Arizona v. Gant
Encyclopedia
Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332 (2009), was a United States Supreme Court decision which held that the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution
Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is the part of the Bill of Rights which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, along with requiring any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause...

 requires law enforcement officers to demonstrate an actual and continuing threat to their safety posed by an arrestee, or a need to preserve evidence
Evidence
Evidence in its broadest sense includes everything that is used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion. Giving or procuring evidence is the process of using those things that are either presumed to be true, or were themselves proven via evidence, to demonstrate an assertion's truth...

 related to the crime of arrest from tampering by the arrestee, in order to justify a warrantless
Search warrant
A search warrant is a court order issued by a Magistrate, judge or Supreme Court Official that authorizes law enforcement officers to conduct a search of a person or location for evidence of a crime and to confiscate evidence if it is found....

 vehicular search incident to arrest
Searches incident to a lawful arrest
In most cases, a search warrant is required to perform a lawful search. An long-recognized exception to this requirement is searches incident to a lawful arrest. This rule permits an officer to perform a warrantless search during or immediately after a lawful arrest...

 conducted after the vehicle's recent occupants have been arrested and secured.

Facts

The case involved Rodney J. Gant, who was arrested by Tucson, Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
Tucson is a city in and the county seat of Pima County, Arizona, United States. The city is located 118 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The 2010 United States Census puts the city's population at 520,116 with a metropolitan area population at 1,020,200...

 police and charged with driving on a suspended driver’s license. Police arrested Gant in a friend's yard after he had parked his vehicle and was walking away. Gant and all other suspects on the scene were then secured in police patrol cars. The officers then searched Gant's vehicle. After finding a weapon and a bag of cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...

, they also charged him with possession of a narcotic for sale and possession of drug paraphernalia
Paraphernalia
In modern usage, the word paraphernalia most commonly refers to apparatus, equipment, or furnishing used in or necessary for a particular activity as in, "Beth is such an avid sports fan that her walls are covered with baseball paraphernalia"....

.

Blurring the Belton bright line

Thomas Frank Jacobs (Tucson, Arizona), lead counsel for Rodney Gant, argued the case before the U.S. Supreme Court on October 7, 2008. Jacobs argued that an unreasonable expansion of a limited authority to search vehicles incident to arrest provided by the Supreme Court's 1981 decision in New York v. Belton
New York v. Belton
In New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454 , the United States Supreme Court held that when a police officer has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile, the officer may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of that automobile...

was occurring. Lower courts were allowing searches after the initial justifications for setting aside the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement had ceased to exist, relying on a so-called bright-line rule
Bright-line rule
A bright-line rule is a clearly defined rule or standard, generally used in law, composed of objective factors, which leaves little or no room for varying interpretation. The purpose of a bright-line rule is to produce predictable and consistent results in its application...

 of "if arrest, then search." Jacobs argued, and the Court ultimately agreed, that such application of the Belton exception caused the exception to "swallow the rule," allowing unconstitutional searches.

Scholarly interest

A group of legal scholars, including University of Iowa
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...

 law professor James Tomkovicz
James Tomkovicz
James Joseph "Jim" Tomkovicz is a professor of law at the University of Iowa College of Law. Tomkovicz has authored six amicus curiae briefs in the Supreme Court of the United States; most recently, he was on the winning side of a 5-4 decision in Arizona v...

, wrote an amicus curiae
Amicus curiae
An amicus curiae is someone, not a party to a case, who volunteers to offer information to assist a court in deciding a matter before it...

brief asking the court to overturn its precedent from a 1981 case, New York v. Belton
New York v. Belton
In New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454 , the United States Supreme Court held that when a police officer has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile, the officer may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of that automobile...

, that grants police the authority to search a person’s vehicle even if that person is not in the vehicle. According to Tomkovicz, Belton fails to meet the constitutional standard of probable cause
Probable cause
In United States criminal law, probable cause is the standard by which an officer or agent of the law has the grounds to make an arrest, to conduct a personal or property search, or to obtain a warrant for arrest, etc. when criminal charges are being considered. It is also used to refer to the...

.

Supreme Court decision

In an opinion delivered by Justice Stevens, the Supreme Court held that police may search the passenger compartment of a vehicle incident to a recent occupant’s arrest only if it is reasonable to believe that the arrestee might access the vehicle at the time of the search or that the vehicle contains evidence of the offense of arrest.

Justice Scalia wrote a concurring opinion, "In my view we should simply abandon the Belton-Thornton
Thornton v. United States
Thornton v. United States, 541 U.S. 615 , was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which held that when a police officer makes a lawful custodial arrest of an automobile's occupant, the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution allows the officer to search the vehicle's passenger...

charade of officer safety and overrule those cases. I would hold that a vehicle search incident to arrest is ipso facto 'reasonable' only when the object of the search is evidence of the crime for which the arrest was made, or of another crime that the officer has probable cause to believe occurred."

Justice Alito wrote a dissent joined by Chief Justice Roberts
John Roberts
John Glover Roberts, Jr. is the 17th and current Chief Justice of the United States. He has served since 2005, having been nominated by President George W. Bush after the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist...

, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Breyer in part, saying that the court had effectively overruled New York v. Belton and Thornton v. United States
Thornton v. United States
Thornton v. United States, 541 U.S. 615 , was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which held that when a police officer makes a lawful custodial arrest of an automobile's occupant, the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution allows the officer to search the vehicle's passenger...

, 541 U. S. 615 (2004).

Justice Breyer wrote a separate dissent.

See also

  • List of United States Supreme Court cases
  • List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 556
  • Chimel v. California
    Chimel v. California
    Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752 , is a Supreme Court of the United States case handed down in 1969. In the case, the Court held that police officers arresting a person in their home could not search the entire home without a search warrant, although they can search the area within immediate...

    (1969)
  • New York v. Belton
    New York v. Belton
    In New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454 , the United States Supreme Court held that when a police officer has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile, the officer may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of that automobile...

    (1981)
  • Thornton v. United States
    Thornton v. United States
    Thornton v. United States, 541 U.S. 615 , was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which held that when a police officer makes a lawful custodial arrest of an automobile's occupant, the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution allows the officer to search the vehicle's passenger...

    (2004)

Further reading

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