Court Opinion

ID: 9481754
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:30:45.970398+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:33.360071
License: Public Domain

SEYMOUR, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Because I believe the warrantless search of Mr. Morgan’s bag was in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, I respectfully dissent.
“In the ordinary case, ... a search of private property must be both reasonable and pursuant to a properly issued search warrant.” Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U.S. 753, 758, 99 S.Ct. 2586, 2590, 61 L.Ed.2d 235 (1979) (emphasis added). Thus, “[t]he mere reasonableness of a search, assessed in the light of the surrounding circumstances, is not a substitute for the judicial warrant required under the Fourth Amendment.” Id. As the Supreme Court noted in Sanders:
“ ‘The warrant requirement has been a valued part of our constitutional law for decades, and it has determined the result in scores and scores of cases in courts all over this country. It is not an inconvenience to be somehow “weighed” against the claims of police efficiency. It is, or should be, an important working part of our machinery of government, operating as a matter of course to check the “well-intentioned but mistakenly overzealous executive officers” who are a part of any system of law enforcement.’ ”
Id. This important principle was also recognized United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 9, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 2482, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977):
“The judicial warrant has a significant role to play in that it provides the detached scrutiny of a neutral magistrate, which is a more reliable safeguard against improper searches than the hurried judgment of a law enforcement officer ‘engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime.’ ”
Notwithstanding the warrant’s integral role in safeguarding the constitutional rights of this country’s citizens, the Supreme Court has created “a few ‘jealously and carefully drawn’ ” exceptions to the requirement that a warrant be obtained prior to a search. Sanders, 442 U.S. at 759, 99 S.Ct. at 2590 (quoting Jones v. United States, 357 U.S. 493, 499, 78 S.Ct. 1253, 1257, 2 L.Ed.2d 1514 (1958)). These exceptions apply when “the societal costs of obtaining a warrant, such as danger to law officers or the risk of loss or destruction of evidence, outweigh the reasons for prior recourse to a neutral magistrate.” Id. “But because each exception to the warrant requirement invariably impinges to some extent on the protective purpose of the Fourth Amendment,” it is the Government’s burden to show that the circumstances surrounding a warrantless search fit one of these narrowly tailored exceptions. Id., 442 U.S. at 759-60, 99 S.Ct. at 2590-91.
In this case, the district court held that the warrantless search of Mr. Morgan’s gym bag fits into two of these exceptions— as incident to his arrest, and as an inventory. The majority, however, upholds the warrantless search on the grounds that the bag was abandoned — an argument conclu-sorily asserted in the Government’s pretrial pleadings,1 that was not developed at trial, and upon which the district court made no findings of fact. A reading of well-established Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, however, establishes that the circum*1576stances surrounding the search were such that no exception to the warrant requirement was applicable. Thus, the failure to obtain a warrant rendered the search unconstitutional.
I.
ABANDONMENT
“When individuals voluntarily abandon property, they forfeit any expectation of privacy in it,” and thus “a warrantless search or seizure of abandoned property is not unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.” United States v. Jones, 707 F.2d 1169, 1172 (10th Cir.1983). Whether an individual has retained a reasonable expectation of privacy in property searched is to be determined by objective standards. Id. “An expectation of privacy is a question of intent, which ‘may be inferred from words spoken, acts done, and other objective facts.’ ” Id. (quoting United States v. Kendall, 655 F.2d 199, 202 (9th Cir.1981), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 941, 102 S.Ct. 1434, 71 L.Ed.2d 652 (1982)). Thus, the inquiry as to whether a defendant voluntarily abandoned property is particularly fact-based.
