In United States v. Johnson, --- F.3d ---, No. 15-30222 (9th Cir. 2018), the Court reversed the district court's denial of the defendant's suppression motion and vacated his conviction.
The defendant argued that the officers' "inventory search" of his car was pretextual -- i.e., it was not intended to catalogue and secure his property, but was instead used to find evidence of a crime.
The Court agreed. Indeed, as it pointed out, the government essentially conceded that point before the district court.
Accordingly, under United States v. Orozco, 858 F.3d 1204 (9th Cir. 2017) -- which held the subjective motivations matter in the context of that administrative searches conducted without individualized suspicion -- the inventory search was improper.
The opinion was published as a per curiam, with Judges O'Scannlain and Bea specially concurring to argue that Orozco should be overruled en banc.
Judge Paez also specially concurred to argue that Orozco was correctly decided.
We shall see what happens next.
p.s., I will be writing an update about today's SCOTUS decisions a bit later.
