State v. Leatham

2025 UT App 194

THE UTAH COURT OF APPEALS

STATE OF UTAH,
Appellee,
v.
BYRON FRED LEATHAM,
Appellant.

Opinion
No. 20230824-CA
Filed December 26, 2025

Sixth District Court, Richfield Department
The Honorable Marvin D. Bagley
No. 211600077

Emily Adams and Melissa Jo Townsend,
Attorneys for Appellant
Derek E. Brown and Connor Nelson,
Attorneys for Appellee

JUDGE DAVID N. MORTENSEN authored this Opinion, in which
JUDGES RYAN M. HARRIS and JOHN D. LUTHY concurred.

MORTENSEN, Judge:

¶1 A driver was stopped by officers and found to lack both a
valid driver license and insurance on the vehicle. The car was
impounded. The driver’s passenger, Byron Fred Leatham,
attempted to remove an item from the vehicle before an inventory
of the vehicle was completed, but the police officers would not
allow it. A small bag, subsequently identified as Leatham’s, was
found to contain drugs, and Leatham was later charged with drug
crimes. The district court denied a motion to suppress based on
alleged infirmities of the search. Now Leatham appeals the denial
of that motion. We affirm.
State v. Leatham

BACKGROUND

¶2 One night in March 2021, police officers from the Sevier
County Sheriff’s Office (the Department) pulled over a car—in
which Leatham was the passenger—because its rear license plate
was not illuminated. The driver and Leatham said that they were
on their way to see a friend, but they didn’t know the friend’s
name or address, indicating instead that they were following an
acquaintance and were going to rendezvous at a gas station.

¶3 The officers ran the car’s and driver’s information and
discovered that the driver did not have a valid driver license and
lacked insurance on the car. The driver told the officers that he
had a gun stowed in the driver side door pocket, which one of the
officers retrieved after the driver exited the vehicle. An officer
informed the driver that the car would be impounded and its
contents inventoried, telling him, “We’ll inventory it and then
we’ll . . . release the items to you.”

¶4 The driver then told Leatham that the police were going to
impound the car. As Leatham was getting out of the car, he
reached back to retrieve an item near him, muttering, “Let me
grab my stuff.” But an officer told him, “Just leave it right there
for now because we already pulled one weapon out of the car and
I don’t want to be surprised with a second.” Leatham assured the
officer that there was no weapon, but he complied and exited the
car without the item.

¶5 Leatham tried to retrieve the item two more times. A few
minutes after exiting the car, Leatham asked, “Can I get my bag
and my cigarettes?” The officer responded, “Yeah, just a minute.
Just want to make sure that [we’re] gonna be impounding it.”
After confirming that the car was going to be impounded, the
officer began to inventory the items in the car. As the officer did
so, Leatham attempted to reach in the passenger side of the car,
but the officer told him to “hold on.”

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State v. Leatham

¶6 During the inventory, an officer found a bag on the front
floor of the passenger side. It was open, small, and black—
resembling a toiletry bag—and contained $1,024 in cash, three
baggies with a crystalline substance that later tested positive for
methamphetamine, a small scale, a glass pipe, a baggie that
contained a green leafy substance, and a medication bottle
bearing Leatham’s name.

¶7 After the inventory, the officers arrested Leatham and
finished impounding the vehicle. Leatham was charged with one
count of possession with the intent to distribute a controlled
substance and one count of possession of drug paraphernalia.