Because the Government did not argue the exception at the suppression hearing, however, the district court made no findings of fact nor conclusions regarding abandonment. It would follow that Mr. Morgan saw no need to offer evidence to rebut the assertion that he abandoned his bag. While it is true that specific findings of fact are not always necessary to our disposition of an issue on appeal, see United States v. Neu, 879 F.2d 805, 807 (10th Cir.1989), a fully-developed record with respect to that issue is. See Seibert v. Univ. of Okla. Health Sciences Center, 867 F.2d 591, 597 (10th Cir.1989) (“An appellate court may affirm the judgment of a district court on any grounds that find support in the record, provided the litigants have had a fair opportunity to develop the record.” (emphasis added)); see also Beaulieu v. United States, 930 F.2d 805, 807 n. 2 (10th Cir.1991) (where record insufficient to address claim, appellate court may either remand for further fact-finding or decline to consider it), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 110 S.Ct. 3252, 111 L.Ed.2d 762 (1990); V-1 Oil Co. v. Wyoming Dept. of Env’t. Quality, 902 F.2d 1482, 1493 (10th Cir.1990) (Ebel, J., dissenting) (“We can affirm on a ground not raised below provided the record is sufficiently clear to permit us to do so and provided that both parties had an adequate opportunity to develop the record on the issue we choose to rely on.”), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 111 S.Ct. 295, 112 L.Ed.2d 249 (1990). Very rarely will such a record be availableon a motion to suppress when the issue we decide is not expressly argued at the suppression hearing. Because I do not believe Mr. Morgan has had a full and fair opportunity to develop in the record his intent with regard to abandonment, I believe it is improper to uphold the search on this ground. Cf. V-1 Oil, 902 F.2d at 1493.
Even if I did consider it appropriate to address this issue, I would conclude, based on the record we do have, that Mr. Morgan did most definitely not abandon his gym bag. A review of the cases reveals that courts use as a barometer of intent to abandon property a defendant’s chances of recovering that property at a later date at the place where it was left, see, e.g., Jones, 707 F.2d at 1172 (abandonment when ability to recover property depended upon fate); United States v. Williams, 569 F.2d 823, 826 (5th Cir.1978) (leaving trailer unlocked and unguarded in public parking lot “is transparently an abandonment of the tight grip of ownership and reliance solely on the feeble hope of reacquisition”), and the defendant’s affirmative denial of ownership or interest in the property, see, e.g., United States v. Burnette, 698 F.2d 1038, 1048 n. 19 (9th Cir.1983); United States v. Kendall, 655 F.2d 199, 200-01 (9th Cir.1981); United States v. Canady, 615 F.2d 694, 696-97 (5th Cir.1980). We employed this analysis in Jones, finding it relevant to whether the defendant had abandoned his property that he had left it on the ground outside a public building where “his ability to recover [it] depended entirely upon fate and the absence of inquisitive (and acquisitive) passers-by,” and that he verbally dis*1577owned any knowledge of it. 707 F.2d at 1172.
In our case, Morgan threw the bag ten to fifteen feet away from him over the side of the porch onto the ground in his friend’s backyard. He did not leave the bag in a public place, and thus this is not a situation where his chances of reaequisition rest on the mere hope that no one would steal it — as might be the case if Morgan had thrown it on public property or into the backyard of a stranger. Rather, he easily could have asked a member of the Reed household to pick up the bag and take it into the house after he had been taken to the station. I do not accept the proposition that I have abandoned, for search and seizure purposes, everything I leave in a friend’s backyard.
The facts relevant to the abandonment inquiry in this case closely parallel those the Supreme Court found not to constitute abandonment in Smith v. Ohio, 494 U.S. 541, 110 S.Ct. 1288, 108 L.Ed.2d 464 (1990) (per curiam). In Smith, the Court upheld a state court ruling that a defendant did not abandon the bag he threw onto the hood of his car in a YMCA parking lot when the police asked him to “come here a minute.” Id. at 1290; State v. Smith, 45 Ohio St.3d 255, 544 N.E.2d 239, 240 (1989). The Court concluded that “a citizen who attempts to protect his private property from inspection, after throwing it on a car to respond to a police officer’s inquiry, clearly has not abandoned that property.” Smith, 110 S.Ct. at 1290; accord United States v. Jackson, 544 F.2d 407, 410 (9th Cir.1976) (no abandonment when defendant dropped suitcase in airport and walked three steps away when addressed by DEA agents). The majority’s attempt to distinguish the present case based on its characterization of why the defendant threw the bag in Smith is disingenuous at best. Mr. Smith no doubt threw his bag full of drug paraphernalia for exactly the same reason Mr. Morgan threw his gym bag — to protect it from police inspection. As Smith makes clear, it simply is of no consequence to a Fourth Amendment analysis that Mr. Morgan threw the bag to avoid being caught with incriminating evidence.
