E.D.Tenn.: While search of suitcase in trunk was invalid as SI, it would inevitably be valid as inventory

While the trunk of defendant’s rental car could not be searched incident to arrest, inevitable discovery saved this search as an inventory. It could have been done as an inventory, and it appeared to be investigatory, but that’s not enough for inevitable discovery. United States v. Thompson-Bey, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 67181 (E.D. Tenn. January 12, 2010)*:

Even if the officers could properly search the passenger compartment of the car for evidence relating to the Defendant’s arrest on drug charges, they could not search the trunk of the car pursuant to the search incident to arrest exception. The line of cases governing the search incident to arrest exception, beginning with Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752 (1969), permit officers to “search incident to arrest only the space within an arrestee’s ‘immediate control,’ meaning ‘the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.’” Gant, 129 S. Ct. at 1714, 1716 (quoting Chimel, 395 U.S. at 763)). “That limitation, which continues to define the boundaries of the exception, ensures that the scope of a search incident to arrest is commensurate with its purposes of protecting arresting officers and safeguarding any evidence of the offense of arrest that an arrestee might conceal or destroy.” Gant, 129 S. Ct. at 1716. The trunk of the vehicle is not a place within the arrestee’s immediate control.

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In the present case, Trooper Robe’s decision to search the Defendant’s rental car was not the result of negligence but, instead, was the result of his accurate determination that the inventory policy required him to impound the car because the passengers could not legally take custody of it. Although Trooper Robe’s testimony suggests that the department intended to use the inventory policy to perform searches that would no longer be justified incident to the suspect’s arrest in the wake of the Gant decision, neither that testimony nor Trooper Robe’s conduct reveal that inventory searches were being conducted when they were not permitted by the inventory policy. Accordingly, the Court finds no bad faith on the part of law enforcement. The Court finds that the exclusionary rule should not be applied in this case but questions whether Herring, which turns upon police negligence, applies. Instead, the Court finds, as discussed in the previous section, that the exclusionary rule should not be applied because the evidence in question would have been inevitably discovered in an inventory search subsequent to the impoundment of the rental car. See Williams, 467 U.S. at 444 (questioning the applicability of the exclusionary rule when the evidence “ultimately or inevitably would have been discovered by lawful means”). The Court recommends that the defendant’s motion to suppress evidence [Doc. 115] be denied.