by Jeff Hampton
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Can cops assume a container has a gun in it and then open it without a warrant? It depends. In this video, I'm going to cover a little known legal concept that as the people's lawyer I have seen cops use this as a way to be able to search whenever and however they want, and we're going to talk about how you can protect yourself from it. Look, normally cops cannot just search you your home or your property unless they either have a valid search warrant your consent, or what's known as exigent circumstances. But is there a little known legal loophole that allows cops to search containers without a warrant? That brings us to the case of us versus Gus. In this case, officer Wade Holzer of the Liberty Lake Police Department had received a dispatch call saying that there had been a passerby that had witnessed people shooting shotguns on private property in a no shooting zone.
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Officer Holzer, of course, drove to the scene and upon hearing some additional shots, he got out of the car and walked up to Mr. Gus. Gus and his friends were carrying cases that the officers testified they identified immediately as being gun cases. Look, Gus made his first mistake by admitting to the cops that he had been there shooting and that he had been doing it for target practice and he had had the owner's permission to do so. He then kept talking and admitted that the cases contained guns. Of course, officer Holzer searches the gun cases and he finds a sought off shotgun, which then leads to Gus being arrested and charged with possession of an unregistered firearm. Gus claimed that the cops violated his fourth amendment rights because they went ahead and searched the gun case, even though he never admitted that it was illegal or an unregistered firearm.
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The government, on the other hand, relied upon this little known legal exception to a warrant requirement known as the single purpose container exception. The first thing we must know is what is a single purpose container? The single purpose container doctrine basically says that some containers based upon their size, their shape, their weight, and the way that they are used, present themselves in a way to an officer that a reasonable officer would immediately know that it could only contain illegal contraband. In other words, a single purpose container is a container that literally announces to anyone who sees it that there's something illegal inside. This is important because normally in order for a police officer to search a container you have in your possession, they either need to have probable cause to do so while also placing you under arrest, which is known as search incident to arrest.
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Or maybe the police officer pulled you over in a traffic stop and now they can do a search incident to arrest because you're under arrest and they're searching your car, or they had to have placed you under arrest and you gave consent for them to search this particular container, or they had to have exigent circumstances. In other words, there used to be no such thing as searching a container based upon probable cause alone. It literally didn't exist. It was a unicorn. That's when the Supreme Court created the single purpose container doctrine. The way the Supreme Court sees it. A single purpose container has no privacy interest and no rights at all. One example of a single purpose container would be a brick of cocaine. Let's say it's wrapped in paper or duct tape. Can you actually see inside of it? No, but cops are going to say that that particular package is put together in such a way that it would only be holding contraband.
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So under that reasoning, you don't have to have any legal basis to search it at all. But don't be fooled because sometimes cops want to label a container as a single purpose container under the exception, but in reality, that container might be able to hold other things. For example, there was a case out there where a cop tried to claim a cooler qualified as a single purpose container. So what he did is he walked up to the cooler. He claimed that he thought he smelled marijuana, the odor of marijuana coming from it. So he opened the container and if sure enough, he found marijuana the problem, the actual cooler was nowhere near the guy that was being arrested, and he didn't give consent for them to search the cooler, and it wasn't a part of a traffic stop. So unless this particular container as a cooler qualified as a single purpose container, the cop had no other reason to search the cooler.
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Now, in this situation, the cooler absolutely did not qualify as a single purpose container. Why? Because a cooler can hold a lot more than marijuana, let's say maybe a balogna sandwich. So how did all of this get started? It actually goes all the way back to the Supreme Court case of Arkansas versus Sanders. Even though the Sanders case established a ruling that was based upon searching luggage as part of a traffic stop, the court said something that changed everything. When it came to the single purpose container exception, I want to read it to you. Not all containers and packages contain found by police during the course of a search will deserve the full protection of the Fourth Amendment. Thus, some containers, for example, a kit of burglar tools or a gun case by their very nature, cannot support any reasonable expectation of privacy because their contents can be inferred from their outward appearance.
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Now, what's going on here? This sounds eerily familiar to another warrant requirement exception known as the Plain View Doctrine Under the Plain View doctrine, anything that the cops find in plain view does not require them to have a warrant or your consent or anything. They can literally take it and use it against you. So if a cop walks up to your front door, and let's say you open the door and he looks past you and he sees on your coffee table illegal drugs just sitting there, he no longer needs a warrant to enter into your house, and he doesn't actually even perform a search Now because under constitutional law at this point, what he sees in plain view is now no longer a search and he can seize it and use it against you. A better example of this might be if you had a mason jar.
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We know a mason jar is made out of glass. So if a cop walks up and grabs that mason jar and within it there's illegal drugs or paraphernalia or something like that, and they're able to see it, they don't need a warrant in order to be able to open that jar and seize that evidence there. The evidence is in plain view, they can see through the jar, and as a result of that, it is not considered a search. So how is the Plain View doctrine similar to the single purpose exception doctrine? The courts say, and I quote, the single purpose container exception, allows for the warrantless search of a container that is so distinctive that its contents are a foregone conclusion and can therefore be said to be in plain view. The courts have said that because these containers openly reveal their contents to the entire world, you have no expectation of privacy with these containers, and cops don't need any reason to just walk up and search them.
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Cops have extended this doctrine to all gun cases, lock pick sets, and of course containers clearly showing drugs. Now, here's the crazy part when it comes to this. This is actually not settled law, whether this exception applies, depends on where you live. The court of appeals are actually split on how cops can treat this single purpose container exception. The ninth and 10th Circuit Court of appeals where US versus Gust was decided, actually held that in order to determine if a container qualifies as a single purpose container exception, it must be determined from an objective, reasonable person point of view. Now, what does that mean? It means these courts have held that determining whether or not a container qualifies as a single purpose container would be seen through the eyes of an objective reasonable person. So just a regular person looking at that container, that's the opinion, not based on just the opinion of a police officer, which is far more fair to your constitutional rights.
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But the fourth and seventh circuits have held the opposite. These courts say that determining whether a container meets this exception can be decided by the subjective opinion of a police officer. In other words, it's all about the cop's opinion and his training and experience, and he gets to be the one that decides if he can ignore a warrant. So what do we do here? How do we protect ourselves from this? It all comes down to the container being analyzed In order to qualify as a single purpose container exception to a warrant requirement, remember the container itself based upon its design or its look, it has to be obvious that it contains something illegal. Let's say you keep a gun in a gun case marked Glock, and if it's obvious to a reasonable person who walks up to that gun case, which is labeled by a gun manufacturer, you're going to have a much stronger case for the cops claiming they don't need a warrant in order to force you to open that gun case.
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But what if you have a gun or any so-called contraband, but now you have it in a guitar case? Could that still qualify as a single purpose container exception? Of course not because there a guitar case or a cooler could hold something else like a guitar or a bologna sandwich. So can a regular person with no law enforcement training whatsoever look at a container or a case and immediately know just by seeing the outside of it, what is inside of that container? If so, if you're concerned about the cops being able to search whatever that container is, why in the world would you use that container? So if you don't want cops being able to search your Glock gun case or maybe your rifle cases, be aware that carrying them this way in these type of containers could give rise to the police being able to search your gun cases without your consent or without any need for a warrant. Now, what if cops approach you claiming they do have a search warrant? What can you do? How do you protect your rights here? What do cops and lawyers know about search warrants that you don't? Check out this next video where I break down how to fight search warrants. See you over there.
YouTube Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCflyOn4qhg
Credit: Jeff Hampton, The Hampton Law Firm