I also do not believe caselaw supports the majority’s implicaton that an assertion of ownership, verbal or otherwise, is necessary in order for an arrestee to retain a reasonable expectation of privacy in property the police saw the arrestee carrying. To the contrary, when finding abandonment, courts rely on the defendant’s denial of interest in the property, not the fact that the defendant did not expressly affirm ownership. See supra at 1576.
Finally, the majority’s reliance on the fact that the Reed residence bordered on an open field misses the point. When an article is left on the private property of a friend, a person maintains a reasonable expectation of privacy in it no matter if the yard is located in the plains of Oklahoma or the tenements of Harlem. When the article is left in a public place, on the other hand, it is legally fair game for all passersby. The majority’s citation to California v. Hodari D, — U.S. —, 111 S.Ct. 1547, 113 L.Ed.2d 690 (1991), to bolster its argument, instead supports the logic of my distinction because Mr. Hodari threw his cocaine on a public street, not on the private property of a friend. Id. at 1549.
Moreover, it is clear that the police knew Mr. Morgan was not leaving the bag in a location that would expose it to the general public. At the suppression hearing, Officer Eubanks testified at length as to his familiarity with both Mr. Morgan and Mr. Reed. Based on Officer Eubanks’ testimony, the district court found that:
“2. Eubanks had been advised by Sgt. Don Bell of the Tulsa Police Department Robbery Detail that a white-over-red Chevrolet El Camino bearing license OST-757 was suspected of being used as an escape vehicle in bank robberies.

“Eubanks knew the car was registered to the mother of Dwight Reed, 4-H3 N. Johnstown, but most often driven by Dwight Reed and his brother.

“3. Eubanks knew that the Defendant Morgan had been tried and acquitted of a bank robbery in the recent past in the District Court of Tulsa County, and the state’s evidence had included *1578that of a car switch and a change of clothes by the robbers after leaving the bank. Eubanks knew Rodney Morgan on sight.
“4. On August 11, 1989, Eubanks’ police radio advised him that three black males had robbed the Heartland Savings and Loan on East 31st Street.
“5. The robbery occurred at approximately 11:10 a.m. Shortly before 12:00 Noon, Eubanks saw the El Camino, with three black males inside, turn into the driveway of the Reed home at 4143 N. Johnstown.”
District Ct. Op. at 2 (emphasis added). Pursuant to an analysis based on objective factors, I would conclude that Mr. Morgan maintained a reasonable expectation of privacy in his bag when he threw it ten to fifteen feet away from him by the side of his friend’s back porch.
II.
SEARCH INCIDENT TO ARREST
The district court held that the warrant-less search of Mr. Morgan’s gym bag fits into the exception created for searches incident to an arrest as formulated in Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969).2 I disagree. The exception delineated by the Supreme Court in Chimel provides that an arresting officer may search for and seize anything that could be used by the arrestee to injure the officer, as well as any evidence the arres-tee could possibly destroy during the course of, or “incident to”, the arrest. Id. at 762-63, 89 S.Ct. at 2039-40; see Chadwick, 433 U.S. at 14, 97 S.Ct. at 2485 (1977); United States v. Bonitz, 826 F.2d 954, 956 (10th Cir.1987); Lavicky v. Burnett, 758 F.2d 468, 474 (10th Cir.1985), cert. denied, 474 U.S. 1101, 106 S.Ct. 882, 88 L.Ed.2d 917 (1986). The Court defined the area appropriate for such warrantless searches as that within the arrestee’s “immediate control;” that is, the officer may search “the area from within which [the arrestee] might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.” Chimel, 395 U.S. at 763, 89 S.Ct. at 2040; see Lavicky, 758 F.2d at 474; United States v. Vasey, 834 F.2d 782, 786 (9th Cir.1987).
The underlying justification for a search under a Chimel exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement is based on “ ‘the exigencies of the situation,’ ” United States v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 457, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 2862, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981) (quoting McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451, 456, 69 S.Ct. 191, 193, 93 L.Ed. 153 (1948)), and thus assumes that the search will occur as the police are in the process of subduing and securing the ar-restee:
*1579“[t]he potential dangers lurking in all custodial arrests make warrantless searches of items within the ‘immediate control’ area reasonable without requiring the arresting officer to calculate the probability that weapons or destructible evidence may be involved.

“However, warrantless searches of luggage or other property seized at the time of an arrest cannot be justified as incident to that arrest either if the ‘search is remote in time or place from the arrest, ’ or no exigency exists.”

