Florida v. Wells

The case was a rare example of the Rehnquist Court enforcing Fourth Amendment privacy rights at the expense of law enforcement. In an interesting sleight of hand, however, the majority of the Court used the case to broaden police rights in inventory searches while holding against the police action in the case.

On 11 February 1985, during routine patrol, Trooper Rodney Adams of the Florida Highway Patrol stopped Martin Wells for speeding. Adams determined that Wells was intoxicated, and he arrested him for drunk driving. Wells agreed to go with Adams to the police station to take a breathalyzer test, and Adams impounded Wells' car. Adams also obtained Wells' permission to perform an inventory search on the car. Such searches are designed to guard against theft while the car is impounded and to prevent a false claim of theft when the arrestee regains the car. Police officers also conduct inventory searches to protect against potential dangers posed by the car or its contents.

Adams had the car towed to nearby K & S Automotive. With the assistance of Grover Bryan, a K & S employee, Adams searched Wells' vehicle and discovered two marijuana cigarette butts in the ashtray and a locked suitcase in the trunk. His interest piqued, Adams and Bryan forced open the lock on the suitcase with two knives and discovered more marijuana.

Wells was charged with possession of a controlled substance. Prior to trial, Wells moved the court to exclude the marijuana evidence, arguing that the search of his suitcase violated the Fourth Amendment to be free from unreasonable searches. The trial court denied the motion and Wells pleaded no contest to the charges. However, he preserved his right to appeal the judge's ruling on his motion, and the Florida District Court of Appeal for the Fifth Circuit reversed the trial court. The Supreme Court of Florida affirmed, and the state of Florida appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a unanimous decision, the High Court sided with Wells, holding that the search of Wells' suitcase was illegal. Although the Court arrived at the same decision as Florida's High Court, it utilized different reasoning. The Florida court was right when it held that law enforcement personnel must follow a clearly stated policy in conducting inventory searches, and that if no policy exists then the inventory search is illegal under the Fourth Amendment. However, the Florida court went on to state that a policy on inventory searches must be created by police departments that either forbids or requires the opening of closed containers found in the course of an inventory search.

The U.S. Supreme Court allowed that police must create and follow a policy on inventory searches. This was true because the Court had already determined in Illinois v. Lafayette (1983) that an inventory search of an arrestee's vehicle "must not be a ruse for a general rummaging in order to discover incriminating evidence." Because Adams had searched Wells' suitcase without the benefit of a guiding departmental policy on inventory searches, the search was illegal and the Court declared that the marijuana evidence found in the suitcase would be unavailable to prosecutors. This effectively ended the prosecution against Wells, but the Court continued its opinion to correct a mistake made by the Florida court.

According to the High Court, police should be allowed to retain discretion to decide whether to open a closed container encountered in an inventory search. Quoting Colorado v. Bertine (1987), the Court stated that such searches "`serve to protect an owner's property while it is in the custody of the police, to insure against claims of lost, stolen, or vandalized property, and to guard the police from danger.'" It is not, maintained the Court, a violation of the Fourth Amendment to allow police officers "the exercise of judgment based on concerns related to the purposes of an inventory search." Ultimately, the Court affirmed the judgment of the Supreme Court of Florida, holding for Wells.

Justices Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, and Stevens concurred with the majority opinion but wrote separate opinions to express their concerns about it. In an opinion joined by Marshall, Brennan recounted many facts that did not appear in the majority opinion. According to the trial transcript, Adams stated that he deferred to his superior on the matter of the inventory search and that his superior had given Adams discretion to do as he wished. Adams' boss, however, did not find anything suspicious about the car. Bryan, the K & S employee, testified that Adams told him that "`he wanted to go through it real good because he felt that there was drugs in it.'" Adams had discovered a large sum of cash on the floor of the car when he arrested Wells, and, according to Bryan, Adams believed that "`[t]here ain't nobody runs around with that kind of money in the floorboard unless they're dealing drugs or something like that.'"

Brennan placed the additional facts about the case into his opinion to lay the groundwork for his objection. In Brennan's opinion, the Court had gone too far in announcing that police officers have discretion to open any and all containers they find in a vehicle during an inventory search. Brennan noted that the Court's rule on discretion was "pure dictum," or outside the scope of the issue at hand, but he feared that lower courts might rely on the statements when they determine the constitutionality of inventory searches. Supreme Court precedent, argued Brennan, actually counseled against giving police officers discretion in deciding what to do in an inventory search. Under South Dakota v. Opperman (1976), inventory searches should be conducted "in accordance with standard procedures that limit the discretion of the police." Brennan believed that Bertine had been misapplied by the majority. The reference to police discretion in that case was made in response to arguments on whether police should have discretion to decide whether to impound a car. The Bertine case did not, Brennan pointed out, stand for the proposition that police officers have the discretion to search all closed containers in an inventory search. "I continue to believe," Brennan wrote, "that in the absence of consent or exigency, police may not open a closed container found during an inventory search of an automobile."

Justices Blackmun and Stevens wrote separate concurring opinions. In his opinion, Blackmun stated that he agreed with the majority in its decision, but that its dicta on discretion was "problematic." The question of what constituted a proper inventory police was not presented in the lower courts and was not presented by the case. "I see no reason," declared Blackmun, "for the Court to say anything" on the topic.

In a third concurring opinion, Stevens added to Blackmun's criticism. Stevens wondered why the Court took the case in the first place. Stevens decried the tendency of the Court "to become self-appointed editors of state-court opinions in the criminal law area." Had the Court left the Florida court's ruling untouched, the ruling may have provided Florida citizens with more protection from inventory searches than the minimal protection required on the federal level, but, Stevens argued, there was no suggestion that the extra protection would hamper law enforcement. To Stevens, the Court's actions constituted "unabashed judicial activism" of the highest order. "Apparently the mere possibility of a minor burden on law enforcement," Stevens growled, "is enough to generate corrective action by this Court."