Court Opinion

ID: 9663286
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:34:10.802567+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:47.415777
License: Public Domain

VANDE WALLE, Justice,
concurring specially.
I concur in the majority opinion. Relying on Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969), this Court has previously held that a search of an automobile not made until the person who had occupied it had been arrested and taken into custody to a police station, and the car had been towed to a garage, was too remote in time or place to have been a search incidental to the arrest and that such a search without a warrant failed to meet the test of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment of the- United States Constitution. See State v. Gagnon, 207 N.W.2d 260 (N.D.1973). Nor do I understand the “bright-line” test subsequently crafted in New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981), and relied upon by this Court in State v. Hensel, 417 N.W.2d 849 (N.D.1988), to have preempted Gagnon, i.e., where the car is towed from the scene of the arrest and the defendant is no longer present at the scene a subsequent search of the vehicle as a search incident to arrest is not a “reasonable” search.
Insofar as the “inventory” search is concerned, I also agree with the result reached by the majority opinion. I write separately only to note that it is not the suspicion that incriminating objects may be present [State v. Riedinger, 374 N.W.2d 866 (N.D.1985); State v. Gelvin, 318 N.W.2d 302 (N.D.1982) ] nor an admitted purpose to search for those objects that invalidates the search. Rather, as stated by Professor LaFave in his treatise on the Fourth Amendment:
“More is involved than the mere expectation that incriminating evidence might be found; the pretext arises out of the fact that the evidence is found in a search which would not have occurred at all but for the manipulation of circumstances and events by the police because of their desire to conduct a search which could not otherwise be lawfully made.” 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure, at 141 (2d ed. 1987).
Thus, an inventory search does not somehow become illegal upon the discovery of incriminating objects which do not take the police by complete surprise.
However, where evidence is found in an inventory search following an arrest for an offense which the officer simply would have ignored but for the officer’s desire to search, I agree that the evidence must be suppressed. The record in this case does not reflect that this search would have been conducted, as required by established police department policy, regardless of the intent and suspicions of the officer; rather, I believe the record reflects the opposite. We necessarily need to rely on whether or not the officers deviated from the established and articulated policy of the department to determine whether or not the officers acted arbitrarily in. making the search.
ERICKSTAD, C.J., concurs.