Chadwick, 433 U.S. at 14-15, 97 S.Ct. at 2485 (emphasis added) (citations omitted). The circumstances surrounding the search in this case exceed the limits of this “carefully drawn” exception because the search was neither incident to the arrest nor carried out in the area that was within Mr. Morgan’s immediate control.3 While it is true that the determination whether the search-incident-to-arrest exception is applicable sometimes involves line-drawing of a subtle nature, the safety and evidentiary concerns underlying this exception are not at all implicated in this case. Mr. Morgan’s bag was never closer than ten to fifteen feet behind him during his arrest, it was not seized until he was handcuffed to a nearby fence, and it was not searched until several hours later at the police station. As the Supreme Court reasoned in Chadwick,
“Once law enforcement officers have reduced luggage or other personal property not immediately associated with the person of the arrestee to their exclusive control, and there is no longer any danger that the arrestee might gain access to the property to seize a weapon or destroy evidence, a search of that property is no longer an incident of the arrest.”
433 U.S. at 15, 97 S.Ct. at 2485.
It is clear, then, that the “search was not conducted in order to disarm defendant or to protect the safety of the officers. Additionally, no serious claim [was] made that destruction of evidence was feared.” United States v. Bonitz, 826 F.2d 954, 956 (10th Cir.1987).
The Government’s reliance on United States v. Edwards, 415 U.S. 800, 94 S.Ct. 1234, 39 L.Ed.2d 771 (1974), to save the search despite the lack of contemporane-ousness with the arrest is misplaced. Like United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 94 S.Ct. 467, 38 L.Ed.2d 427 (1973), discussed supra at note 2, Edwards involved a search of the arrestee’s person, not the area within her or his immediate control, and, thus, a different Fourth Amendment analysis is applicable, see Chadwick, 433 U.S. at 16 n. 10, 97 S.Ct. at 2486 n. 10; Calandrella, 605 F.2d at 247-50; United States v. Schleis, 582 F.2d 1166, 1170-72 (8th Cir.) (en banc). Since Edwards, the Supreme Court has continued to require contemporaneousness when the article searched is not on the arrestee’s person. See Belton, 453 U.S. at 460, 101 S.Ct. at 2864 (search of immediate control area may be made as a “contemporaneous incident” of the arrest); Chadwick, 433 U.S. at 15, 97 S.Ct. at 2485 (warrantless searches of area within arrestee’s immediate control not justified as incident to arrest if conducted remote in time or place from arrest).
This circuit also has invalidated warrant-less searches of articles argued to have been within the arrestee’s immediate control when the search was not contemporaneous with the arrest. See United States v. Butler, 904 F.2d 1482, 1484 (10th Cir.1990) (“[I]f the police conduct a search that is not contemporaneous to arrest, a warrant will be necessary.”); United States v. McKinnell, 888 F.2d 669, 673 (10th Cir.1989) (general rule that search incident to *1580arrest invalid if remote in time or place of arrest). Indeed, it is a “necessary corollary” to the rationale underlying this warrant exception — protection of the arresting officer from injury and potential evidence from destruction — “that a valid search incident to arrest requires the search and arrest to be substantially contemporaneous.” Lavicky, 758 F.2d at 475 (10th Cir.1985).
This requirement is necessary to fairly balance the arrestee’s Fourth Amendment right to a warrant with law enforcement interests. If the police do not conduct a search of an item until several hours after an arrest, they apparently were not concerned that the arrestee would, during the course of the arrest, be able to elude or escape detention in order to obtain the item. In our case, there was no mention of any concern by the police that Mr. Morgan might have attempted to grab the gym bag, open it, and obtain a weapon or evidence. To the contrary, when asked why he didn’t search the bag at the scene of the arrest, Officer Eubanks replied that he “just didn’t”, and that he wanted to make sure his superiors gave him an okay before he did. As to this exception, therefore, the Government has failed to meet its burden of “com[ing] forward and establishing] the existence of any exceptional circumstances dictating the necessity of the search without a warrant.” United States v. Anthon, 648 F.2d 669, 675 (10th Cir.1981).
III.
