FindLaw > Criminal Law Summaries > 1998 Index > City of West Covina v. Perkins

Case: City of West Covina v. Perkins

Issue: Whether the Due Process Clause of the Fourth Amendment requires state or local entities to provide detailed and specific instructions or advice to owners seeking return of their lawfully seized property when it is no longer needed by police.

Facts: West Covina police officers lawfully seized personal property from Lawrence Perkins's home pursuant to a valid search warrant when Perkins's former boarder became a homicide suspect. The police left a notice detailing certain information including what had been seized and who to contact for information. Perkins filed suit when his attempts at retrieving his property were repeatedly frustrated. The Ninth Circuit reversed the lower court's grant of summary judgement to West Covina, holding that under Memphis Light, Gas & Water Div. v. Craft, 436 U.S. 1 (1978), the City was required to notify people of the procedures for return of seized property and how to invoke those procedures. The Court of Appeals went on to describe in great detail what such notice should include.

Holding: The Fourth Amendment does not require state or local entities to provide detailed information about state law remedies for retrieving lawfully seized property.

Reasoning: Justice Kennedy, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Stevens, O'Connor, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer explained that while the Due Process Clause requires that police take reasonable steps to give notice that property has been taken so that owners know who is responsible and can get it back, state and local entities are not required to reiterate state law remedies for recovering property when such information is readily available from public sources. The Court distinguished Memphis Light, in which it held that due process required a public utility to inform its customers about any planned termination of service and also the availability and framework of the utility's administrative procedures for resolving accounting disputes. In Memphis Light, the utility's administrative procedures were not otherwise available to customers. The Court explained that "[w]hile Memphis Light demonstrates that notice of the procedures for protecting one's property interests may be required when those procedures are arcane and are not set forth in documents accessible to the public, it does not support a general rule that notice of remedies and procedures is required."

In addition to lacking of support in Supreme Court precedent, the Ninth Circuit's notice requirement also conflicts with state and federal rules and practice. Under such a strenuous notice requirement, the current – and much less far-reaching – state and federal notice requirements will be rendered "inadequate as a constitutional matter." Sustaining the Ninth Circuit's decision would mean finding that "due process requires notice that not one State or the Federal Government has seen fit to require, in the context of law enforcement practices that have existed for centuries."

Other Opinions: Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Scalia, concurred in the judgement of the majority, but disagreed with the assertion that "when law enforcement agents seize property pursuant to a warrant, due process requires them to take reasonable steps to give notice that the property has been taken so the owner can pursue available remedies for its return." Justice Thomas concluded that such an assertion inappropriately expands procedural due process to govern the execution of criminal search warrants.