¶8 Leatham moved to suppress the evidence obtained in the
inventory of his bag. He argued that his bag did not need to be
inventoried because it was not going to be left in the car upon
impound. Given the officers’ asserted knowledge that the bag
belonged to Leatham and would not be left in the car, Leatham
argued that the “inventorying of [his] bag was illegal” and that it
“was conducted in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”
Accordingly, he argued that all evidence found in the inventory
of his personal items should be suppressed. The State opposed the
motion, asserting that the officers had adhered to the
Department’s policy regarding inventory and impoundment of
vehicles that cannot be legally driven. The State argued that upon
concluding that the driver “was unable to legally operate the
vehicle,” the officers followed the proper “procedure and policy
for the safeguarding and impounding of the vehicle and the
contents” and that the discovery of the drugs occurred during the
execution of a lawful inventory. The State submitted a bodycam
video of one of the officers who inventoried the car, and the officer
stated in the video that he was required “to inventory everything
that’s in” the car. Yet no party placed a copy of the Department’s
policy into evidence.

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State v. Leatham

¶9 The district court denied Leatham’s motion. It found that
the Department’s “policy when an owner or driver of an
automobile does not possess a valid driver’s license is to
inventory and impound the vehicle” and that the officers
“conducted an inventory of the vehicle, including [Leatham’s]
bag that he was instructed to leave in the vehicle.” Reasoning that
“the officers had no duty to allow [the driver or Leatham] to
remove any articles from the impounded vehicle,” the court
concluded that the inventory was properly conducted and that no
search warrant was required under the circumstances.

¶10 Leatham entered a conditional guilty plea to one count of
possession of a controlled substance, reserving his right to appeal
the denial of his motion to suppress. 1 He timely appeals.

ISSUE AND STANDARD OF REVIEW

¶11 The sole issue on appeal is whether the district court erred
in denying Leatham’s motion to suppress evidence obtained from
the search of his bag. We review a district court’s decision to deny
a motion to suppress as a mixed question of law and fact. State v.
Williamson, 2024 UT App 141, ¶ 25, 558 P.3d 143, cert. denied, 568
P.3d 263 (Utah 2025). “While the court’s factual findings are
reviewed for clear error, its legal conclusions are reviewed for
correctness, including its application of law to the facts of the
case.” Id. (cleaned up).

1. The Utah Rules of Criminal Procedure provides that “a
defendant may enter a conditional plea of guilty” while reserving
the right on appeal to challenge the denial of a pre-trial motion.
Utah R. Crim. P. 11(j). In this circumstance, a “defendant who
prevails on appeal will be allowed to withdraw the plea.” Id.

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State v. Leatham

ANALYSIS

¶12 As has long been recognized, an “inventory search of an
automobile is a well-defined exception to the warrant
requirement of the Fourth Amendment.” State v. Johnson, 745 P.2d
452, 454 (Utah 1987). The exception exists because an inventory
search is “not conducted to investigate criminal activity and no
variant of individualized suspicion is necessary to permit one.”
State v. Strickling, 844 P.2d 979, 986 (Utah Ct. App. 1992). Thus,
“when vehicles are impounded, local police departments
generally follow a routine practice of securing and inventorying
the automobiles’ contents. These procedures developed in
response to three distinct needs: the protection of the owner’s
property while it remains in police custody; the protection of the
police against claims or disputes over lost or stolen property; and
the protection of the police from potential danger.” South Dakota
v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364, 369 (1976) (cleaned up); see also State v.
Shamblin, 763 P.2d 425, 426 (Utah Ct. App. 1988) (reciting the same
three functions of an inventory search). “These caretaking
functions, when balanced against the citizen’s interest in the
privacy of automobile contents, justify inventory searches of
impounded vehicles when performed in accordance with
standardized procedures.” Strickling, 844 P.2d at 986.
“Accordingly, the Fourth Amendment is not violated if the police
conduct an inventory search of a properly impounded vehicle in
good faith following reasonable, standardized procedures.”
Shamblin, 763 P.2d at 426 (footnote omitted). Thus, “to be lawful,
an inventory search must meet two requirements. First, there
must be reasonable and proper justification for the impoundment
of the vehicle. . . . Second, there must be an established reasonable
procedure for safeguarding impounded vehicles and their
contents, and the State must show that the challenged police
activity was essentially in conformance with that procedure.”
State v. Tirado, 2018 UT App 132, ¶ 15, 428 P.3d 70 (cleaned up).