INVENTORY SEARCH
The district court also held that the search of the bag was a constitutionally valid inventory search. An inventory search is part of a routine administrative procedure carried out at the police station incident to incarcerating a suspect. Illinois v. Lafayette, 462 U.S. 640, 643, 103 S.Ct. 2605, 2608, 77 L.Ed.2d 65 (1983). “Under the Fourth Amendment, the propriety of inventory searches is judged by the standard of reasonableness.” United States v. Woolbright, 831 F.2d 1390, 1394 (8th Cir.1987) (citing Colorado v. Bertine, 479 U.S. 367, 107 S.Ct. 738, 93 L.Ed.2d 739 (1987)). The Government bears the burden to show that a warrantless search justified as an inventory search fits within the parameters of the inventory exception as it has been fashioned by the Supreme Court.
The Government first must establish that the inventory was conducted pursuant to “reasonable” inventory procedures. See Florida v. Wells, — U.S. —, 110 S.Ct. 1632, 1635, 109 L.Ed.2d 1 (1990). In Wells, the Court upheld the suppression of evidence obtained from a search characterized by the police as an inventory search because the government failed to prove the existence of a police department policy governing the type of search involved. Id. at 1634-35; see Bertine, 479 U.S. at 374 n. 6, 107 S.Ct. at 742 n. 6 (“Our decisions have always adhered to the requirement that inventories be conducted according to standardized criteria.”) (citing Lafayette, 462 U.S. at 648, 103 S.Ct. at 2610-11, and South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364, 374-75, 96 S.Ct. 3092, 3099-100, 49 L.Ed.2d 1000 (1976)); United States v. Hahn, 922 F.2d 243, 246-47 (5th Cir.1991) (search unconstitutional where police had no standardized procedure to govern the search); United States v. Davis, 882 F.2d 1334, 1339 (8th Cir.1989) (“An inventory search is not constitutionally reasonable, however, merely because it serves important governmental interests. To pass constitutional muster, the search also must be conducted pursuant to standard police procedures.”). The Court noted that “standardized criteria”, or “established routine” must regulate the inventory search because “an inventory search must not be a ruse for a general rummaging in order to discover incriminating evidence.” Wells, 110 S.Ct. at 1635.
Contrary to the majority’s gratuitous finding that the search of Mr. Morgan’s bag was conducted pursuant to “standardized criteria”, majority opinion at 1571, the Government conceded in its brief that “[n]o direct evidence revealed that the bag was searched pursuant to standardized procedures.” Brief of Appellee at 25. My view of the record accords with the Government’s concession that it has not established its burden under Wells. Cf. United *1581States v. Kornegay, 885 F.2d 713, 717 (10th Cir.1989) (inventory search upheld where “[testimony at the suppression hearing showed that an initial routine inventory was conducted pursuant to standard procedures by a specialist in attendance for that purpose”). I would reverse the district court’s inventory conclusion on that ground alone.
Moreover, even if the police have a relevant inventory policy, the Government must still prove that the search was “designed to produce an inventory” rather than “incriminating evidence.” See Wells, 110 S.Ct. at 1635. The particular warrant-less search will be “unreasonable” if it was motivated by “bad faith or for the sole purpose of investigation.” See Bertine, 479 U.S. at 372, 107 S.Ct. at 741. When the inventory search is employed as a pretext for discovering evidence of crime, it is unreasonable under settled Fourth Amendment caselaw. See Wells, 110 S.Ct. at 1635; Bertine, 479 U.S. at 372, 107 S.Ct. at 741; Opperman, 428 U.S. at 376, 96 S.Ct. at 3100. As Justice Powell stated in Opperman, 428 U.S. at 383, 96 S.Ct. at 3104 (Powell, J., concurring);
“Inventory searches ... are not conducted in order to discover evidence of crime. The officer does not make a discretionary determination to search based on a judgment that certain conditions are present.”
Circumstances giving rise to valid inventories generally involve two factual patterns: 1) the item was inventoried as part of the police’s caretaking function, i.e., the item (usually a vehicle) is taken to the police station when it otherwise would be left unattended in a public place; or 2) the item was carried into the police station by the arrestee. The Government argues on appeal only that under Lafayette the bag could be inventoried because it was “an item within Morgan’s possession at the time of his arrest.” Brief of Appellee at 25. In Lafayette, the arrestee carried the inventoried article, a shoulder bag, into the police station after his arrest. The Court upheld the search, concluding that “a station house search of every item carried on or by a person who has lawfully been taken into custody by the police” serves the governmental interest in protecting the ar-restee’s property and the safety of both the arrestee and the police. Id., 462 U.S. at 648, 103 S.Ct. at 2610 (emphasis added); see United States v. Lipscomb, 435 F.2d 795, 800 (5th Cir.1970), cert. denied, 401 U.S. 980, 91 S.Ct. 1213, 28 L.Ed.2d 331 (1971). It is also clear that the police may bring in the personal effects of the arres-tee at the arrestee’s request. See Lipscomb, 435 F.2d at 799.
