Latest Case: United States v. Magdirila (Criminal Law)

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United States v. Magdirila

Docket: 18-50430

Opinion Date: June 23, 2020

Judge: R. Nelson

Areas of Law: Criminal Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of defendant's motion to suppress contraband found in the vehicle defendant was driving. The district court held that the evidence was discovered during a valid inventory search. As a preliminary matter, the panel held that defendant has not waived arguments challenging the district court's denial of his motion to suppress. On the merits of the motion, the panel affirmed and held that the officers' failure to precisely comply with police department towing policy by failing to completely fill out the CHP 180 form did not render the search invalid. The panel stated that this case was considerably clearer than United States v. Garay, 938 F.3d 1108 (9th Cir. 2019), which held that the failure to complete the form under the circumstances was not a material deviation from policy and did not make the search invalid. In this case, by creating a list of recovered items and incorporating it into a CHP 180 form, an officer complied substantially with the policy's direction to inventory the property in an impounded vehicle. Furthermore, given the early stage at which an officer decided to impound the vehicle, it is a reasonable view of the evidence that the officer's intent at the time the vehicle was impounded was administrative rather than investigatory. Finally, the panel vacated three conditions of supervised release where the government conceded error or made no argument. The panel remanded for revision, as well as vacated and remanded the notification-of-risk condition.