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Consent to search premises normally does not include persons of guests, but here, officer feared a gun, so she could search a guest's handbag

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Consent to search a house immediately after a drug deal there permitted a search of a large handbag of a guest on the premises. Normally, consent does not extend to the persons of guests not shown to be linked to the crime under investigation, but here the search of the bag was reasonably related to officer safety because it was clearly large enough to hold a gun. Commonwealth v. Grahame, 2008 PA Super 73, 2008 Pa. Super. LEXIS 581 (April 18, 2008).* Defense counsel was not ineffective for not moving to suppress evidence taken from a storage unit by police that turned out to have been stolen property because the issue was not properly developed by putting the search warrant into evidence at the post-conviction hearing. State v. Lloyd, 2008 Ohio 1874, 2008 Ohio App...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on April 21, 2008 (boomark / email).