Here, the evidence shows that Mr. Morgan did not carry the bag to the police station himself but, rather, that it was taken to the station by the police. Officer Eubanks testified that Mr. Morgan did not say anything to him about the bag, and thus Mr. Morgan obviously did not request Officer Eubanks to bring it to the station for him. Most significantly, there is direct evidence that Officer Eubanks intended to search the bag for incriminating evidence rather than as a routine procedure incident to Mr. Morgan’s pretrial incarceration. He testified at the suppression hearing that, when he saw Mr. Morgan carrying the bag, “[i]n [his] mind it was connected with the bank robbery” and he thought it might contain the clothes worn during the robbery. Rec., vol. II, at 25.
Officer Eubanks did not suggest at the evidentiary hearing that the reason he wanted to search the bag was for inventory purposes. When asked why he did not conduct the search at the scene of the arrest, he replied:
“I just didn’t. I waited till we got downtown and waited till the FBI, and [robbery sergeant] Don Bell wanted to search it, got through with everything they wanted to do, and went through it.
“Q. No particular reason then?
“A. I just wanted to make sure that they gave the okay to do that.”
Rec., vol. II, at 25. In order to inventory the bag under routine police procedure, it seems to me unlikely that Officer Eubanks would have needed to obtain an “okay” from anyone.
*1582Nor can I conclude that the inventory can be upheld under the “community care-taking” rationale. The police’s community caretaking function is “totally divorced from the detection, investigation, or acquisition of evidence relating to the violation of a criminal statute.” Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433, 441, 93 S.Ct. 2523, 2528, 37 L.Ed.2d 706 (1973). See United States v. Rodriguez-Morales, 929 F.2d 780, 785 (1st Cir.1991). In the usual case, the circumstances surrounding the seizure will be the only guide as to whether the search was pursuant to the police caretaking function rather than its investigatory one. See Opperman, 428 U.S. at 375, 96 S.Ct. at 3100; Rodriguez-Morales, 929 F.2d at 785-86.
“A police inventory of some possession of the arrestee, such as a suitcase, presupposes that the police had some valid reason for taking custody of that object, for it is only because of such taking of custody that the police can be said to have some obligation to safeguard the contents. This presents no problem when a person is arrested in some public place while carrying a suitcase or like object, for it would be clearly improper for the police to simply leave the container unattended at the scene of the arrest. As noted by Justice Blackmun in United States v. Chadwick:
“ 'A person arrested in a public place is likely to have various kinds of property with him: items inside his clothing, a briefcase or suitcase, packages, or a vehicle. In such instances, the police cannot very well leave the property on the sidewalk or street.I think it is surely reasonable for the police to take the items along to the station with the arrested person.’
“Likewise, if a person is arrested in a public place and it is known that he will thereby be prevented from retrieving a suitcase belonging to him which is in the vicinity, perhaps checked aboard a soon-to-depart aircraft, it is again appropriate for the police to take custody of it.
“If a person is arrested within private premises, then it is necessary to consider the circumstances of his presence there.”
2 LaFave, Search and Seizure: A Treatise on the Fourth Amendment § 5.5(b), at pp. 536-37 (2d ed. 1987) (footnotes omitted).
