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The Indiana Supreme Court narrowly denied the transfer of a case in which the Indiana Court of Appeals found that an inventory search of a man’s truck that led to a drug conviction was reasonable.
Justices Mark Massa, Geoffrey Slaughter and Christopher Goff concurred in the decision but Chief Justice Loretta Rush and Justice Derek Molter dissented.
The case involved Roger Mendez-Vasquez, who was stopped in February 2022 by a Fishers Police Department officer after the officer witnessed a traffic violation and noticed the truck’s registration had expired.
During the stop, the officer learned Mendez-Vasquez had an active warrant for operating a vehicle without a license, arrested him, and decided to impound the vehicle and conduct an inventory search on the scene.
The search uncovered a purse in the passenger seat, which contained a glass smoking pipe with a substance inside that appeared to be methamphetamine. Inside the compartment in the armrest, there was also a plastic container that had methamphetamine in it.
Mendez-Vasquez was charged with Level 6 possession of methamphetamine and Class C unlawful possession of paraphernalia.
He was found guilty of possession of methamphetamine, but not guilty of unlawful possession of paraphernalia. He was sentenced to 654 days.
The appellate court split in its August 2023 opinion.
Judges Cale Bradford and Patricia Riley concurred in the opinion. Judge Leanna Weissmann wrote a separate dissenting opinion in which she expressed she didn’t think the state met its burden to prove the inventory search was “conducted in good faith under standardized inventory procedures that sufficiently curtail the discretion of the searching officer.”
In the Supreme Court dissent, Rush wrote that the court consistently held that when the state fails to establish that an inventory search complied with established procedures that sufficiently limit officer discretion then the search violated a defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights.
“Though we do not require evidence of a department’s written regulations, we do require more than an officer’s conclusory testimony,” Rush wrote. “The officer must specifically outline departmental policy or procedure that is both ‘rationally designed to meet the objectives that justify the search in the first place’ and ‘sufficiently limit[s]’ law enforcement’s discretion.”
She wrote that the officer’s testimony failed to specifically outline departmental procedure and was indistinguishable from those they have found inadequate.
“It is also unclear whether the procedure was even followed, as the second officer did not testify about the ‘paperwork’ and the State did not offer any inventory sheets into evidence. On this scant record, the same pretextual concerns we highlighted in Fair and Wilford are present here: the search took place at the scene of an arrest rather than at an impoundment lot; the investigating officer conducted the search; and the State did not submit a completed inventory sheet into evidence,” Rush wrote. “For these reasons alone transfer is warranted.”
Rush added that she agreed with Weissmann’s dissent and that transfer was also warranted because a different panel of the appellate court had struck down an identical policy that failed to sufficiently limit officer discretion. She cited Sams v. State, 71 N.E.3d 372, 378–80 (Ind. Ct. App. 2017).
“Overall, the State failed to carry its burden to establish that the inventory search conformed with established departmental procedures, that the described policy sufficiently restrained officer discretion, or that the officer adhered to that policy,” Rush wrote. “Because the majority held otherwise, denying transfer tacitly agrees with a decision that directly conflicts with precedent.”
The case is Roger Oswaldo Mendez-Vasquez v. State of Indiana, 23A-CR-226.
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