State v. Kimble

Citations

• 2019 Ohio 2934

Syllabus

CONSTITUTIONAL LAW/CRIMINAL – FOURTH AMENDMENT – SEARCH AND SEIZURE – COMMUNITY-CARETAKING EXCEPTION: Where defendant was indicted for having a weapon while under a disability, the trial court did not err in granting defendant's motion to suppress the gun found by police when they searched his bags, because the community-caretaking exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment did not apply where defendant gave police a fake name, the tenant of the apartment gave police permission to search the room where defendant was staying in order to verify his true identity, officers searched defendant's bags that were in the room and found a court paper with defendant's identifying information, the court paper showed that defendant had an open warrant for a probation violation on a drug-possession charge, and the tenant told police that neighbors believed that defendant was selling drugs outside the apartment, but that she had never seen defendant with drugs or a gun in the apartment: the police officers' actions in searching defendant's bags were not reasonable where there was no immediate injury or emergency situation, merely speculation about the existence of drugs or guns, and the search was not totally divorced from the detection, investigation, or acquisition of evidence relating to a crime.