Good faith as a part of inventory searches? In Ohio since at least 1992. Coming to a court near you. Is good faith being subsumed into the “reasonableness” inquiry?

In 2009’s Herring, “good faith” is referred to in the majority opinion seven times as a reason for not applying the exclusionary rule. There it was a search incident to a recalled arrest warrant, a Warrantless search. In Ohio, at least, it’s part of the inquiry whether warrantless searches are valid; here, an inventory search. [So, is good faith being subsumed into the “reasonableness” inquiry?] State v. Smith, 2015-Ohio-5265, 2015 Ohio App. LEXIS 5254 (8th Dist. Dec. 17, 2015):

[*P15] Inventory searches are a well-defined exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment. State v. Mesa, 87 Ohio St.3d 105, 108, 1999 Ohio 253, 717 N.E.2d 329 (1999). Inventory searches involve administrative procedures conducted by law enforcement officials and are intended to protect an individual’s property while it is in police custody, protect the police against claims of lost, stolen, or vandalized property, and protect police from dangerous instrumentalities. Id. at 109. Because inventory searches are administrative caretaking functions unrelated to criminal investigations, the policies underlying the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement are not implicated. Id. Rather, the validity of an inventory search of a lawfully impounded vehicle is judged by the Fourth Amendment’s standard of reasonableness. Id. “To satisfy the requirements of the Fourth Amendment, an inventory search of a lawfully impounded vehicle must be conducted in good faith and in accordance with reasonable standardized procedure(s) or established routine.” State v. Hathman, 65 Ohio St.3d 403, 407, 1992 Ohio 63, 604 N.E.2d 743 (1992).

[*P16] In this case, there is ample evidence that the decision to conduct the inventory search of the vehicle was made in good faith and in accordance with the city of Cleveland’s standardized procedure regarding such searches. …

Well, it is, but I think it’s more judicial laziness because it makes solving Fourth Amendment problems far easier, essentially reducing important constitutional principles to a Rorschach test. Anthony G. Amsterdam, Perspectives on the Fourth Amendment, 58 Minn. L. Rev. 349, 393-94 (1974) (concluding that a “sliding scale approach … converts” the Fourth Amendment into “one immense Rorschach blot,” which can “only produce more slide than scale” and “means in practice … that appellate courts defer to trial courts and trial courts defer to the police”). See § 2.01 n. 96.

As for the good faith exception, remember that Leon made it somewhat clear that it did not apply to warrantless searches. United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 924 (1984):

The good-faith exception for searches conducted pursuant to warrants is not intended to signal our unwillingness strictly to enforce the requirements of the Fourth Amendment, and we do not believe that it will have this effect. As we have already suggested, the good-faith exception, turning as it does on objective reasonableness, should not be difficult to apply in practice. When officers have acted pursuant to a warrant, the prosecution should ordinarily be able to establish objective good faith without a substantial expenditure of judicial time.

That didn’t last long now, did it?