Appeals Court, Invalidating Search of Locked Gun Safe, Says State Law 'Calibrated Slightly Different' Than 4th Amendment - Law.com

What You Need to Know

• Defendant Leo Jim moved to suppress all evidence obtained as a result of the unreasonable warrantless search and seizure to a locked gun safe in violation to Article II, Section 10 of the New Mexico Constitution.
• Prosecutors maintained that the search was reasonable under federal and state law and encouraged the appellate court not to diverge from the federal inventory search standard.
• The New Mexico Court of Appeals departed from federal precedent, siding with Jim in finding that the state's search-and-seizure law provides "stronger privacy protections than the federal Fourth Amendment."

The New Mexico Court of Appeals departed from federal precedent this week in siding with a defendant who argued that a police inventory search of a locked gun safe in his vehicle violated his state protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

In a matter of first impression, the appellate panel reversed the decision of San Juan County District Court Judge John A. Dean Jr., who denied defendant Leo Jim’s motion to suppress evidence found inside the once-locked safe during a vehicle inventory search, according to the court’s opinion filed Tuesday.

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source: https://www.law.com/2022/02/03/appeals-court-invalidating-search-of-locked-gun-safe-says-state-law-calibrated-slightly-different-than-4th-amendment/

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