§ 16.04 Scope of Search

• Jurisdiction: United States

§ 16.04 Scope of Search⁵⁹

A warrantless consent search is invalid if an officer exceeds the scope of the consent granted. For example, if A consents to a search of his bedroom, the police may not search other parts of the house on the basis of the consent.⁶⁰ If A consents to a 10-minute search, the police may not invoke consent to justify the search after the consent expires.⁶¹ Consent searches, however, are virtually never negotiated with the precision of a contract, so it is often unclear how extensively the police may search based on the permission granted.

In Florida v. Jimeno,⁶² the Supreme Court provided guidance on the "scope of consent" issue. In Jimeno, O stopped J's car on the highway in order to issue a traffic citation. Because O had reason to suspect that J was carrying narcotics in the car, O requested permission to search the car for narcotics. J consented. During the search, O opened a folded paper bag, in which he discovered a kilogram of cocaine. The trial court suppressed the evidence on the ground that J had not expressly consented to a search of the container, only of "the car."

The Supreme Court reversed. Chief Justice Rehnquist declared that "[t]he standard for measuring the scope of a suspect's consent . . . is that of 'objective' reasonableness — what would the typical reasonable person have understood by the exchange between the officer and the suspect?" On the facts here, the Court maintained that "it was objectively reasonable for the police to conclude that the general consent to search [J's] car included consent to search containers within that car which might bear drugs." In other words, whether or not J subjectively thought about the container when he consented to the search, O acted objectively reasonably in interpreting J's consent to include the right to open the folded paper bag.

Jimeno does not stand for the proposition that the police may, in the absence of an express limitation, open every container discovered during any consent search of a residence or automobile. According to the Court, "[t]he scope of a search is generally defined by its expressed object." Therefore, it would be improper for the police to open a container too small to hide the object of the search. Potentially more significantly, the Court in dictum distinguished the case before it from one in which the police, pursuant to consent to search a car trunk, break open a locked suitcase found in the car trunk. In the latter situation, the Court opined...