The single-purpose-container exception did not authorize the police to search Ms. Burroughs’s bookbag. When police search a bookbag in a home under circumstances that do not give rise to any exigency, they must follow the command of the Fourth Amendment: get a warrant.
State v. Burroughs
2022 – Ohio – 2146
Supreme Court of Ohio
June 28, 2022
Misdemeanor Warrant on Patten Street
On Sunday January 27, 2019 Marion Police Officer Chris Coburn and two other officers went to 200 Patten Street in Marion, Ohio to serve a misdemeanor warrant for Obstruction on a Ms. Kennedy Burroughs. The address of the arrest warrant was 200 Patten Street, Marion.
Ms. Kennedy Burroughs lived here at 200 Patten Street in Marion, Ohio. Soon after Officer Coburn arrives she began her marijuana sprint at the front door.
Plastic Baggie Peek-a-Boo
Upon arrival Ms. Burroughs answered the door. As Officer Coburn explained that she had a warrant, Ms. Burroughs immediately slammed the door shut, locked it, grabbed several plastic baggies and ran to the back of the house. Officer Coburn observed Ms. Burroughs actions through the window of the front door. Officer Coburn did not see or know what was in the plastic baggies. At this moment, Officer Coburn kicked open the front door, ran inside and found Ms. Burroughs, holding a cell phone in the back bedroom. There was also an unrelated female teenager in the bedroom. Officer Coburn suspected that Ms. Burroughs flushed the plastic baggies, so he inspected the bathroom which was next to the bedroom. Next to the toilet was a bookbag that was incompletely zipped and either a baggie or baggies were protruding. Next to the bag around the toilet was marijuana shake and roaches.
Bookbag Filled with Marijuana and Edibles Next to the Bed
Officer Coburn arrested Ms. Burroughs and placed her in the Marion Police Cruiser outside and detained the female juvenile in the living room. A short time later Lt. Mark Elliott arrived. Lt. Elliott smelled marijuana in the house and observed marijuana shake throughout the house. Officer Coburn directed him to the restroom where the lieutenant observed the bookbag with baggies protruding from the zipper portion. Like Officer Coburn he observed only a portion of the baggie protruding from the bookbag and neither officer could determine what was inside the baggies. Lt. Elliott opened the bookbag to determine if there was weapon inside. There was no weapon, but the baggies were filled with marijuana. An extended search of the home discovered marijuana edibles next to the bed.
Motion to Suppress and the Single Purpose Container Doctrine
Ms. Burroughs was indicted for one count of Possession of Marijuana, O.R.C. §2925.11(A), (C)(3). She filed a Motion to Suppress which was denied by the trial court as it held that Marion Police had probable cause to open the bookbag. Ms. Burroughs, plead no contest, was found guilty and filed an appeal to the Third District Appellate Court. The Third District Appellate Court upheld Ms. Burroughs conviction but did not uphold the search of the bookbag on probable cause. Instead the court applied a seldom-used exception to the Fourth Amendment titled Single Purpose Container. This doctrine is an extension of the Plain View Doctrine. The first three prongs of the Plain View Doctrine must first be met 1) The officer must be legally on the premises from where the observation is made; 2) Officer must not violate the Fourth Amendment to make the observation; and 3) The incriminating nature of the object must be immediately apparent. Horton v. California, 496 U.S. 128 (1990). If all three of these elements are met the Single Purpose Container doctrine may possibly apply.
What is the Single Purpose Container doctrine?
A single-purpose container is a container that “[B]y [its] very nature cannot support any reasonable expectation of privacy because [its] contents can be inferred from [its] outward appearance. … when a container is not closed, or transparent, or when its distinctive configuration proclaims its contents, the container supports no reasonable expectation of privacy and the contents can be said to be in plain view. If an object is in a closed container, the object is not in plain view and the container may not be opened unless the packing gives away the contents. When a container has been legally seized, and its contents are a foregone conclusion, we hold that a subsequent search of the container is lawful under the plain view container doctrine.” Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U.S. 753, 764 (1979). Based on this analysis the Third District Appellate Court held “[W]e conclude that law enforcement was authorized to search the bookbag under the single-purpose container exception.”. Id at 22.