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State v. Leatham

¶13 As to the first requirement, Leatham “concedes that the
officers were justified in performing an inventory search” of the
car. But he argues that the search fell short on the second
requirement because “the inventory search should not have
extended to his personal property that was inside the car—i.e.,
that in searching his bag, the officers exceeded the scope of the
inventory-search exception.” He contends that the “caretaking
functions,” see Strickling, 844 P.2d at 986, meant to ensure the
proper care of the property and protect police officers are “limited
to items that will remain in the car after impound.” Since
“personal belongings (like cell phones, wallets, medication,
jackets, and even bags) need not remain in a car while it is
impounded,” Leatham argues that “they fall outside the police’s
‘caretaking’ and thus need not be inventoried.” Along this line, he
asserts that the State did not present evidence of the Department’s
policy on impound inventories, specifically complaining that
there was no evidence that a policy required “a passenger’s bags to
be searched as part of the inventory process.”

¶14 As to the presence of a policy, the State concedes that it had
“the burden of introducing evidence that such a standardized,
reasonable procedure exists and that the challenged police
activity was essentially in conformance with that procedure.”
State v. Giron, 943 P.2d 1114, 1117 (Utah Ct. App. 1997) (cleaned
up). But in carrying this burden, the State is not required to
“submit written procedures” to show that its “agents acted in
accordance with standardized procedures when performing an
inventory search of an impounded automobile.” Strickling, 844
P.2d at 989. Indeed, evidence such as an officer’s testimony about
“normal departmental practice” and “procedures,” even when
“admittedly thin,” is “probative of standardized policies.” Id. at
990. And here, the State met that burden. In response to Leatham’s
motion to suppress, the State produced an officer’s bodycam
video in which the officer stated that he was required “to
inventory everything that’s in” the car, presumably including

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State v. Leatham

personal belongings found in the car. As Leatham acknowledges,
the district court found that the “Sevier County Sheriff’s policy
when an owner or driver of an automobile does not possess a
valid driver’s license is to inventory and impound the vehicle.”
Leatham has not challenged the finding that the policy required
an unqualified inventory of “the vehicle,” and we “must accept
. . . as true” any factual finding that is “not properly challenged”
by an appellant or is not clearly erroneous. State v. Applegate, 2008
UT 63, ¶ 19, 194 P.3d 925. As far as the scope of the policy
extending to passenger belongings, without a copy of the actual
policy included in evidence, there is simply no way for Leatham
to support his claim that officers exceeded the scope of the policy
by not allowing him to retrieve his bag when he was informed
that the car was going to be impounded. See Strickling, 844 P.2d at
990 (concluding that “the district court’s findings that there were
standardized procedures, and that the inventory was conducted
according to those standardized procedures,” based on an
officer’s testimony of departmental procedures “were not clearly
erroneous”).

¶15 When a department has a policy generally providing for
the inventorying of impounded vehicles, absent an express
provision in the policy allowing the removal of personal items
prior to an impound, officers are under no obligation to allow
passengers to remove personal items. And this is for good reason.
As discussed, the caretaking functions arising from a vehicle
impound address three distinct needs: (1) to protect “the owner’s
property while [the impounded vehicle] remains in police
custody,” (2) to protect “police against claims or disputes over lost
or stolen property,” and (3) to protect “police from potential
danger.” Opperman, 428 U.S. at 369. These needs are furthered by
allowing officers to inventory personal items found in
impounded vehicles. “Indeed, if [a defendant] were free to
remove [a] backpack before the search and the backpack proved
to belong to the vehicle’s absent owner rather than [the

20230824-CA 7 2025 UT App 194
State v. Leatham

defendant], the police would be subject to the very kind of claim
against which the inventory search doctrine is designed to
protect.” State v. Weaver, 2008 UT App 101U, para. 4. Accordingly,
“it would be countersensical to allow an individual to remove . . .
personal belongings from a vehicle that is the subject of an
inventory search before the search occurs, especially in
circumstances where, as here, the individual has no ownership or
verifiable possessory interest in the vehicle.” Id. (cleaned up); see
also United States v. Penn, 233 F.3d 1111, 1116 (9th Cir. 2000) (“It is
hard to see how the owner’s property can be protected from theft,
and the police and city from claims for lost or stolen property,
without a full listing of all items in the car before any of it is
released to anyone, with a receipt.”).

