§ 12.05 SEARCHES OF AUTOMOBILES INCIDENT TO ARREST

• Jurisdiction: United States

§ 12.05. Searches of Automobiles Incident to Arrest⁶²

[A] New York v. Belton

The Supreme Court's approach to searches of automobiles incident to arrest has resulted in controversy and, as a result, change in constitutional interpretation in recent years. The starting point to understanding this aspect of SILA law is New York v. Bel-ton.⁶³ In this case, O, a police officer, arrested four occupants of an automobile that he had stopped for speeding, after he smelled burnt marijuana in the vehicle and observed an envelope on the floor of the car marked "Supergold," a term that he associated with marijuana. O removed the occupants from the car and separated them from each other "so they would not be in physical touching area of each other." He returned to the vehicle, opened the envelope, and discovered marijuana. He then searched the remainder of the passenger compartment. In the backseat he found a jacket. He unzipped a pocket of it, in which he found cocaine.

In an opinion written by Justice Stewart, the author of Chimel, the Supreme Court approved the warrantless search, including that of the jacket, as an incident to the lawful arrest of the occupants. In doing so, the Court lamented the lack of a "straightforward rule" respecting the question of what constitutes the grabbing area of persons arrested in automobiles. And yet, the Court reported, "[o]ur reading of the cases suggests the generalization that articles inside the relatively narrow compass of the passenger compartment of an automobile are in fact generally, if not inevitably," within the arrestee's grabbing area. Therefore, the Court generated a supposed⁶⁴ bright-line rule for automobiles: In all cases, an officer may conduct a contemporaneous warrantless search of the passenger compartment of a vehicle, including all containers therein, incident to a lawful custodial arrest of the occupants. For purposes of this rule, a "container" is defined as "any object capable of holding another object." Under Belton, the glove compartment, consoles "or other receptacles," as well as luggage, clothing, boxes, "and the like" found in the passenger compartment are subject to warrantless search. The trunk and engine compartment fall outside the scope of the bright-line Belton rule.⁶⁵

It is almost impossible to rationalize Belton in light of Chimel, and particularly perplexing is the fact that Justice Stewart wrote both opinions. As discussed earlier, Chimel was based on the principle that, in view of the constitutional importance of warrants, the scope of a search should be "strictly tied" to the circumstances that render the warrantless action permissible. In Belton, however, the bright-line rule seemingly permits the police to dispense with the warrant requirement in many cases in which no genuine exigency exists. For example, if the doors of the passenger compartment of a car are closed and the arrestee is handcuffed, or if he is a considerable distance from the vehicle, or if the arrestee is in custody in the police car, it is hard to imagine that the interior of the vehicle is within the "immediate control" of the arrestee. Yet, the Belton bright-line rule seemingly covers such fact patterns. As dissenting Justice Brennan put it, "[i]n its attempt to formulate a single familiar standard . . . to guide police officers . . . the Court disregard[ed] [earlier Fourth Amendment principles], and instead adopt[ed] a fiction—that the interior of a car is always within the immediate control of an arrestee who has recently been in the car."⁶⁶

If Belton's approach had been followed in Chimel, the search condemned in thatcase—a search of the entire house, while the arrestee and his wife were on the premises — might have been upheld. At the very least, a bright-line "one room" or "one floor" rule (such as lower courts have implicitly adopted⁶⁷), rather than the vague "area of immediate control" rule, would likely have been formulated in the home-arrest context. Put simply, if Belton is right in devising a bright-line rule to assist the police and courts in car cases, the case-by-case adjudication called for by Chimel in home arrests is hard to justify. If Chimel is right, however, Belton is hard to fathom.

Even if bright-line rules are desirable, a matter of considerable dispute,⁶⁸ a strong case can be made that Belton is not the proper bright-line rule...