Mayfield v. United States
| Decision Date | 15 April 1971 |
| Docket Number | No. 5380.,5380. |
| Citation | 276 A.2d 123 |
| Parties | Rufus Gray MAYFIELD, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee. |
| Court | D.C. Court of Appeals |
Rufus Gray Mayfield, pro se, and, at the request of the court Langdon G. Dowdey, Washington, D. C., for appellant.
Jerome Wiener, Asst. U. S. Atty., with whom Thomas A. Flannery, U. S. Atty., and John A. Terry, Asst. U. S. Atty., were on the brief, for appellee.
Before PAIR, REILLY and YEAGLEY, Associate Judges.
Appellant's conviction of unlawful possession of narcotics1 is based entirely on a police officer's discovery in appellant's car of an envelope containing a small quantity of marijuana. The only question presented by this appeal is whether the envelope and its contents should have been received as evidence in the face of a defense contention that these items were obtained by a search and seizure contravening fourth amendment standards.
The record shows that on December 16, 1968, police were making routine checks of automobiles cruising in a downtown area where reports of window breaking had been received. Shortly after midnight, appellant, driving with two friends, was stopped by a police officer and asked to produce his license and registration. As a stamped notation on the permit revealed a suspension, the officer arrested him for operating a motor vehicle without a valid license.
While an argument about this was going on, two more officers — one of them a police sergeant — arrived on the scene in another police car. Appellant was then placed in a squad car and driven to a precinct station where he was booked on the same charge for which he was arrested, and detained for inability to post collateral. In the meantime, the sergeant, having ascertained from appellant's passengers that neither had a current permit, instructed a third officer to drive appellant's vehicle to the station — the two passengers accompanying him.
Upon arrival, the passengers stepped out of the car. Appellant then being inside the building, the arresting officers proceeded to impound the car, search it, and make an inventory of its contents. According to their testimony, one of the items discovered was a brown envelope which they had previously observed appellant slipping under the front seat when he went back to his car momentarily after being notified he was under arrest, but before he entered the police vehicle to go to the station. Upon being advised by a narcotics officer that the content of the envelope was marijuana, appellant was booked on an additional charge — the one on which he was ultimately convicted.
In a pretrial proceeding, the court denied a motion to suppress after hearing testimony of the arresting officer, the sergeant, and appellant.2 The court's conclusions of law were that (1) the arrest was valid; (2) the impoundment of the car was proper; (3) the search of the vehicle at the precinct was a normal search incident to the impoundment; and (4) the seizure was incident to a lawful arrest and proper impounding. The court's ruling was accepted as the law of the case in a subsequent jury trial before another judge, where the envelope was admitted. Appellant was found guilty of possession as charged by the information, given a six months suspended sentence, and placed on probation.
In reviewing the findings concerning the motion to suppress, we agree that the arrest was lawful. Irrespective of the reason the police officer stopped appellant's car, the absence of proper driving credentials did justify his arrest. It has also been held that under certain circumstances, a contemporaneous seizure of an article in the course of an arrest may satisfy the constitutional requirement of reasonableness, Harris v. United States, 390 U.S. 234, 88 S.Ct. 992, 19 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1968), particularly if the person being arrested tries to hide it, McGee v. United States, D.C.App., 270 A.2d 348 (1970), or if the article is in plain view of the officer, Hobby v. United States, D.C.App., 275 A.2d 235 (No. 5449, decided March 22, 1971).3
But after appellant was safely in custody inside a precinct station, to hold that the police without a warrant could search his car (taken to the station at their direction) and then use any incriminating item — which might turn up by accident — as evidence for an entirely different offense, raises quite another question. The Government contends that this search was justified under a regulation requiring police officers after impounding an automobile which has been stolen, abandoned or left unattended, to make an inventory of the contents of the car, remove any valuables for safekeeping, and put the car in a place where it is not likely to be vandalized or pilfered before being claimed by or returned to its lawful owner. This court has not questioned the propriety of this regulation, recognizing that its purpose is to protect the property of the car owner and to minimize the likelihood of law suits charging police custodians with negligence. Williams v. United States, D.C.Mun.App., 170 A.2d 233 (1961).
Obviously compliance with this regulation necessarily involves some search and seizure. This court, however, in situations where the search has occurred in a parking area contiguous to a police station while the accused is inside the building being booked on a traffic charge (which is the case here) has consistently held that resort to impoundment procedure does not make admissible — at least for the prosecution of wholly different offenses — articles thereby uncovered which would be otherwise inadmissible on fourth amendment principles. Williams v. United States, supra, (prosecution for carrying gun found in car which police previously had instructed owner to drive to station in order to post collateral on speeding charge); United States v. Pannell, D.C.App., 256 A.2d 925 (1969), (prosecution for possessing narcotics paraphernalia discovered in car driven to station by policeman after defendant's arrest for operating without a permit); Pigford v. United States, D.C.App., 273 A.2d 837 (1971), (prosecution for receiving stolen goods seized during purported inventory search, after arrest on outstanding traffic warrants — accused having driven car into police lot at officer's direction).
It is true that in these opinions the lawfulness of the impoundment was questioned,...
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United States v. Mitchell
...such an extensive intrusion completely deprives the property owner of his right to the privacy of his property. 7 See Mayfield v. United States, 276 A.2d 123 (D.C.C.A.1971); Stroud, The Inventory Search and the Fourth Amendment, 4 Ind.Leg.Forum 471, 479-486 8 In Terry, the Supreme Court dis......
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