An inventory search is another common scenario where a potential 4th Amendment violation occurs. An “inventory search” is an administrative search that officers can do when a vehicle is towed to account for the property inside the vehicle. The purpose of an “inventory search” is to protect police departments from liability for lost and/or damaged property by having them make a list of everything inside the vehicle at the time it is towed.
However, Courts have expressed their concerns that this inventory search procedure can be used by officers who use this as a way to disguise a criminal investigation that is not justified. For that reason, inventory searches must meet very specific requirements to be valid.
First, the police department must establish standardized criteria that officers are trained to use when determining whether they will tow a vehicle or not.1 In addition, the police department must establish standardized criteria that officers are trained to follow that details the procedure for conducting the inventory search after the decision to tow has been made.2 These criteria must act as “a standard of some sort—that is, a directive, a guidepost, a benchmark, a criteria—that informs and potentially curtails the exercise of an officer’s discretionbefore a law enforcement officer can impound a vehicle and conduct an inventory search.”3
Second, the individual officer who makes the decision to tow the vehicle and conducts the inventory search must strictly adhere to these standardized criteria.4
Third, the officer conducting the impounding and inventory search is doing it as a good-faith inventory search. That is, the officer’s inventory search and decision to tow the vehicle cannot be a “ruse for a general rummaging in order to discovery incriminating evidence.”5 The officer’s decision to tow the vehicle and do the inventory search must be “totally divorced from the detection, investigation, or acquisition of evidence relating to the violation of a criminal statute.”6
If any of these requirements are not met, the search is invalid and the evidence obtained from the search may be excluded. Depending on the facts of your specific case, there may be additional analysis that needs to be done and other rules that may apply.
If you believe that your 4th Amendment rights have been violated by law enforcement during a traffic stop, contact Maroni Law as soon as possible so that we can begin preparing your defense and fighting for you.
- Colorado v. Bertine, 479 U.S. 367, 381 (1987). ↩︎
- South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364, 367 (1976). ↩︎
- Ross v. State, 319 So. 3d 807, 812 (Fla. 2d DCA 2021). ↩︎
- South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364, 367 (1976). ↩︎
- Florida v. Wells, 495 U.S. 1, 4 (1990). ↩︎
- Colorado v. Bertine, 479 U.S. 367, 381 (1987). ↩︎