{"id":2809,"date":"2009-07-17T07:18:09","date_gmt":"2008-12-27T13:52:03","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-27T13:52:03","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=2809","title":{"rendered":"MA: Locked safe in vehicle should not have been opened for inventory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Locked safe in a vehicle should not have been opened and inventoried under Massachusetts law.  <a href=\"http:\/\/weblinks.westlaw.com\/Search\/default.wl?RP=%2FWelcome%2FFrameless%2FSearch%2Ewl&amp;n=3&amp;ACTION=SEARCH&amp;bhcp=1&amp;bQlocfnd=True&amp;DB=MA%2DORSLIP&amp;Method=TNC&amp;query=to%28allapp+allapprs%29+&amp;RLT=CLID%5FQRYRLT847132712&amp;RLTDB=CLID%5FDB747132712&amp;sp=MassOF%2D1001&amp;ssl=n&amp;strRecreate=no&amp;sv=Split&amp;RS=WEBL8.11&amp;VR=2.0&amp;SPa=MassOF-1001\">Commonwealth v. Difalco<\/a>, 73 Mass. App. Ct. 401, 897 N.E.2d 1287 (2008):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Reading the two policies together, we conclude, contrary to the judge&#8217;s interpretation, that there is no explicit authority for the police to unlock a closed container and inventory the contents, and that the officer in this case could do no more than inventory a locked container as a single unit. &#8220;We have made it clear that, if police open a closed container during an inventory search in the absence of a specific written procedure requiring them to do so, then any evidence they discover  [*8] in the container must be suppressed.&#8221; Commonwealth v. Garcia, 409 Mass. 675, 684-685, 569 N.E.2d 385 (1991). See Commonwealth v. Muckle, 61 Mass. App. Ct. 678, 684, 814 N.E.2d 7 (2004) (police may open closed, but unlocked containers where written inventory search so provides) 6 For these reasons we conclude the defendant&#8217;s motion to suppress should be allowed, and that it is unnecessary to examine in detail the reasons given by the judge in the second step of his decision (see note 3, supra).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>b2evALnk.b2WPAutP <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=2809\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}