UT: Photographing items for inventory rather than listing them is reasonable

Photographing the things seen in the inventory rather than listing them all is reasonable. Here, defendant also mounted a “vigorous” defense to the validity of the inventory in other respects, but they all fail. His backpack was searched in the inventory, but nothing illegal was found, and his argument essentially becomes a moot point if, and that’s not decided, its search was illegal. Opening a pill bottle was reasonable under the policy because the policy also considers giving needed prescription medication to the suspect. State v. Tirado, 2018 UT App 132, 2018 Utah App. LEXIS 145 (June 29, 2018).

Defendant had the burden of showing that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the files in his computer that were accessed on a peer-to-peer search. The government’s expert testified that their software cannot access files not open to the peer-to-peer network. Therefore, the district court did not err in concluding defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in that which was searched. United States v. Landry, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 18041 (5th Cir. July 2, 2018).*