Court Opinion

ID: 9719417
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:52:03.829911+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:07.036133
License: Public Domain

Mr. JUSTICE CRAVEN, dissenting: In April 1972, defendant was driving through Decatur, Illinois, with another person as a passenger in his car. His car had mechanical difficulties; he got out to look under the hood of the car; and a trucker stopped, apparently to render assistance. Later, a police officer stopped, , asked other people to leave; he then asked the defendant for his driver’s license. The defendant was unable to produce a driver’s license. According to the defendant, the officer saw some beer in the car and the defendant thereupon was arrested for the illegal possession of liquor and for failure to have a valid driver’s license. The officer then looked in the car for alcohol and found two cans of beer in front, and four cans in the back of the car. The defendant did not give the officer permission to search the car and the officer did not have a warrant for the search of the car. According to the testimony of the police officer, he asked the defendant to produce a driver’s license or a registration. The defendant could not and the officer then arrested the defendant in connection with the discovered beer and the failure to have a license. The officer testified that he did not have the defendant’s consent to search the car. The defendant did not ask him to call anyone to take custody of the car and there was no one to take charge of the car which was in traffic. The officer called a commercial towing service to take the car. The defendant had previously been removed from the scene by reason of his admittedly valid arrest. After the commercial towing service arrived, the officer made a search of the automobile -and in the process found some blank checks, imprinted with the name of the defendant’s employer, in the closed glove compartment. The officer testified as to a policy of searching automobiles under such circumstances to keep any valuables that may have been left in the car from being stolen, or to avoid any subsequent allegations of missing valuables that may have been in the car. The defendant filed a motion to suppress, asserting the invalidity of the search. After a hearing, the trial court denied the motion to suppress the discovered evidence and to suppress a confession of the .defendant admittedly obtained as a result of the evidence found in the glove compartment. Thereafter, a bench trial resulted in a finding of guilty of forgery. The defendant was sentenced on March 7, 1974, to a term of not less than 1 nor more than 3 years. We now process the appeal, the notice of appeal having been filed on April 5, 1974. The problem for resolution here is the validity of the search of an automobile for the alleged purpose of making an inventory under circumstances where there is no warrant and no probable cause for the search. It seems clear to me that what was done here by the police authority constituted an intrusion into the private property of an individual and that such intrusion is a search. Such search, even if for a benevolent purpose, is not exempt from the constitutional requirements of the fourth amendment merely because the search is not made for the express purpose of finding evidence of a crime. The stated purpose of the police to make inventory searches for protection of the property or avoidance of accusation with reference to lost or stolen property has been discussed and such reasons do not persuade that the search is lawful. An inventory search is hardly conclusive in a civil action for loss of property from the vehicle since the article might be stolen before thé' inventory or omitted from the inventory. The inventory is prepared by the police and is a self-serving document and can hardly be binding upon a claimant. (See 1968 U. Ill. L. F. 401, 407-08; also 17 U.C.L.A. L.Rev. 626 (1970).) In the last cited article, the author observed that a person arrested should be allowed to assume the risk of loss of property and that even when a car must be impounded, it is unreasonable to think that the owner would exchange his fourth amendment rights for unwanted protection against theft. The author concluded that the assertion that a benevolent purpose justifies an inventory search “turns the Fourth Amendment on its head.” See Annot., 48 A.L.R.Sd 537 et seq. (1973). The standard for determining the validity for a search of a motor vehicle is whether that search was reasonable under the circumstances. (Cooper v. California, 386 U.S. 58, 17 L.Ed.2d 730, 87 S.Ct. 788; 17 L.Ed.2d 730; Preston v. United States, 376 U.S. 364, 11 L.Ed.2d 777, 84 S.Ct. 881.) As the majority states, courts have reached differing conclusions with regard to the reasonableness of inventory searches of automobiles in police custody. The Eighth Circuit in United States v. Lawson said: “While police custody may justify reasonable measures to protect the vehicle itself (i.e., rolling up the windows and locking the doors), or property within plain view in the automobile, such reasonable protective measures do not extend to breaking into a locked trunk.” (Lawson, 487 F.2d 468, 475.) While the police conduct in searching the glove compartment of defendant’s car in the instant case was not as extreme as breaking into' a locked trunk, neither could it be characterized as a means of protecting the vehicle itself or property within plain view. In Lawson, the Eighth Circuit referred favorably to two State court cases condemning non-probable cause inventoiy searches of cars. In Mozzetti, the court rejected the argument that these searches protect both the car owner and the police, saying: “In weighing the necessity of the inventory search as protection of the owner’s property against the owner’s rights under the Fourth Amendment, we observe that items of value left in an automobile to be stored by the police may be adequately protected merely by rolling up the windows, locking the vehicle doors and returning the keys to the owner. The owner himself, if required to leave his car temporarily, could do no more to protect his property.” (4 Cal.3d 699, 707, 484 P.2d 84, 89, 94 Cal. Rptr. 412, 417.) The court further noted that the police, as involuntary bailees of such cars, had only a duty of slight care which could be adequately fulfilled by locking the door and rolling up the windows. The majority attempts to distinguish Mozzetti on the grounds that the evidence involved there had been removed from a closed suitcase within the car. Yet, if police must inventory valuables as a protection against theft or claims of theft, there can be no logical reason for failing to inventory valuables stored in suitcases or other closed containers. The same objection applies to the majority’s attempt to distinguish Boulet on the grounds that the evidence there was removed from a closed shaving kit. The glove compartment in defendant Clark’s car was apparently just as “closed” and inaccessible to passers-by as the suitcase in Mozzetti or the shaving kit in Boulet. While the facts of the case in State v. Opperman distinguish it in some respects from Mozzetti, Boulet and the instant case, the court there espoused the same principle that police inventory searches must be restricted to safeguarding articles within plain view which may be likely to tempt passing vandals to explore the car and damage its contents. In this case, there is no contention that the defendant’s car was searched incident to his arrest or that there was probable cause to search the car, or that the evidence in question was in plain sight. Nor is there evidence that the search was necessitated by any other exigent circumstance which could not have been accommodated by a less serious intrusion into the defendant’s right to privacy. The search was illegal and evidence seized as a result of that search should have been suppressed. When confronted with the checks seized during the search, the defendant confessed to forgery. The State conceded at oral argument that this confession was the product of the search. Consequently, I would exclude the confession from evidence along with the other fruits of the unlawful search. Fahy v. Connecticut, 375 U.S. 85, 11 L.Ed.2d 171, 84 S.Ct. 229; People v. Rodriquez, 79 Ill.App.2d 26, 223 N.E.2d 414; Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 45 L.Ed.2d 416, 95 S.Ct. 2254.