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GA: Legally parking car and running in apartment is not abandonment of the car

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Defendant did not per se legally abandon his car by parking it and running from it. He parked it in his own apartment complex parking lot. State v. Nesbitt, 2010 Ga. App. LEXIS 656 (July 8, 2010): [T]he facts of this case more closely resemble those of Dean and Scrivner rather than cases in which the suspects ran away from vehicles illegally parked or parked in some hazardous manner. When Nesbitt ran away, the officer had just observed him park the Altima within a parking space of an apartment complex, where lived -- as was readily ascertained by the officer based upon his investigation of the car's tag -- the person to whom the Altima's registered owner had entrusted the vehicle. In light of this evidentiary record, we cannot conclude that the trial court clearly erred in rejecting the state's argument that Nesbitt abandoned the Altima and consequently lost any reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to the car...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on July 12, 2010 (boomark / email).