. Its policy says that if the driver can’t produce proof of liability insurance, the police shall either “cause the vehicle to be left legally parked, or, at the request of the operator, notify a tow company of the operator’s choice, if the operator has a valid driver’s license.” It does not authorize impoundment when the driver has a valid license — unless “left legally parked” makes the entire sentence applicable only to legally parked cars, which is to say to situations in which the driver, though he could leave the car where it is, may prefer that it be elsewhere, presumably his home. If so, he can have it towed there instead of leaving it where it is. (He is not permitted to drive it there because he lacks proof of insured status.) But that would leave unaddressed the situation in which the driver, though he has a valid driver’s license, is parked illegally.
It might be thought that the reason that situation is left unprovided for is that of course a car can be towed if it is illegally parked on a public street, General Order 17-4 § 2.4; and in the usual case there is no one in the car and so the tow necessarily is arranged by the police and the car is in their custody and therefore they can conduct an inventory search. South Dakota v. Opperman, supra, 428 U.S. at 375-76, 96 S.Ct. 3092; United States v. Pittman, supra, 411 F.3d at 817; United States v. Kimes, 246 F.3d 800, 804 (6th Cir.2001). That is the provision of Joliet’s policy on which the majority hangs its hat. But the only reason Cherry’s car was illegally parked was that he’d been pulled over by the police, so he was present and therefore there was no need for the police rather than Cherry to handle the tow. It would be bootstrapping for the police to argue that if they want to search a car that they’ve stopped for speeding or some other traffic offense that would not ordinarily justify a search of the car all they have to do is arrange to stop it in a place where it cannot be parked legally. That would be to use the policy on inventory searches to authorize illegal investigatory searches.
To make matters still more confused, General Order 17-18 § 6.1 provides that “vehicles will be towed only under the following circumstances” — and none of them is applicable to this case. This is in flat contradiction of the preceding section of General Order 17-18 (§ 5.2(B)). And then there is General Order 17-3 § 1.3(A), which provides that any time the police order a car towed, they shall conduct an inventory search. This is also in conflict with section 5.2(B), which requires towing if the driver has no proof of insurance, but *779impoundment only if, in addition, he doesn’t have a valid driver’s license (which Cherry, remember, did).
Suppose General Order 17-3 § 1.3(A) takes precedence and therefore authorizes an inventory search even when the car is towed to the driver’s home by a tow company summoned by the driver. The district court thought that, if so, that’s the end of the case. That is incorrect. A police department’s policy concerning inventory searches cannot override the Fourth Amendment. Police cannot demand entry into a person’s home in order to inventory the contents. An inventory search has to be in service of a legitimate interest unrelated to suspicion of criminal activity if it is to comply with the Constitution. No such interest is engaged if the driver is present when the car is stopped, he arranges the tow, and the car is towed to his home. In such a case there is no constitutional basis for an inventory search because the car and its contents are never in police custody. E.g., People v. Litchfield, 918 P.2d 1099, 1105-06 (Colo.1996); Fortson v. State, 262 Ga. 3, 412 S.E.2d 833, 834-35 (1992); Caplan v. State, 531 So.2d 88, 90 (Fla.1988); cf. United States v. Edwards, 242 F.3d 928, 938 (10th Cir. 2001).
So this interpretation of Joliet’s policy, which would be necessary to uphold an inventory search in this case, would be unconstitutional. The constitutional interpretation would not justify the search. I said earlier that an inventory search could be proper even if it didn’t comply with a formal policy on such searches, but the only justification that could be offered for an inventory search in this case would be compliance with Joliet’s policy. The police of course searched Cherry’s car not because they thought they were conducting an inventory search but because they were looking for marijuana, so their conduct cannot fill a gap in the policy. In sum, then, neither the Joliet policy, nor the circumstances, justified the police in impounding Cherry’s car; and without im-poundment, there was no justification for an inventory search of the car.
Two of our eases uphold inventory searches without discussion of whether the defendant’s car was impounded, United States v. Bass, 325 F.3d 847, 849-50 (7th Cir.2003); United States v. Sholola, 124 F.3d 803, 808, 818 (7th Cir.1997), but their silence should not be understood to signify that police can conduct an inventory search even though they have no grounds for taking custody of the vehicle. Unless it’s impounded and the owner therefore deprived of custody of its contents, there is no constitutional basis for an inventory search. United States v. Privett, 68 F.3d 101, 104 (5th Cir.1995), says that “the police could have permissibly conducted an inventory search even if the car was towed to [the defendant’s] home,” but in the actual case it was not towed there. The only reason the court gave for its statement was “the problem of security of the contents.” If, however, the owner of the car has it towed to his home by the towing company of his choice, the police have no valid interest in inventorying the contents because they are not potentially responsible for any loss of or damage to them, they are not endangered by the contents, and the owner has taken it on himself to protect the property from being damaged or lost en route to his home.
The judgment cannot be upheld on the basis of the district court’s reasoning. The case should be remanded for a determination of the credibility of the officer who testified that he smelled marijuana. If that testimony is credited by the district judge, there was probable cause to search *780the car; if not, not, and the evidence of the gun should be suppressed.