¶16 Several cases provide insight into the issue of occupants
being allowed to remove items before an impound inventory. In
State v. Tirado, 2018 UT App 132, 428 P.3d 70, a case involving an
impound inventory, a backpack was not going to remain in an
impounded vehicle. The police department in that case had a
policy stating that “officers should make reasonable
accommodations to permit a driver/owner to retrieve small items
of value or personal need (e.g., cash, jewelry, cell phone,
prescriptions) which are not considered evidence or contraband.”
Id. ¶ 4. Apparently following this policy, the officer asked the
passenger if there were any items he wanted from the car before
it was impounded, and the passenger asked for the backpack. Id.
¶ 5. The officer searched it, found nothing troubling, and handed
it over to the defendant, all without logging or photographing it.
Id. But as the officers continued to inventory the remaining
contents of the car, they discovered other items that led to the
arrest of the passenger for various drug-related offenses. Id. ¶¶ 8–
10. On appeal, the passenger argued, among other things, that the
officer should not have searched the backpack before giving it
back to him. Id. ¶ 21. And in dicta, this court suggested that
“because the backpack was not going to remain with the vehicle

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State v. Leatham

after impound, it did not need to be inventoried, and therefore
[the officer’s] search of the backpack was not part of the inventory
search.” Id. ¶ 23. Assuming for purposes of the argument that the
search of the backpack had been unlawful, we nevertheless
concluded that the search of the backpack did not “impact the
validity of the actual inventory search.” Id. However, we noted
that if “the officers had found contraband inside the backpack,
[the passenger] may have been able to argue for suppression of
that evidence.” Id. On appeal, Leatham argues that his bag should
not have been searched because—like the situation alluded to in
the Tirado dicta—the item was not going to remain in the vehicle
and did not need to be inventoried. Leatham misreads Tirado.
There, the backpack was never going to remain with the vehicle.
Instead, the backpack was going to be given to the passenger from
the start, but the officer searched it anyway. Id. ¶¶ 4–5. That
milieu of circumstances is not in play here, where there is no
indication that the Department’s policy had a provision excluding
personal items from the inventory.

¶17 Our supreme court touched upon this general issue in State
v. Cole, 674 P.2d 119 (Utah 1983). There, police officers allowed the
driver to take some items out of a truck before conducting an
impound inventory. Id. at 122. The driver removed some clothing
and personal items and handed them to his passenger. Id. But an
officer spotted a pistol case “half concealed” in the clothing the
driver was removing. Id. It turned out to have a loaded 9mm pistol
in it. Id. The driver was then arrested for being a felon in
possession of a firearm and for possession of marijuana seeds
found during the inventory. Id. At this point, an officer retrieved
a knapsack and a purse that the driver had handed to the
passenger. Id. When these items were inventoried, the officers
found a variety of illegal drugs. Id. After being charged, the driver
moved to suppress all the evidence seized prior to and after his
arrest, and the district court denied the motion. Id. The driver
appealed, asserting, among other arguments, that “there was no

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State v. Leatham

justification for repossession of his personal belongings” from the
passenger. Id. at 126. The supreme court disagreed, concluding,
“The officers, of course, had no duty to allow [the driver] to
remove any articles from the impounded vehicle. The fact that
they changed their minds after [the driver’s] suspicious behavior
and arrest and refused to let [the passenger] remove [the driver’s]
alleged property from the scene reflects proper police practice
under the circumstances.” Id.

