The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Raleigh police did not violate a suspect’s constitutional rights when charging him with gun and drug offenses based on searches of two bags he had been wearing before his arrest.
The decision Tuesday reversed a trial judge’s 2024 decision in the case against Milton Christopher Allen. Authorities now can move forward with charges stemming from the bags’ contents.
“Allen filed a motion to suppress the evidence obtained from his bags, arguing that the warrantless search did not qualify as a lawful ‘search incident to arrest’ because he had already been secured at the time of the search and therefore could not have accessed the bags to create a safety risk to the officers,” Judge Paul Niemeyer wrote for a unanimous three-judge 4th Circuit panel. “The government argued otherwise. It also argued that the items in Allen’s body bags would, in any event, have inevitably been discovered pursuant to established policies for inventory searches. The district court, however, granted Allen’s motion to suppress.”…