{"id":6195,"date":"2012-07-25T15:35:55","date_gmt":"2011-10-29T08:36:37","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-10-29T08:32:01","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=6195","title":{"rendered":"OH7: Police officer’s active participation in what started as a private search was a warrantless government search"},"content":{"rendered":"

A private search of a storage unit became a government search because the officer was standing by watching, and then, after drugs were found in one box, the officer entered and opened two boxes himself. The police may be present at a private search, but they cannot participate without making it a government search. State v. Archer<\/a>, 2011 Ohio 5471, 197 Ohio App. 3d 570, 968 N.E.2d 495 (7th Dist. 2011):<\/p>\n

[*P21] But when the police become involved in a private individual\u2019s search, the probable cause and warrant requirements of the Fourth Amendment may apply; thus the courts must look to the level of police involvement to determine whether it was a private search or an unreasonable police search. Morris at 316. State v. Willis, 169 Ohio App.3d 364, 2005 Ohio 5754, 862 N.E.2d 906, at \u00b628. \u201cOfficial participation in the planning or implementation of a private person\u2019s efforts to secure evidence may taint the operation sufficiently as to require suppression of the evidence. The test of government participation is whether under all the circumstances the private individual must be regarded as an agent or instrument of the state. Dillon, supra; Katz, Ohio Arrest, Search and Seizure (2005), Section 27:12 at p. 604.\u201d Ellis, at \u00b614. Although the state usually bears the burden of proving that an exception to the warrant requirement exists where a warrantless search has occurred, the defendant bears the burden of proving that there was \u2018sufficient governmental involvement in seemingly private conduct\u2019 to consider it a state search. State v. Jedd, (2001), 146 Ohio App.3d 167, at 171-2, 2001 Ohio 2479, 765 N.E.2d 880.<\/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-6195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}