{"id":3444,"date":"2009-10-17T08:47:03","date_gmt":"2009-10-17T08:46:10","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-17T08:46:10","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=3444","title":{"rendered":"CA6: Consent search of hotel room permitted search of visitor’s jacket that was unusually heavy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Renter of a motel room consented to a search of the room, and defendant’s jacket was in the room. The officer picked up the jacket, and it was unusually heavy. The officer could search the jacket for officer safety. United States v. Adams<\/a>, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 22485, 2009 FED App. 0363P (6th Cir. October 14, 2009):<\/p>\n

Here, it is not disputed that Bond, as the renter of Room 241, had a legitimate privacy interest in the room and, thus, the authority to give consent to the officers to search the room for contraband. It is also undisputed that he gave such consent. Accordingly, Adams does not contend that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated by the search of the motel room. Instead, he contests the scope of Bond’s consent and whether it extended to the inside pocket of Adams’s jacket where the gun was found. Adams argues that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated when Sergeant Eby searched the interior pocket of his jacket, which was “kind of hidden” in the “little gap” between a bed and a wall. Thus, the question is: whether under the facts of this case, Adams–by his conduct–retained a sufficient expectation of privacy in the jacket, such that Sergeant Eby violated Adams’s rights under the Fourth Amendment when he picked up the jacket, and when he searched the inside pocket. See United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 822-23, 102 S. Ct. 2157, 72 L. Ed. 2d 572 (1982) (noting that Fourth Amendment protection varies depending on the factual circumstances in each situation). We find that he did not.<\/p>\n

The district court concluded that Sergeant Eby’s search of the motel room fell within the consent exception to the warrant requirement. Moreover, the court concluded that Bond’s consent to search the motel room for contraband “included consent to look throughout the room in places where contraband could possibly be located[, a]nd that picking the jacket up off the floor was within the scope of that consent.” (SuppTr., Vol. II at 227.) The court further found that once the jacket was picked up “Officer Eby asked whose jacket it was and nobody claimed it.” Thus, the court determined that “there was no assertion of privacy in the jacket[, a]nd any privacy interest was effectively abandoned at the time under either version of the facts about when the gun was discovered in the jacket.” Once Sergeant Eby picked up the jacket and determined that it was heavy, the court concluded that Eby “was entitled to determine for officer safety why it was heavy since there is a natural possibility that a weapon might be in the jacket.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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