KS: SW for house did not permit searches of four purses of visitors without inquiring

In executing a search warrant on a house, the officer encountered four females with their purses. Since they were not the targets of the search, the officer was obliged to inquire into who owned which rather than just search them. State v. Jackson, 46 Kan. App. 2d 199 (2011):

In applying the notice test under the facts of this appeal, we reject the notion that Officer Phillips did not have notice that the purses belonged to the guests and not Davenport. Phillips admitted that he knew the purses could have belonged to the female guests; thus, he had constructive notice of “containers” not subject to the reach of the search warrant. His expressed reasoning for the search was that one or all of the purses could have belonged to the target of the warrant, Davenport, and that in order to determine ownership, he was forced to open the purses.

But Officer Phillips made no inquiry about the purses’ ownership. He did not ask any of the women present in the house if they had brought a purse or which one it was. Phillips could have simply gone into the living room and asked three questions of each guest: Did you bring a purse with you today? Is that the only purse you brought? Can you describe your purse? The true owner of the purse is most likely to have enough knowledge of the purse to describe it, while the others will probably not recall enough about the purse to describe it. Further, if Jackson had been questioned and had denied the purple purse with an orange handle was hers, she would no longer have had a subjective expectation of privacy in the purse. Moreover, if there was doubt of ownership after questioning Jackson, the officers could have applied for a supplemental search warrant or requested that a drug dog be brought to the premises. In short, the notion that the police would have been stymied and without appropriate avenues of investigation is not accurate.

. . .

In the final analysis, we are required to balance the privacy rights of an individual under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and § 15 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights against the legitimate need of law enforcement to conduct a proper search under the mandate of a search warrant. We hold the State did not meet its burden to demonstrate the search of Jackson’s purse was lawful and, to paraphrase Tonroy, the State offered nothing to rebut the reasonable assumption that three or four purses lying on a kitchen floor during a social gathering attended by three or four women were owned by the guests rather than by the female occupant of the residence. See 32 Kan. App. 2d at 925.