illegal search and seizure?

[kleptonite]

I live in Peoria, Arizona and I'm 19 years old. No prior convictions, charges except assault and disorderly conduct with my roomate that called the cops.

Let me start at the beginning... I got into a fight with my roomate, he called the cops and we both got charged with assault and disorderly conduct charge and I accepted a plea agreement which would remove the charges for taking anger management classes. Some how those same two charges came up twice and I missed the court date for the "second two charges" that was never supposed to be, a warrent was issued for my arrest. I was pulled over for traffic violation the officer saw my warrent and arrested me. They did a "inventory check" and found weed, scale, and baggies.

I was taken to 4th street jail and they let me go without bond because they checked up with the peoria court and found that their never was supposed to be a warrent our for my arrest in the first place. However I now have 4 new charges. Possession and sales for weed, possession and sales for steroids. The steroids were found at my house because I broke down and told them everything... I let them walk into my house and I told them where the steroids were at.

My car, cellphone, money were all seized.

My question is was the search in my car legal and will I be able to get all these charges dropped because I never gave them permission to seach my car? Also when/how/if will I get my car back? The cop called me the day before and said that when I went to court in the morning the charges would be scratched and they were. What does this mean?

 

[Some Random Guy]

My question is was the search in my car legal and will I be able to get all these charges dropped because I never gave them permission to seach my car?

Yes it was legal. No It is not a reason to drop the charges.

The police lawfully arrested you based upon information that you had arrest warrants. As part of that they inventoried your car. The fact that the arrest warrant was later found to be issued incorrectly does not mean that the initial arrest was unlawful.

 

[kroam82]

As stated above, yes the search was legal. Once you are arrested they can do a search incident to arrest, this involves your person and areas at close proximity to you. Once your car is towed it will be inventoried, this is done for your protection to ensure all your valuables are accounted for, sometimes they just happen to find more illegal stuff. The search of the house sounds like you gave consent for the search so all that is in. Just because it was later found out the warrant was not good does not matter as the cops fall under the good faith exemption as they believed the warrant was good.

The only thing you could possibly do is try to bring up they did not verify the warrant before the arrest. I know it was policy for us to contact the department with the warrant to ensure we had the right person and that the warrant was good before we arrested the guy.