In the end Ms. Kennedy Burroughs was not able to outrun her warrant.
Third District Applies the Single Purpose Doctrine and Upholds Ms. Burrough’s Conviction on Possession of Marijuana
On appeal, the Third District Court of Appeals rejected the trial court’s reasoning but affirmed the judgment on other grounds. The court of appeals opined that the plain-view exception could justify only the seizure of the bookbag, not its search. Nonetheless, it concluded that the search was justified based on the single-purpose-container exception to the warrant requirement.
A Second Appeal to the Supreme Court of Ohio
Ms. Burroughs appealed to this court, and we accepted jurisdiction to decide the validity of the search.
Should a Warrant have been Obtained to Search the Marijuana-Filled Bookbag?
Ms. Burroughs argues that the search of a bookbag inside a home without a warrant is unreasonable absent exigent circumstances that were not present in her case. Ms. Burroughs does not argue that the officers’ seizure of the bookbag was unlawful. Nor does she contend that the officers lacked probable cause to believe that the bookbag contained marijuana. Instead, Ms. Burroughs argues that the officers should have obtained a search warrant before they opened the bookbag.
Case will be Analyzed under the Fourth Amendment
Because Ms. Burroughs has failed to develop any argument under the Ohio Constitution, we are constrained to analyze this case under the Fourth Amendment only. It is the rule, not the exception, that police must obtain a warrant to conduct a search. See Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373, 382, 134 S.Ct. 2473, 189 L.Ed.2d 430 (2014).
Single Purpose Container Argument
The state contends that no warrant was required because the search fell under the single-purpose-container exception to the warrant requirement.
The single-purpose-container exception is best understood as an offshoot of the plain-view doctrine. See Robbins v. California, 453 U.S. 420, 427, 101 S.Ct. 2841, 69 L.Ed.2d 744 (1981) (plurality), overruled on other grounds by United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 824, 102 S.Ct. 2157, 72 L.Ed.2d 572 (1982).
The single-purpose-container exception is premised on the notion that when “the distinctive configuration of a container proclaims its contents, the contents cannot fairly be said to have been removed from a searching officer’s view,” Robbins at 427. “The same would be true, of course, if the container were transparent, or otherwise clearly revealed its contents.” Id. A warrant is unnecessary in such a case because the outward appearance of the container has already made evident the container’s contents; there is no privacy interest left to protect. See Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U.S. 753, 764 (1979).
The single-purpose-container exception is a particularly narrow exception to the warrant requirement. Indeed, neither this court nor the United States Supreme Court has ever used the exception to authorize a warrantless search. While the court has made clear that there are circumstances in which the exception will apply, they are limited to the rare, obvious case.
Sufficiently Obvious?
To meet the requirements of the single-purpose-container exception, the container’s contents must be sufficiently obvious that they could be said to be in plain view. Robbins at 427. In Robbins, officers found two packages wrapped in green opaque plastic in the recessed luggage compartment of a car; upon unwrapping the packages, they discovered marijuana. In holding that the officers needed a warrant to search the packages, the court rejected the argument that the single-purpose-container exception applied. The court explained that to fall within that exception, “a container must so clearly announce its contents, whether by its distinctive configuration, its transparency, or otherwise, that its contents are obvious to an observer.” Id. at 428.
Why a Bookbag is not a Single Purpose Container
We are concerned with a bookbag, an object commonly used to carry a wide variety of items. As the name suggests, a bookbag may carry books. It may also carry lunch, private letters, or as Lieutenant Elliott ostensibly believed, weapons. The bookbag at issue is not transparent, it did not silhouette a distinctive shape, and its illicit contents could not be observed without opening it. The bookbag did have part of a baggie stuck in the zipper, but the visible part of the baggie was empty. It therefore announced only that the bookbag contained a baggie. Under these circumstances, the contents of the bookbag cannot be said to have been so obvious that they may as well have been in plain view.
