Search & Seizure – Inventory search exception applies to warrantless search

Where the district court granted the defendant’s motion to suppress evidence found in bags he was carrying, reasoning that, because he was secured at the time, he could not have accessed the bags to create a safety risk to the officers, it erred. The bags would have been lawfully searched in inventory searches, and the evidence would inevitably have been lawfully obtained for use at trial.

Background

In arresting Milton Allen for interfering with a police investigation, Raleigh police officers placed Allen on the ground, removed two bags he was wearing and secured both his hands and feet. While Allen remained on the ground but was still squirming, one officer searched Allen’s bags and found two loaded firearms, illegal drugs, scales, cash and related items.

Allen filed a motion to suppress the evidence obtained from his bags, arguing that the warrantless search did not qualify as a lawful “search incident to arrest” because he had already been secured at the time of the search and therefore could not have accessed the bags to create a safety risk to the officers. The district court granted Allen’s motion to suppress.

Preservation

The government contends — only to preserve the issue for Supreme Court review — that Allen’s cross-body bags were lawfully subject to a warrantless search incident to arrest, and that *United States v. Davis*, 997 F.3d 191 (4th Cir. 2021), on which the district court relied in finding the search unlawful, improperly extended the Supreme Court’s ruling in *Arizona v. Gant*, 556 U.S. 332 (2009), to a non-vehicular situation. Because *Davis *was decided after the cases relied on by the government, this court will not address the government’s point, leaving it “as a preserved argument.”

Inventory search

The government contends that the undisputed evidence showed that “Allen’s bags would have been [lawfully] searched in inventory searches by Raleigh Police and the Wake County Detention Center” and that therefore the evidence recovered from Allen’s bags would inevitably have been lawfully obtained for use at trial. This court agrees.

“For the inventory search exception to apply, the search must have been conducted according to standardized criteria, such as a uniform police department policy, and performed in good faith.” A lawful inventory search policy must be specific as to who is to be the subject of an inventory search, when the person must be searched and what is to be searched, such that an officer would readily understand what he must do to comply with the policy.

In this case, the Raleigh Police Department policy required, following an arrest, the search of *every arrestee’s *personal belongings, meaning “any personal property in possession of [the] arrestee.” It required that the search be documented and that the property, if not accepted by the Wake County Detention Center, be stored in the Raleigh Police Department Evidence Unit “for safekeeping.” Under this policy, officers were not left with any discretion as to whom to search, when to search and what to search.

Moreover Allen was taken to the Wake County Detention Center for intake. Under its policy, *every arrestee *taken to the Detention Center had to be searched, and each search had to include all personal property of the person, including purses, backpacks, computer bags and luggage. And if the person were not to post bond and therefore would be taken into custody, the Detention Center policy required that the person be searched again. The arrestee’s personal property would then be catalogued and placed into storage at the Detention Center, where it would be subjected to a K9 sniff for missed contraband, drugs or guns. A search under this policy was not subject to the discretion of the officers conducting it.

The district court disagreed philosophically with the inventory search exception, which it noted was a court-made doctrine. It also faulted the government for “not provid[ing] a copy of [the Wake County Detention Center’s] policy.” And it found that the testimony about the policy lacked “enough particularity” to make a showing of “standardized criteria [that would] limit a searching officer’s discretion to prevent his search from becoming ‘a ruse for a general rummaging in order to discover incriminating evidence.’”

First, lower courts are all bound by the Supreme Court’s doctrines. Second, there is no requirement that the inventory search policy be proved with *written *evidence. Third the evidence with respect to each policy explicitly showed that the policies applied to *every *arrestee and to *all property *possessed by the arrestee, without exception.

Reversed.

United States v. Allen, Case No. No. 24-4604, April 28, 2026. 4th Cir. (Niemeyer), from EDNC at Raleigh (Boyle). Sarah Elizabeth Nokes for Appellant. Colin Alexander Shive for Appellee. VLW 026-2-150. 13 pp.

Full-Text Opinion

VLW 026-2-150
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