U.S. Supreme Court
129 S. Ct. 1710
Decided April 21, 2009
Full Text
Issue: Search Incident to Arrest Doctrine.
Holding: The United State Supreme Court rejected the automatic application of search incident to arrest of a vehicle when the subject is arrested, handcuffed and locked in a patrol car.
Summary:
The police received an anonymous tip that a particular residence was being used to sell drugs. When the police went to the residence they made contact with Gant who identified himself and told them the owner would return later. After the police left, a records check revealed that Gant’s driver license was suspended and there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest for driving while suspended. When the officers returned to the residence later in the evening, they arrested a man near the back of the house for providing a false name and a woman parked in front for possessing drug paraphernalia. Both arrestees were handcuffed and secured in separate patrol cars. Gant then drove to the house where police arrested and handcuffed him pursuant to the warrant. After Gant was locked in a patrol car, police conducted a search incident to arrest of his vehicle. Police found a gun and a bag of cocaine.
Gant argued that the evidence found in his vehicle should be suppressed because the search violated the Fourth Amendment in that he could not have posed a threat to the officers after he was handcuffed and placed in the squad car. The state argued that the search was constitutional under New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454 (1981). In Belton, the Court held that when an officer lawfully arrests the occupant of a vehicle, the officer may, as a contemporaneous incident of the arrest, search the passenger compartment of the vehicle. The underlying rationale was to prevent an arrestee from having access to a weapon or destructible evidence inside the vehicle.
The Supreme Court recognized that the search incident to arrest doctrine, based on a broad reading of Belton, had become embedded in police practice having been widely taught in police academies for 28 years. However, the Court concluded, “The experience of the 28 years since we decided Belton has shown that the generalization underpinning the broad reading of that decision is unfounded. We now know that articles inside the passenger compartment are rarely ‘within the area into which an arrestee might reach,’ and blind adherence to Belton’s faulty assumption would authorize myriad unconstitutional searches.” Thus, the Supreme Court held that police may search a vehicle incident to a recent occupant’s arrest under one of two scenarios:
1. When the arrestee is unsecured and within reaching distance of the passenger compartment at the time of the search, or
2. When it is “reasonable to believe evidence relevant to the crime of arrest might be found in the vehicle.”
Unless one of these justifications exists, absent a warrant or another exception to the warrant requirement, a search of an arrestee’s vehicle will be unreasonable.
