• Inventory Searches
• Good Faith Searches and Police Department Policy

When an individual is lawfully arrested and brought to a police station for booking, the police may conduct an inventory search of that individual’s belongings as part of the booking process even though the person is ultimately released without being booked, and even though his belongings are not searched until some hours after his arrest.  The only issue in such a case is whether the officer acted in good faith and in substantial compliance with police department policy.

Two Anchorage, Alaska, police officers, responding to a call at around 2:30 a.m. about gunshots being fired at an apartment, encountered defendant Markanthony Sapalasan and another individual walking away from the apartment.  Defendant was observed to be carrying a backpack.  He also had a semiautomatic pistol visibly sticking out of his front pants pocket.  Defendant was therefore detained and searched.  The pistol was determined to be loaded, with one round in the chamber and one round missing from the magazine.  Arrested and handcuffed, defendant’s backpack was retrieved.  One of the officers—Officer Tae Yoon—requested and received defendant’s permission to search it.  Nothing of any significance was found in the backpack, however.  Other officers in the meantime found a dead individual in the apartment house with a single gunshot wound.  Defendant was therefore transported to the police station where, after being questioned by detectives, was (amazingly) released.  While defendant was being interviewed, Officer Yoon (still in possession of defendant’s backpack) returned to the field to finish his shift.  When he later returned to the station, Officer Yoon finally got around to conducting a detailed inventory search of defendant’s backpack, done about six hours after defendant’s initial arrest.  In this search, the officer found a significant amount of methamphetamine.  A search warrant was obtained at around 8:22 a.m. for the purpose of completing the search of the backpack (during which, apparently, nothing else of any evidentiary value was discovered).  Defendant was charged in federal court with one count of Possession with the Intent to Distribute Methamphetamine, and one count of Possession of a Firearm in Furtherance of a Drug Trafficking Crime.  (Nothing is mentioned in this case decision about whether there was any evidence of defendant’s possible connection to the dead body found at the apartment, so we have to assume that there was not.)   Defendant’s motion to suppress the methamphetamine was denied by the trial court.  Found guilty of all charges, defendant appealed. 

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a split (2-to-1) decision, affirmed.  First, the Court determined that it did not need to decide whether the initial search of the backpack in the field was lawful—i.e., was his defendant’s valid—in that (aside from the fact that nothing was found) even if it was not, the later inventory search of the backpack at the station was, per the majority, lawful.  The general rule is simple: “When an individual is lawfully brought to a police station for booking into jail, the police may conduct an inventory search of that individual’s belongings as part of the booking process.”  (Citing Illinois v. Lafayette (1983) 462 U.S. 640.)  Defendant here conceded on appeal that he was lawfully arrested on probable cause, and that it was also lawful to separate him from his backpack while being transported to the station and while he was being questioned.  The issue was whether it was lawful to search his backpack some six hours after defendant was arrested, but after he had been released and without having completed the booking process. “In Lafayette, the Supreme Court held that under the?Fourth Amendment, ‘it is reasonable for police to search the personal effects of a person under lawful arrest as part of the routine administrative procedure at a police stationhouse incident to booking and jailing the suspect.’” (Id., at p. 643.)  The Court held that even though defendant, as it later turned out, was never booked (being released after questioning), this fact is irrelevant so long as when first arrested, defendant was lawfully separated from his backpack and booking was intended.  It must also be shown that the inventory search as conducted satisfied “reasonable police regulations and be administered in good faith.”  Defendant did not contest Officer Yoon’s good faith. So the only issue here was whether the inventory search was in compliance with Anchorage Police Department policy.  Noting that even though Officer Yoon failed to conduct the inventory search “immediately,” as required by Anchorage Police Department policy, the Court held that it was close enough; i.e., that searching the backpack six hours after defendant’s arrest constituted “substantial compliance,” and therefore “sufficiently followed Department policy to constitute a lawful inventory search.”  Lastly, the Court rejected defendant’s argument that such a search required that the officer have “probable cause” to believe the backpack contained sizeable evidence, holding simply that “probable cause to search is irrelevant in inventory searches.”  The trial court, therefore, properly denied defendant’s motion to suppress.