State v. Harding

122 I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion, as I cannot agree with its conclusion that the search of Defendant's bags pursuant to the driver's consent was permissible. Here, the trial court expressly found that, under the cireumstances, Officer Wes-terman "had no way of knowing whose bags they were." Accordingly, I disagree that Officer Westerman can be said to have had a reasonable belief as to the driver's ownership of the bags, and I would hold that the State failed to meet its burden of demonstrating that the driver had the apparent authority to consent to the search of…