Supreme Court Limits Car Searches. A Bit.

It is often said that a man’s home is his castle. The Supreme Court has upheld this rule many times. Police may only search upon probable cause or a warrant from a Judge. When, however, can the police search your car incident to a traffic violation? Just about always, claimed the police. Not so fast, rules the Supreme Court. In a close decision, the nation’s highest court reined back the ability of police to make warrantless searches in auto stop cases. Make no mistake, you are not “home” when you are in your car, no matter how much time you spend there or what you do there. Indeed, you have a greater right to privacy walking down a street.

The police may search your car for traces of a crime they see; so if they see oddly small “cigarettes” in the ashtray or car parts recently reported stolen, the car will be searched upon probable cause. (“In plain sight” is a frequent claim of police, but clients will often differ on this point.)

Up until today, the police may also search “incident to arrest”, which is a broad right—so broad the police contended that this allowed them to search anyone “incident to arrest” . . . ANY arrest.

The test case concerned a man who was arrested for “operation on a suspended license.” At the time, he was home and his car was outside in his driveway. He was arrested and put into the police car (so the police were in no danger) and was not at the time suspected of anything else.

Subsequent to this the police searched and found cocaine and a gun in a jacket in the back seat of the car, which he was neither driving nor occupying at the time of arrest. There is, of course, no physical “evidence” in a case of driving while suspended. (This is what lawyers call a “perfect test case.”)

In this case, police had no probable cause, no warrant and no officer safety issues; subsequently, the search was ruled not legal. A legal ruling would have given police power to thoroughly search vehicles when the driver receives any citation, even those as minor as a “five over the limit” moving violation or inoperative signal lamp.

It is a pleasure to see the Supreme Court uphold the intent of the Bill of Rights.