Seizure of personal property from jail does not require a search warrant
In State v. Muquit, the S.C. Court of Appeals held that a search warrant is not necessary for law enforcement to seize "an incarcerated defendant’s personal effects in his possession or the possession of the detention center or jail where he is being held;" it is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
In this case, the police obtained a search warrant that authorized a search of Muquit's person and the seizure of the clothes he wore during the robbery. Because the police seized the clothes not from Muquit's person as authorized by the warrant (he was wearing jail clothes at the time the warrant was executed), but they instead seized the clothes from Muquit's personal property at the jail, the search warrant was invalid. However, it did not matter that the warrant was invalid, because there is a greatly lessened expectation of privacy in your belongings held at the jail and there was no Fourth Amendment violation.
The Court points out that, although this is a matter of first impression in South Carolina, it is well-settled law in the federal courts that property already in custody may be seized.
Although there is no South Carolina case law directly on point, the federal courts view the issue of seizing property already in custody as well-settled. Authority to search an arrestee derives not only from the need to disarm him, but also from “the need to preserve evidence on his person for later use at trial.” U.S. v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 234 (1973) (citing Agnello v. U.S., 269 U.S. 20 (1925); Abel v. U.S., 362 U.S. 217 (1960)). When an arrestee’s property is already in the custody of law enforcement as an incident of the arrest, the police may seize it at a later time as evidence relating to his offense. U.S. v. Edwards, 415 U.S. 800, 806-807 (1974) (citing Cooper v. California, 386 U.S. 58, 61-62 (1967)) (holding seizure of arrestee’s car impounded incidental to arrest was proper even though it occurred a week after arrest). In Edwards, the United States Supreme Court enunciated:[O]nce the accused is lawfully arrested and is in custody, the effects in his possession at the place of detention that were subject to search at the time and place of his arrest may lawfully be searched and seized without a warrant even though a substantial period of time has elapsed between the arrest and subsequent administrative processing, on the one hand, and the taking of the property for use as evidence, on the other. This is true where the clothing or effects are immediately seized upon arrival at the jail, held under the defendant's name in the ‘property room’ of the jail, and at a later time searched and taken for use at the subsequent criminal trial. The result is the same where the property is not physically taken from the defendant until sometime after his incarceration.
Id. at 807-808 (emphasis added) (footnotes omitted).
