D.Nev.: Police impoundment here was clearly pretextual for a “general rummaging”

A constable came to defendant’s house with a writ of execution to remove him from the premises, and he smelled marijuana. He observed defendant packing in a hurry and saw a lot of cash in the house. He called the local police, and they saw some expensive stuff in his SUV allegedly illegally parked in front of the house. The police decision to impound his car was clearly pretextual, because impoundment was done to search, not to protect the property inside. A gun found in the car was suppressed. United States v. Scott, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 115356 (D. Nev. August 23, 2011)*:

Because of these discrepancies regarding what exactly constitutes NLVPD policy, the Court’s task of determining whether the officers involved complied with that policy when conducting the inventory search becomes somewhat perplexing. In any case, the Court need not attempt to divine the exact nature of NLVPD’s impound and inventory search policies because the Court finds that the inventory search was a ruse for general rummaging in order to discover incriminating evidence, rather than a search conducted to protect Scott’s property or to protect NLVPD from liability.

An Arby’s store clerk called 911 to report that a man who matched the description of somebody who robbed the place once before was in the store pacing around the counter, and there was a person in a car waiting outside. This was reasonable suspicion when the police arrived. United States v. Ussery, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 115184 (W.D. N.C. September 9, 2011)* [Indeed, it sounds a lot like Terry.]

Defendant participated in the decision to waive a particular Fourth Amendment argument, and his defense counsel was not ineffective. United States v. Young, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 115336 (D. Alaska September 4, 2011).*