Unreasonable Searches: Police Can’t Search Anything, Everywhere, Anytime?
Police Cant Search Everywhere: Arizona v. Gant stops certain unreasonable search after Arrest
Recently a student wanted law office experience and asked if he could come by, work for me and become an intern. Free help . . . that’s good, right? Actually IT WAS GREAT but not just because of the joy of teaching, the extra things that got done or the
camaraderie. I told him when he came to be prepared to answer questions about a case I wanted to study, Arizona v. Gant, a 2009 U.S. Supreme Court case about Search and Seizure. He came as planned and off we went to court. Within the first hour, we were sitting in the court clerk’s office waiting to file papers. Another attorney (some might call him difficult) came and sat there with us. For the record, that attorney in the past had made lots of trouble for me, so coincidentally when he asked us a question about search and seizure, I saw my moment for revenge. That lawyer’s client was brought out of his car and made to do field sobriety tests. Later, when the client was searched incident to a DWI arrest, the officer searched and found drugs in the trunk. I asked my student to give the answer and he didn’t disappoint. He gave the name of the case, the holding and correctly told how it would apply in that scenario. The lawyer was impressed. When he asked if my intern was in law school, my intern said “No, I am a high school sophomore.” Now that was a real lawyer joke.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly said that the fourth amendment prohibits any search done without first obtaining a warrant. There are exceptions, one being a search done at the time or shortly after an arrest. That is often called a search incident to an arrest. In Gant, the Defendant got out of his car voluntarily after a stop for his suspended license. He was put in handcuffs and put in the back of a locked police cruiser. Then the police searched his trunk and found drugs and a weapon. The Court said that the “search incident to arrest” exception did not apply because The police were not searching for anything in particular and Mr. Gant had no way to get to the trunk from the back of the cruiser. How could the police possibly be endangered by the trunk’s contents. Also, why should the police be allowed to go on a fishing expedition when they had no good reason to think there was a problem in that trunk.
The long and short therefore is that if you are arrested, the police can’t necessarily search everything trying to find what else you might have done wrong. So, if the police didn’t have a warrant nor a reason to search, it would be an illegal and unreasonable search. Don’t give away your rights by saying the police can do a voluntary search.
