South Dakota v. Opperman: An Analysis of how: Inventory Searches are Unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.

• Author: Henry, Patrick

"I feel myself distressed because the necessity of securing our personal rights seems not to have pervaded the minds of men; for many other valuable things are omitted:--for instance, general warrants, by which an officer may search suspected places, without evidence of the commission of a fact, or seize any person without evidence of his crime, ought to be prohibited." (1)

- Former Virginia Governor and delegate to the Constitutional Convention, Patrick Henry

From the time of the ratification of the Constitution, the issue of unreasonable searches and seizures of property has been an important issue. With Britain's use of general warrants being a contributing factor to the Revolutionary War, the Founding Fathers created the Fourth Amendment to ensure that all searches and seizers be either reasonable or approved through a warrant by a judge. (2) While the Fourth Amendment creates protections against unreasonable warrantless searches and seizures, the issue then becomes what constitutes an "unreasonable" search and seizure? Nearly 200 years of case law and common law have allowed justices to determine which searches are reasonable and which are not. Looking at common law and established standards of what is deemed reasonable, inventory searches should be considered to be unreasonable and a violation of the Fourth Amendment. This essay aims to analyze South Dakota v. Opperman 428 U.S. 364 (1976), and the reasonableness of inventory searches. More specifically, the reasonableness of inventory searches are drawn into question when looking at the Inherent Mobility Standard, the Rational Basis Test, the Application of Community Caretaking Functions, and the original understanding of the Fourth Amendment.

Analysis of the South Dakota v. Opperman Case

The Fourth Amendment states, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." (3) Simply put, the Fourth Amendment does not outlaw all searches and seizures without a warrant, but only those searches and seizures that are deemed to be unreasonable by law. The United States Supreme Court (S.C.) has often held that a warrantless search is unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment unless it falls within one of the few, well-defined exceptions, which are: searches that are incident to a lawful arrest, when contraband is in plain view, when consent to search is given, when exigent circumstances are present, or for an inventory search. The two important factors that the S.C. has considered are, what is an "effect" and what is an "unreasonable" search under the Fourth Amendment. James Madison's text of his proposed Fourth Amendment initially included the phrasing of "other property." However, the House of Representatives revised Madison's proposal to say "effect" in an effort to broaden the language to cover more forms of property. (4) With the Framers intending to protect various forms of property, it is not hard to determine that a vehicle falls under the protection of an "effect" under the Fourth Amendment. Cady shows exactly that; a vehicle is considered an "effect" and is guaranteed the same protections of the Fourth Amendment as other forms of property. (5) Since it has been established that a vehicle is an "effect," the main question becomes whether these inventory searches are a reasonable or an unreasonable search.

Facts of the Case

South Dakota v. Opperman was originally argued in South Dakota's Second Judicial District of Clay County. The defendant, Donald Opperman, was subsequently charged and convicted with possession of marijuana after the police conducted an inventory search of the Defendant's vehicle. The City of Vermillion had various areas throughout the city marked as a restricted parking zone, in which it is illegal to park overnight. At approximately 3:00 a.m. on December 10, 1973, Vermillion police officers observed the Defendant's car parked illegally in a restricted parking zone. (6) A Vermillion police officer issued the Defendant a citation and placed the citation on the Defendant's windshield. A second officer issued the Defendant an additional ticket at 10:00 a.m., the same morning, after the Defendant had failed to remove the vehicle from the restricted parking zone. Both citations warned the Defendant that a vehicle may be towed if it was parked in the no-parking zone. The Defendant's vehicle was subsequently impounded later that day after the Defendant had still not moved the vehicle. (7)

Upon the car being towed to the city impound lot, officers observed several items of personal property laying in plain view inside the vehicle. Pursuant to the Vermillion Police Department's standard operating procedures, the officers entered the vehicle to retrieve the items and searched for any other valuables inside the vehicle to inventory the contents of the vehicle. However, while the officers were conducting the inventory search, a plastic bag of marijuana was found inside the vehicle's closed glovebox.

The Defendant filed a Motion to Suppress the marijuana evidence because the Defendant believed the inventory search was in violation of the Fourth Amendment and was therefore subject to the Exclusionary Rule. (8) The trial court ultimately overruled the Defendant's Motion to Suppress and ruled that the marijuana was found in accordance with the law through a lawful inventory search. The Defendant was convicted and sentenced to a fine of one hundred dollars and fourteen days in the county jail. The Defendant appealed his conviction and asserted that the trial court should not have overruled the Defendant's Motion to Suppress. The South Dakota Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Defendant and reversed the conviction. They held that the search of a closed compartment during an inventory search was unreasonable without a warrant. (9) The S.C. granted a writ of certiorari and agreed to hear the case. Upon consideration of the appeal, the S.C. reversed the South Dakota Supreme Court's decision to expand upon the Community Caretaking Function doctrine to allow for an inventory search of a vehicle.

The S.C. noted that while it had already been established that automobiles fall within the protections of the Fourth Amendment and are thus protected against unreasonable searches and seizures, these protections are far less than those afforded to a person or a home due to a vehicle's mobility. (10) The fact that a car can easily leave an area or even a jurisdiction creates an exigent circumstance for officers to conduct a warrantless search of the vehicle for contraband if there is probable cause to believe that the contraband is within the vehicle. In the present case, the S.C. relied heavily on a precedent created in Carroll v. United States (1925). In Carroll, the S.C. ruled that since a vehicle is mobile, it creates a circumstance of such exigency that obtaining a warrant to search a vehicle would be impractical. (11) South Dakota v. Opperman, also relied heavily on Chambers v. Maroney. In Chambers, officers searched a vehicle for contraband after the officers had already towed the vehicle to the police station. (12) The decision in Chambers drastically expanded upon Carroll to allow an officer to search a vehicle after it was in police custody and not presently mobile. Chambers argued that the automobile exception should apply to any vehicle for the fact that a vehicle is "inherently mobile." (13) Under this analysis a vehicle is deemed to have fewer protections under the Fourth Amendment for the pure fact that a vehicle can be mobile, regardless of whether it is abandoned in a parking lot or driving on a road.

The S.C. additionally reasoned in Opperman that the owner of a vehicle has a lesser expectation of privacy. "One has a lesser expectation of privacy in a motor vehicle because its function is transportation, and it seldom serves as one's residence or as repository of personal effects...It travels public thoroughfares where both its occupants and its contents are in plain view." (14) Since a vehicle is used for transportation and not as a residence, the S.C. reasoned that there is a lesser expectation of privacy for any personal property within the vehicle. The S.C. goes on to later cite Cardwell v. Lewis and reasoned that since there is a lesser expectation of privacy, an inventory search would not be unreasonable and can be viewed as an expansion of the Community Caretaking Functions doctrine. (15) While the S.C. held that an inventory search is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment in Opperman, the jurisprudence that was used is the largest factor in determining if it was reasonable or not.

Supreme Court Jurisprudence

The judicial jurisprudence that controls the S.C. at the time an issue is brought before them is the largest indicator of how a case will be decided. Jurisprudence is defined as "the science or...