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Seizure of vehicle for forfeiture validly led to inventory

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Defendant's vehicle was contraband for forfeiture at the time of his arrest because of a prior drug sale from the car. Therefore, the police could inventory it on seizure for forfeiture under Florida v. White. United States v. Shipe, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 59614 (E.D. Tenn. May 23, 2008).* Government did not exceed defendant's wife's private search of his child porn under Jacobsen when they got his computer and DVDs and got a warrant and searched them later. "[O]on the facts of this case, the subsequent search did not enable the Government to "learn[] something … that it could not have learned from the private searcher's testimony." Runyan, 275 F.3d at 461. Accordingly, the Court finds that the Government's search of the imaged hard drives of the Netcap computers did not exceed the scope of the private search and, thus, did not violate the Fourth Amendment...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on August 10, 2008 (boomark / email).