Someone smashed into my parent’s car which was parked in front of their house. They weren’t at home to claim ownership. Apparently the attending officer opened the car door and went into the closed glove compartment to find the registration card so he could determine the owner.
Now if the officer had found anything illegal in the glove compartment would that have been a legal search?
There is no warrant, the owner has not given consent and is not under suspicion for anything.
The questionable object(s) are not visible from outside and can only be found by entering the car and opening the glove compartment.
Hmmm. Hit ‘Submit’ a bit too soon. Still, my last post answers the question!
A bit of detail might be nice, however.
While police officers have law enforcement as their primary duty, they also are recognized as being community caretakers - helping people with emergencies that are not necessarily crime related. For example, an officer that sees an unconscious man on a park bench is expected to render assistance, even though there may be no law against being unconscious on a park bench.
In the case you mention, the officer wasn’t performing a law enforcement function. He didn’t expect to find the fruits of a crime in the glove compartment; he was looking for ownership information so that the owners of the car could be contacted about their broken window.
In general, as long as the community caretaker exception isn’t used as a pretext to perform a search for which a warrant could not be had, anything visible during the exercise of community caretaking is admissible as plain view.
>From Bricker
>The search is legal under what’s called the
>“community caretaker” exception to the warrant requirement.
Excellent info. And damn fast too. Thanks!
Bricker: Wouldn’t a simpler–and nonprolematic–way of determining ownership have been to run the plate? That wouldn’t even have required looking inside the vehicle let alone opening any of the closed compartments within it. Of course, that would require the plates to still be on the outside of the vehicle.
That’s a factual determination. It could be that running plates takes three minutes - a walk back to the cruiser and keying the plate info in on his on-board computer – and looking inside the glove box takes thirty seconds. Or not.
As I say, the key element is the motive for the officer’s actions. If he was acting in good faith as a caretaker, I doubt you’d win suppression by pointing out there were equally easy ways of gaining the information.
Also wouldn’t the fact that there were visible signs of forceable entry pretty much invalidate any charge against the car owners as it could not be proven who put contraband in the car?
Assuming of course that the car owner wasn’t dumb enough to put his driver’s license in the bag of weed.
We’re assuming that drugs are found? Then, sure, it gets harder to prove possession. But if the officer found kiddie porn Polaroids that showed the adult owner of the car in sexually explicit conduct with children, they would likely be admissible.
Mere admissibility does not equal conviction. If the only evidence adduced at trial was that a bag of weed was found in the glove box after a break-in, I’d say that’s insufficient as a matter of law to support a conviction against the car’s owner for possession. But if the search were illegal, we’d never get to trial, since the bag would have been suppressed.
Thanks, Rick that is kinda what I thought.
Oh and I would rank the kiddie porn picture showing the car owner in with the driver’s license in the bag o weed as being tied for the dumb move of the week.
One thing that is manifestly true about criminals: they tend not to be international jewel thieves or sophisticated gentlemen burglars. Yes, leaving your ID in your dope is pretty foolish… but I once had a case in a guy kept his cocaine in his driver’s license. (This was in the days when Virginia had a two-part DL, with a small pouch in which a green, tri-fold printout of your name and address was kept; genius-boy thought it was an excellent hiding place for his powder… and forgot his brilliant inspiration when he turned over his license after being stopped for running a stop sign).
Trust me when I say that the level of competence amongst the criminal element is not universally high.
