D.Ore.: Person ordered from car doesn’t abandon personal property left inside; coat was a “closed container”

When a person is ordered out of a car, he certainly doesn’t abandon that which is left in the car. Here, the officers didn’t even ask about the defendant’s coat, and one officer testified he believed it was defendant’s because it was in his lap. The coat is a “closed container.” A search of the jacket turned up a gun. United States v. Davis, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 45269 (D. Ore. April 2, 2014):

The government’s focus on the physical attributes of Mr. Davis’s coat is misplaced. Any object that conceals its contents from plain view may be afforded constitutional protection. See Ross, 456 U.S. at 822-23. That the container belonging to Mr. Davis was a coat lacking zippers or buttons is not constitutionally significant.5 On the other hand, what is significant is context, because “the protection afforded by the [Fourth] Amendment varies in different settings.” Id. at 823. Thus, the proper inquiry is not whether Mr. Davis’s coat is or is not a “container,” but whether Mr. Davis had an expectation of privacy in his coat at the time of the search. I find that he did have such an expectation. First, as discussed above, Mr. Davis did not abandon his coat, and was only separated from his coat because the officers required the occupants of the car to exit. Second, while it is true that the coat was not located in a secure, discrete location, such as the trunk, the circumstances of this case make that fact irrelevant. Before Mr. Davis left the car, his coat was sitting on his lap. Finally, Mr. Davis’s coat was being used in a manner consistent with a reasonable expectation of privacy, in that the firearm was located in a pocket of the coat and was not in view. Mr. Davis surely had an expectation of privacy before he left the car, and I find that Mr. Davis retained that expectation after leaving the car without his coat at the behest of the police. His coat was a “container” for Fourth Amendment purposes, and Mr. Davis did not “forfeit [his] expectation of privacy” simply because his coat was in a vehicle over which he did not exercise exclusive control. See Davis, 332 F.3d at 1167 (internal quotation omitted).