State v. Ching

OPINION OF THE COURT BY

HAYASHI, J.

This case concerns the scope of a warrantless police inventory search of lost property. We hold that while lost property may be inventoried for identification, safekeeping, and safety purposes, the search made in the present case went beyond those purposes and was invalid. We therefore affirm the trial court’s suppression of the discovered evidence.

On March 6, 1982, at 11:30 p.m., an eleven year-old boy found an unzipped leather pouch next to a blue Corvette parked in a public lot. The boy gave the pouch to his father, who looked inside it and then took it to…