Gooden v. State

Gooden was a truck driver and was stopped on his way from work just after 3:00 a.m. when he was about five to ten minutes from home. He testified that he intended to have his wife come for the vehicle.

I agree that justification for the warrantless search of the vehicle could not lie on the exception that it was a search incident to arrest. The officers conducting it did not consider it as being necessary, incident to arrest, but rather considered it an inventory search after the decision had been made to impound it. The search did not occur until after defendant was on his way to the station…