Two inventory policies lead to different results in Indiana and Ohio:
Putting defendant into handcuffs but advising him that he was not under arrest 40 minutes into a stop made the consent invalid. A reasonable person in his position would not feel free to leave. State’s alternative theory that inventory justified the search failed because the defendant was permitted to remove college books from the car before the inventory and state policy permitted owners to remove valuables from the car before the inventory, and here he was not permitted to do so. Friend v. State, 2006 Ind. App. LEXIS 2573 (December 18, 2006).
Where the policy, however, required the officer to actually itemize what the defendant removed from his vehicle that he was taking with him, that policy was not unconstitutional. [Policy here could not be recited exactly by the officer because the handbooks were collected and put online, but that did not trouble the court.] State v. Flynn, 2006 Ohio 6683, 2006 Ohio App. LEXIS 6591 (3d Dist. December 18, 2006).
Dropping a backpack and walking toward officer to talk about a burglary was an abandonment of the backpack. People v. Novakowski, 368 Ill. App. 3d 637, 306 Ill. Dec. 417, 857 N.E.2d 816 (1st Dist. December 8, 2006).
Informant’s information was corroborated when he was riding with officers to meet somebody for a drug deal and the defendant showed up as predicted. State v. Guillory, 942 So. 2d 73 (La. App. 3d Cir. November 2, 2006, released for publication December 12, 2006).
Stop was justified based on defendant’s vehicle matching description of vehicle involved in multiple burglaries in area. State v. Phillips, 2006 Ohio 6710, 2006 Ohio App. LEXIS 6600 (4th Dist. December 11, 2006).*
Officer’s prolonging stop for 25 minutes to get drug dog to scene for a sniff was unreasonable. There was no objective basis for concluding that the defendant was involved in any drug activity, just because he had been seen near a house where there was drug activity as much as two months earlier. The court declined to adopt a bright line rule on length of a stop but had no difficulty concluding that a 25 minute detention to give a warning ticket and stall for a drug dog was unreasonable. Seabolt v. State, 2006 OK CR 50, 152 P.3d 235 (December 15, 2006).
Defendant’s admitting an informant into his house was not a violation of the Fourth Amendment, even if the informant was acting as an agent of the police. State v. Smith, 2006 UT App 485, 2006 Utah App. LEXIS 538 (December 7, 2006).
