Judge: presence of scale authorizes police search
Judge says warrant not needed for search on private property because it was not part of a planned investigation
By News Channel NebraskaNEBRASKA CITY – A district judge has overruled a Nebraska City woman’s suppression motion saying the presence of a digital scale in a vehicle authorizes a police search on private property.
Public Defender Michael Ziskey had argued that a police officer could only see the corner of digital scale before he seized it and told the court that digital scale are not illegal.
Judge Julie Smith said she believes the officer’s testimony that he suspected it was a scale and that he knows scales are sometimes used in illegal drug activity. She said once the officer identified the scale, he could go ahead an search the woman's pink bag.
The court found that the presence of the scale in the vehicle provided probable cause for a search.
The judge said a warrant was not needed to search the car on private property because police had seen the car driven on a public roadway and because the search was contemporaneous to an arrest and not part of a planned investigation.