{"id":8956,"date":"2013-07-31T10:01:53","date_gmt":"2013-06-27T21:19:37","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-06-27T21:19:37","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=8956","title":{"rendered":"Cal.: A package seized in transit with PC can’t be searched on exigent circumstances; DA forfeits plain smell by not raising it in trial court"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cal.: A package seized in transit with PC can’t be searched on exigent circumstances without a warrant. Also, the state here forfeits its plain smell argument by not having raised it in the trial court. Robey v. Superior Court of Santa Barbara County<\/a>, 56 Cal. 4th 1218, 158 Cal. Rptr. 3d 261 (2013):<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Petitioner Kewhan Robey was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana for sale and with the sale or transportation of marijuana after police seized a package from a private shipping company and discovered the drug inside. The superior court denied petitioner\u2018s motion to suppress evidence, relying on exigent circumstances and inevitable discovery. The Court of Appeal granted Robey’s petition for writ of mandate and ordered the superior court to grant the motion to suppress. The Office of the Santa Barbara County District Attorney, as real party in interest, sought this court\u2018s review on two issues: (1) whether a police officer may conduct a warrantless search of a package seized from a common carrier based on the exigent circumstance of the container\u2018s mobility, and (2) whether a police officer can conduct a warrantless search based on the “plain smell” of contraband.<\/p>\n

On the first issue, we hold that although a container’s mobility may constitute exigent circumstances sufficient to justify a warrantless seizure, it cannot alone justify a search of the container once it has been seized. On the second issue, we find that the District Attorney forfeited the plain smell argument by failing to raise it in opposition to petitioner’s motion to suppress in the superior court. Because the District Attorney presents no other grounds to justify the search of the container, petitioner\u2018s motion to suppress should be granted as to the evidence obtained as a result of the warrantless search.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[Done on an iPhone. A real pain. I’ll fix it later.]<\/p>\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-8956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8956","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=8956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}