Cal.4: Subjective intent to conduct a pretextual inventory is relevant

Subjective intent of the officer is usually irrelevant, except for inventory search. This inventory clearly was a criminal investigative search under the pretext of an inventory. The community care taking function was not served by this search. People v. Torres, 188 Cal. App. 4th 775, 116 Cal. Rptr. 3d 48 (4th Dist. 2010):

Just as inventory searches are exceptions to the probable cause requirement, they are also exceptions to the usual rule that the police officers’ “[s]ubjective intentions play no role in ordinary, probable-cause Fourth Amendment analysis.” (Whren, supra, 517 U.S. at p. 813.) We have “never held, outside the context of inventory search … that an officer’s motive invalidates objectively justifiable behavior under the Fourth Amendment.” (Id. at p. 812, italics added.) Instead, courts will explore police officers’ subjective motivations for impounding vehicles in inventory search cases, even when some objectively reasonable basis exists for the impounding. In Opperman, supra, 428 U.S. 364, the police impounded a car that had been “illegally parked for an extended period” (id. at p. 375) and contained “a number of valuables inside” (id. at pp. 375–376) “in plain view” (id. at p. 375). Yet the court stressed “there is no suggestion whatever” that the inventory search “was a pretext concealing an investigatory police motive.” (Id. at p. 376.) In Bertine, the police impounded a van after arresting the driver for driving under the influence. (Bertine, supra, 479 U.S. at p. 368.) The alternative of parking and locking the van was not feasible. (Id. at p. 376.) Still, the court noted “there was no showing that the police … acted in bad faith or for the sole purpose of investigation” (id. at p. 372) and “no showing that the police chose to impound [the] van in order to investigate suspected criminal activity” (id. at p. 376).

Thus, as the U.S. Supreme Court has explained, inventory search cases apply “the principle that an inventory search must not be a ruse for a general rummaging in order to discover incriminating evidence. The policy or practice governing inventory searches should be designed to produce an inventory. The individual police officer must not be allowed so much latitude that inventory searches are turned into ‘a purposeful and general means of discovering evidence of crime.’” (Florida v. Wells (1990) 495 U.S. 1, 4 [109 L. Ed. 2d 1, 110 S. Ct. 1632] (Wells) [evidence in suitcase in impounded car should be suppressed because state highway patrol lacked standardized policy on opening closed containers found in inventory searches].)