¶18 So too here. The officers were under no obligation to
release to Leatham any items he wanted to take from the car. As
the State points out on appeal, a categorical rule requiring police
to allow passengers to retrieve personal items pre-inventory
“would swallow the inventory exception whole.” Indeed, if
“passengers could take items out of an impounded car before an
inventory, a passenger could claim to own everything in a car and
remove everything before an inventory took place.” A practice of
allowing a passenger to remove items based on the passenger’s
word alone would obviously expose the police to liability if the
items were later discovered to belong to someone else. Deprived
of conducting a proper inventory because items in the car were
released pre-inventory, the officers would have no ability to refute
claims that the items were mishandled. 2

2. Leatham relies on caselaw from Oregon to support his
contention that the police must give vehicle occupants the
opportunity to remove personal items before an impound
inventory. See State v. Fulmer, 460 P.3d 486, 493 (Or. 2020)
(concluding that an inventory conducted without notice that an
occupant “may remove readily retrievable items” violates the
Oregon Constitution); see also State v. Schmidt, 464 P.3d 481, 483
(Or. Ct. App. 2020) (relying on Fulmer to hold that the Oregon
Constitution requires an “officer to ‘allow’ people to remove their
personal property from an impounded vehicle”); State v. Bernabo,
(continued…)

20230824-CA 10 2025 UT App 194
State v. Leatham

¶19 Leatham resists this conclusion by attempting to transform
the object of an impound inventory from the vehicle to the
occupants. This shift in perspective represents a fundamental
misunderstanding of an impound inventory. The point of an
impound inventory is to identify and catalogue those items that
are present in the vehicle when the State takes control of it—to
protect the property in the vehicle, to shield state actors from
liability for mishandling the property, and to ensure the safety of
police officers. It would be at least somewhat at odds with these
three purposes if a prerequisite of the inventory involved the
driver or passengers taking whatever they wanted from the
vehicle before the inventory was conducted. For these reasons,
nothing in the Fourth Amendment prevents a police department
from enacting an inventory policy that forbids removal of
personal items from the car pre-inventory. And this also means
that absent some provision in a policy to the contrary, we assume
that inventory policies implicitly forbid removal of personal items
from a vehicle pre-inventory. What Leatham has essentially done
is challenge the constitutionality of a vehicle inventory by making
it about who the items belong to rather than the fact that the items
are in the vehicle. But Leatham cannot prevail on his claim by
redefining a vehicle inventory (namely, an accounting of items in
a vehicle at the time of impound) into something it isn’t (namely,

197 P.3d 610, 613–14 (Or. Ct. App. 2008) (explaining that under
the county’s policies and procedures, an occupant must be
provided the opportunity to remove any valuables before an
inventory). Our research indicates that the same is true in Iowa.
See State v. Ingram, 914 N.W.2d 794, 820 (Iowa 2018) (stating that
under the Iowa Constitution, “the police should advise the owner
or operator of the options to impoundment” and that “personal
items may be retrieved from the vehicle”). But these cases were
decided under state constitutional provisions, and therefore this
extra-jurisdictional law is of no help to Leatham because he has
raised only a federal constitutional claim.

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State v. Leatham

a warrantless search of personal property). Such linguistic
maneuvering simply will not stand as a basis to challenge the
legitimacy of including all items in a vehicle as the proper object
of impound inventory.

¶20 In sum, the car was subject to impound and inventory
because the driver lacked a valid license. In conducting the
inventory, the officers were under no obligation—pursuant to
either the Department’s policy or pursuant to the United States
Constitution—to release any item in the car prior to conducting
the inventory. Accordingly, the officers properly inventoried
Leatham’s bag along with everything else in the car, leading to the
lawful discovery of the drugs and paraphernalia belonging to
Leatham.

CONCLUSION

¶21 The district court properly denied Leatham’s motion to
suppress the evidence gathered in the impound inventory.

¶22 Affirmed.

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