Arizona v. Gant ruling at Supreme Court: Police must have reason to search vehicle, not just an arrest

From Scott Morgan at the FlexYourRights blog:

For many years, the Supreme Court has permitted police to search the passenger compartment of a vehicle any time an occupant of the car is arrested. These so-called “searches incident to arrest” were authorized in New York v. Belton (1981) based in large part on concerns about officer safety, namely that the suspect might dive for a weapon hidden in the car. As a result, police have grown accustomed to searching vehicles for “safety reasons” even after the suspect has been taken into custody. This doesn’t protect officers, but it certainly encourages police to make more arrests so they can do more searches.

Well, that’s finally going to change. The Supreme Court ruled today in Arizona v. Gant that vehicle searches following an arrest are legal only if the suspect has access to the vehicle or if officers reasonably believe the vehicle contains evidence related to that arrest. In other words, police are now required to have an actual reason to justify the vehicle search, instead of being allowed to do it automatically. This decision restores some much needed logic and common sense to the way many warrantless vehicle searches are analyzed under the 4th Amendment.

This is a huge decision for curbing the “fishing expeditions” by law enforcement who pull over “suspects” (likely to be of darken complexion in nice cars or youngsters sporting Grateful Dead stickers on their VW bus) on minor traffic violations as a pretext for searching the car for marijuana or drugs.  Police will still be able to search with probable cause, certainly the smell of marijuana or it lying inside the car “in plain view” will get your car looked at.  There is still no protection from the unscientific use and mis-use of K-9 units to manufacture a probable cause.  But I can bet there are some NORML Legal Committee defense lawyers who are very excited about this ruling today.

I found this portion of the oral arguments at the SCOTUS Wiki:

Justices Souter, Kennedy, Scalia, Ginsburg and Stevens all were openly incredulous of the claim that officer safety could justify the rule. And Justice Scalia scoffed at the idea that there was any need to preserve evidence that might be found in the car in the case of an arrest for a traffic violation. “Evidence of what?” he asked. When Yang suggested that the search might turn up evidence of a more serious crime, Scalia asked in disbelief “you avowedly say that once you arrest somebody you can rummage around for evidence of a different crime”?

Justice Kennedy invited both the State and the Assistant Solicitor General to identify some new justification and seemed mildly frustrated when neither counsel accepted the invitation. Speaking to Yang, he said “It seems to me there are good reasons for searching that car. It’s — it’s movable. That’s the old vehicle exception. It can have contraband in it. It can be stolen. It can be taken for joy rides. But you don’t seem to make any of those arguments. You just want to keep coming back to officer safety and on that point I think your case is very weak.”

Justice Scalia similarly asked both sides whether there was any historical – as opposed to pragmatic – justification for the rule. “If you stopped Thomas Jefferson’s carriage to arrest Thomas Jefferson and you pulled him off to the side of the road, could you – could you then go and search his carriage?” No one seemed to know.

I’d ask Justice Scalia how he’d explain to Thomas Jefferson the need to harass a citizen for possessing hemp in the first place.