§ 13.02 Automobile Search Warrant Exception: The "Mobility" Rationale

• Jurisdiction: North Carolina

§ 13.02 Automobile Search Warrant Exception: The "Mobility" Rationale

[A] Carroll v. United States: True Mobility

In Carroll v. United States,²⁵ a Prohibition-era case, the Supreme Court first enunciated an automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement. In Carroll, federal officers stopped C and X in C's automobile on the highway and searched it without a warrant for "bootleg" liquor. At the time C's car was stopped, the officers had probable cause to search it for the contraband, but they lacked authority to arrest the occupants of the car unless and until they found the goods.²⁶

The Court upheld the warrantless search for contraband.²⁷ In an opinion written by Chief Justice Taft, the Court stated that "[i]n cases where the securing of a warrant is reasonably practicable, it must be used." However, it also observed that "a necessary difference [exists] between a search of a . . . dwelling house or other structure in respect of which a proper official warrant readily may be obtained" and an automobile, because a "vehicle can be quickly moved out of the locality or jurisdiction in which the warrant must be sought."

The result in Carroll is unsurprising. Apparently the police did not have probable cause to search the vehicle before they spotted it on the highway. Moreover, the police "were not looking for defendants at the particular time when they appeared." Therefore, the police could not be faulted for not possessing a warrant when they sighted the car. At that point, the car was clearly mobile; it was in transit on the highway. And, significantly, the occupants could not be arrested prior to the search, so the police could not prevent the suspects from driving out of the jurisdiction. Therefore, a genuine exigency existed. The only practical solution was to conduct a warrantless search.

[B] Chambers v. Maroney: A Controversial View of "Mobility"

In Chambers v. Maroney,²⁸ police officers had probable cause to stop C's car because it fit the description of one involved in a robbery in the vicinity. When the officers approached the car and saw that the occupants fit the robbers' descriptions, the police lawfully arrested them. The police did not search the car at that time. Instead, they drove it and the suspects to the police station. Shortly thereafter, while the arrestees were in jail, the police searched the car without a warrant and found weapons and evidence of the crime concealed under the dashboard.

The Court, per Justice Byron White, upheld the warrantless search, ostensibly on the basis of the principles enunciated in Carroll v. United States. Essentially, Chambers stands for the proposition that, as the Court later explained, "police officers with probable cause to search an automobile at the scene where it was stopped [may] constitutionally do so later at the station house without first obtaining a warrant."²⁹

Justice White stated that "[n]either Carroll, . . . nor other cases in this Court require or suggest that in every conceivable circumstance the search of an auto even with probable cause may be made without the extra protection for privacy that a warrant affords." Nonetheless, as in Carroll and the present case, "the circumstances that furnish probable cause to search . . . are most often unforeseeable; moreover, the opportunity to search is fleeting since a car is readily movable."

The Court reasoned that when an automobile is stopped on the highway, an effective search is possible...