In this case, if the bag had not been taken in by the police it would not have been left exposed in a public place. Rather, it would have remained in the backyard by the backporch of Mr. Morgan’s friend. It would have been easy for Mr. Morgan to ask anyone living in the residence to retrieve the bag and take it inside the house for safekeeping. Moreover, as noted earlier, the record reveals direct evidence of Officer Eubanks’ investigative intent. Thus, the inventory is unreasonable under the “caretaking” argument. I therefore conclude that the search was a “ ‘subterfuge for [a] criminal investigation[ ],’ ” Bertine, 479 U.S. at 371, 107 S.Ct. at 741 (quoting South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364, 370 n. 5, 96 S.Ct. 3092, 3097 n. 5, 49 L.Ed.2d 1000 (1976)), rather than an “inventory” incident to Mr. Morgan’s booking and post-arrest detention. While I acknowledge the necessity of routine, administrative inventory searches prior to incarceration, the police cannot be allowed to employ them as subterfuges for investigative searches — searches that, absent any exception, require a warrant. Cf. United States v. Grill, 484 F.2d 990, 991-92 (5th Cir.1973), cert. denied, 416 U.S. 989, 94 S.Ct. 2396, 40 L.Ed.2d 767 (1974).
Because the judicially-created exceptions to the warrant requirement have begun to swallow it, I find it particularly egregious that the majority feels compelled to uphold the warrantless search based on an exception that was not asserted by the Government at the hearing below nor relied on by the district court. I fear this reflects the ever-growing judicial hostility to the Fourth Amendment. While it intuitively may seem “reasonable” for the police to be allowed to search without a warrant items that could have been searched had the ar-restee not tried to evade capture, we are required to test for reasonableness against the backdrop of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.
“ ‘To say that the search must be reasonable is to require some criterion of *1583reason. It is no guide at all either for a jury or for district judges or the police to say that an “unreasonable search” is forbidden — that the search must be reasonable. What is the test of reason which makes a search reasonable? The test is the reason underlying and expressed by the Fourth Amendment: the history and experience which it embodies and the safeguards afforded by it against the evils to which it was a response.’ ”
Chimel, 395 U.S. at 765, 89 S.Ct. at 2041 (quoting United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 83, 70 S.Ct. 430, 433, 94 L.Ed. 653 (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)).
Because the majority imposes its notion of reasonableness to validate a search conducted in violation of the Fourth Amendment, I respectfully dissent.

. The Government’s Response to Defendant’s Pretrial Motions merely stated that when Mr. Morgan could not enter Mr. Reed’s house, he abandoned the bag. It contained no discussion or analysis of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence with respect to abandonment or how the facts of this case fit within that exception.

. The Government also incorporates in its argument on this point the district court’s reliance on United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 94 S.Ct. 467, 38 L.Ed.2d 427 (1973), to justify the search as incident to the arrest based on the contention that ”[i]t is basic law that a person under arrest may be fully searched.” Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, rec., vol. I, tab 13, at 4. In Robinson, however, the Supreme Court distinguished between searches of the ar-restee’s person, i.e., the arrestee’s body and clothing, and searches of articles within the arrestee’s immediate control:
"It is well settled that a search incident to a lawful arrest is a traditional exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment. This general exception has historically been formulated into two distinct propositions. The first is that a search may be made of the person of the arrestee by virtue of the lawful arrest. The second is that a search may be made of the area within the control of the arrestee.”
414 U.S. at 224, 94 S.Ct. at 471 (emphasis in original).
Robinson stands for the proposition that, after a proper custodial arrest has been made, it is unnecessary to obtain a warrant to search the arrestee’s person and clothing because it is the arrest that constitutes the significant intrusion under the Fourth Amendment; the search of the person is incidental and does not require additional justification. See Robinson, 414 U.S. at 235, 94 S.Ct. at 476-77; United States v. Calandrella, 605 F.2d 236, 248 (6th Cir.1979). However,
“unlike searches of the person, United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218 [94 S.Ct. 467, 38 L.Ed.2d 427] (1973); United States v. Edwards, 415 U.S. 800 [94 S.Ct. 1234, 39 L.Ed.2d 771] (1974), searches of possessions within an arrestee’s immediate control cannot be justified by any reduced expectations of privacy caused by the arrest.”
United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 16 n. 10, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 2486 n. 10, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977). Thus, because the gym bag was not on Mr. Morgan's person, I find the principles of Robinson inapplicable.

. There is nothing in the district court's "Findings of Facts” to negate this conclusion. The court found that the hag was not searched until it was at the police station, and the cohrt made no findings at all concerning whether the bag was in the area within Mr. Morgan’s immediate control. It did note, however, that Mr. Morgan "threw the bag to the south side of the porch" prior to his arrest. Rec., vol. I, tab 13, at 2. Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law at 2. Our review of the record unearthed no facts that would support the Government’s position on this point.