{"id":4281,"date":"2010-06-11T12:07:18","date_gmt":"2010-06-12T00:17:42","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-06-11T12:06:58","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=4281","title":{"rendered":"OH8: Inventory of wheel well was invalid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inventory of wheel well was with an investigative purpose and violated Fourth Amendment. State v. Wells<\/a>, 2010 Ohio 2603, 2010 Ohio App. LEXIS 2145 (8th Dist. June 10, 2010):<\/p>\n

[*P11] The search at issue in this case was conducted with an investigatory intent. The Cleveland General Police Order regarding vehicle tows, pursuant to which Officer Yasenchack performed his search, provides that property found in unlocked closed containers in a vehicle shall be inventoried, and property such as jewelry, cameras, radios, and other valuables should be inventoried and removed from the car prior to tow. It says nothing about searching wheel wells as part of an inventory search. Thus, Officer Yasenchack\u2019s search of the wheel well was not pursuant to standard police policy.<\/p>\n

[*P12] Furthermore, Officer Yasenchack admitted that the inventory search was actually a pretext for an investigatory search for more drugs. On direct examination, Officer Yasenchack testified that after Wells was arrested, \u201cwe did an inventory search of the vehicle.\u201d But he testified that he looked in the wheel well because it is a \u201ccommon area to hide contraband, weapons, drugs\u201d and because he suspected that Wells and his passenger were involved in the sale of drugs. When challenged on cross-examination as to the purpose of his search of the wheel well, he admitted that he was performing a \u201cdual purpose search\u201d and \u201calso searching for more drugs\u201d and, with that intention, he \u201cpulled the fabric [back from around the wheel well] to reveal the cavity inside.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/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-4281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4281","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=4281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}