Arizona v. Gant
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.