Inventory search exception to the warrant requirement after Com. v. Alexander
Com. v. Thompson, 289 A.3d 1104 (Pa. Super. 2023), appeal docket 85 MAP 2023, allocatur granted August 8, 2023
After the trial court denied appellant Michael Thompson’s motion to supress a firearm recovered during a pre-towing inventory search of his vehicle, Thompson was convicted of person not to possess a firearm. Superior Court rejected his argument that the Supreme Court’s decision in Commonwealth v. Alexander, 243 A.3d 177 (Pa. 2020) (holding that Article I, Section 8 does not recognize the full federal “automobile exception” to the warrant requirement), eliminated Pennsylvania’s inventory search exception, and affirmed the judgment of sentence.
The Superior Court opened with a discussion of unreasonable search prohibition and its exceptions:
Both the Fourth Amendment and Article I, Section 8 prohibit unreasonable searches. Pa. Const. art. I, § 8 (“The people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions from unreasonable searches and seizure[.]”); U.S. Const. amend. IV (“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated[.]”). The text of each “does not specify when a search warrant must be obtained.” Kentucky v. King, 563 U.S. 452, 459, 131 S.Ct. 1849, 179 L.Ed.2d 865 (2011). The law is replete with exceptions to the warrant requirement, i.e., a recognition that certain searches may be constitutionally reasonable without a warrant issued by a neutral magistrate.
The inventory search that occurred in this case is one of those exceptions. It is rooted in Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433 (1973), which recognized that police officers frequently perform tasks unrelated to criminal investigation.
Local police officers, unlike federal officers, frequently investigate vehicle accidents in which there is no claim of criminal liability and engage in what, for want of a better term, may be described as community caretaking functions, totally divorced from the detection, investigation, or acquisition of evidence relating to the violation of a criminal statute. Id. at 441.
Slip op. at 4-5.
As the court further explained:
In determining whether the warrantless search was reasonable, the Cady Court deemed two facts significant. The first was that the vehicle “constituted a nuisance along the highway,” thus justifying a tow. Id. at 443. The second was that the lower courts had made a factual finding that the search was a standard procedure by that police department “to protect the public from the possibility that a revolver would fall into untrained or perhaps malicious hands.” Id. That was important because it established that the officer’s motivation was not to look for evidence of a crime; the governmental interest of “concern for the safety of the general public who might be endangered if an intruder removed a revolver from the trunk of the vehicle” was constitutionally reasonable. Id. at 447.
Slip op. at 5.
The Cady rationale, the court explained, eventually became part of the basis for the federal “automobile exception,” which a Pennsylvania Supreme Court plurality adopted in 2014 in Commonwealth v. Gary, 91 A.3d 102 (Pa. 2014). In 2020 in Alexander, however, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overruled Gary, and held, as the Superior Court explained:
the federal automobile exception is incompatible with the protections afforded by Article I, Section 8. As that decision explained, the pre-Gary law “recognized an automobile exception, but unlike its federal counterpart, ours was ‘limited’ in application.” Alexander, 243 A.3d at 187-88. Following Alexander, our state constitution recognizes a limited automobile exception, which “requires both a showing of probable cause and exigent circumstances to justify a warrantless search of an automobile.” Id. at 181.
Slip op. at 7.
Rejecting Thompson’s argument that the Supreme Court’s overruling of Gary establishes that a person’s vehicle is to be treated identically to a home such that no inventory search is permitted, the Superior Court reasoned:
Appellant’s argument overlooks that the limited automobile exception is doctrinally distinct from the inventory search exception. It is true that to some degree, the United States Supreme Court’s adoption of the inventory search exception relied on views concerning the expectation of privacy in an automobile’s contents that Alexander rejects. But the specific federal automobile exception rejected in Alexander requires the presence of probable cause as a baseline requirement; an officer cannot perform a vehicular search under either constitution if probable cause is absent. The “automobile exception” therefore involves a fact pattern wherein the officers are searching for evidence of a crime. As the Opperman Court explained, “[t]he standard of probable cause is peculiarly related to criminal investigations, not routine, noncriminal procedures.” Opperman, 428 U.S. at 370 n.5. Thus, while Gary and Alexander both discuss warrantless searches of a vehicle, the context of the case involves probable cause supporting an investigatory search for evidence of a crime. An inventory search falls under “community caretaking” and thus does not involve probable cause.
Slip op. at 9-10.
The Superior Court acknowledged that Alexander’s rejection of the automobile exception may support some limitation on the inventory search doctrine based on a citizen’s privacy interests, but that Thompson advanced no such nuanced arguments, contending instead for a wholesale rejection of the inventory search exception:
The Alexander Court’s rejection of the United States Supreme Court’s views on the privacy interests involved in an automobile may well support some limitations on the inventory search doctrine. See Bertine, 479 U.S. at 386, 107 S.Ct. 738 (“Not only are the government’s interests weaker here than in Opperman … but respondent’s privacy interest is greater.”) (Marshall, J., dissenting). Here, however, Appellant argues that Alexander simply eliminated the inventory search exception in total. We thus have no occasion to address these types of arguments.
Slip op. at 12-13.
The issue on allocatur, as stated by petitioner, is:
Whether the [t]rial [c]ourt and the Superior Court of Pennsylvania erred in determining that an inventory search of an automobile by law enforcement is an exception to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision in Commonwealth v . Alexander, 243 A.3d 177 (Pa. 2020) requiring a search warrant before conducting a search of a person’s vehicle or requir[ing] production and proof of exigent circumstances for a warrantless search of a vehicle?
For more information, contact Kevin McKeon or Dennis Whitaker.