When Totality of the Circumstances Does Not Apply
The state seeks to broaden the single-purpose-container exception beyond single-purpose containers to include situations in which, based on a totality of the circumstances, the contents of a container are a foregone conclusion. We cannot square such a far-reaching exception—one essentially allowing searches of containers based on a super-probable-cause showing—with traditional Fourth Amendment principles. To allow container searches based on a totality-of-the- circumstances test would, in essence, have the exception swallow the rule, enabling officers “to conduct warrantless searches of indistinct and innocuous containers based solely on probable cause derived from the officers’ subjective knowledge and the circumstances,” United States v. Gust, 405 F.3d 797, 802 (9th Cir.2005). A broad exception of this sort could not easily exist alongside the long-held principle that “no amount of probable cause can justify a warrantless search or seizure absent ‘exigent circumstances,’ ” Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 468 (1971).
The Officer was Right but Unreasonable
Thus, we see no reason to extend the single-purpose-container exception beyond its rationale: that when a container by its very nature makes its contents clear, its owner has no expectation of privacy in those contents. When the container does not do so, a warrant is required. That’s true, no matter how confident an officer is about what he thinks is inside.
Single Purpose means Single Purpose
The single-purpose-container exception, as the name makes clear, applies to single-purpose containers. A bookbag is not a single-purpose drug container. Lacking an exigent circumstance, Lieutenant Elliott was required to obtain a warrant before searching the bookbag.
The single-purpose-container exception did not authorize the police to search Ms. Burroughs’s bookbag. When police search a bookbag in a home under circumstances that do not give rise to any exigency, they must follow the command of the Fourth Amendment: get a warrant. The judgment of the court of appeals is reversed, Burroughs’s conviction is vacated, and this case is remanded to the court of common pleas with instructions to enter judgment suppressing the evidence found in the bookbag.
Information for this article was obtained from State v. Burroughs, 2022 – Ohio – 2146.
State v. Burroughs, 2022 – Ohio – 2146 was issued by the Supreme Court of Ohio on June 28, 2022 and is binding throughout the State of Ohio.
Lessons Learned:
- Third District was Overruled by the Supreme Court of Ohio – On September 14, 2020 the Third District Appellate Court upheld Ms. Burrough’s conviction based on the Single Purpose Container Doctrine. This doctrine is rarely used but the Third District found it to be applicable to Ms. Burrough’s marijuana-filled bookbag. Now the Supreme Court of Ohio re-examined that analysis and came to a different conclusion. The Supreme Court of Ohio determined that a bookbag could contain many different items and is not a single purpose container.
- Single Purpose Container – A single purpose container has been described by the U.S. Supreme Court as “[B]y [its] very nature cannot support any reasonable expectation of privacy because [its] contents can be inferred from [its] outward appearance. … when a container is not closed, or transparent, or when its distinctive configuration proclaims its contents, the container supports no reasonable expectation of privacy and the contents can be said to be in plain view. Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U.S. 753, 764 (1979). Law enforcement may think of this as a soft firearm case for either a handgun or rifle.
- Why Didn’t the Wingspan Doctrine Apply? On June 23, 1969 the U.S. Supreme Court issued Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752 (1969) offered referred to as the Wingspan Doctrine. The court held in a six to two decision “Officers may conduct warrantless searches of persons in the area within their immediate control solely as the result of a lawful arrest.”. In this case Ms. Burrough’s sprinted from the front door to the bathroom, flushed some baggies down the toilet in the bathroom, but by the time the officer confronted and arrested her, Ms. Burrough’s was in the bedroom. Consequently, the bookbag was not within her immediate control. The decision in this case, State v. Burrough’s should not be unreasonably extended to all bags in the possession of an arrestee at the time of the arrest. Those bags may still be searched under Chimel.
- Automobile Exception – In this case, law enforcement established probable cause that the bookbag contained marijuana, at a time it was illegal. Because the bag was inside a home, law enforcement must obtain a search warrant to search the bag. However, if law enforcement establishes probable cause that a bag that is within a vehicle contains contraband the search would be lawful under the Automobile Exception under both Carroll v. United States 267 U.S. 132 (1925) and U.S. v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798 (1982). For more on these cases see What is in Bandit’s Paper Bag?.
Does your agency train on the Single Purpose Container Doctrine?
Don’t fail your training.
Don’t let your training fail you!
Be safe, smart and objectively reasonable!