Arizona v. Gant

From ScotusWiki

Jump to: navigation, search

Authorship: This page is maintained by Brittani Head, a 2008 summer associate at Akin Gump and a third-year student at the University of Virginia.

Contents

[edit] Briefs and Documents

Docket: 07-542

Issue: Whether, under New York v. Belton (1981), police may conduct a warrantless search of a car if its recently arrested occupant poses no threat to officer safety or preservation of evidence.

Merit briefs

Amicus briefs

Oral Argument: Transcript

Decision: Affirmed in an opinion by Justice Stevens

[edit] Pre-Argument Articles

[edit] Background

United States v. Katz highlights the general parameters of searches under the fourth amendment. Warrantless searches are “per se unreasonable . . . subject only to a few specially established and well-delineated exceptions.” Since appearing in dictum in 1914 in Weeks v. United States, the warrantless search incident to arrest has been one such specially established exception.

The challenge of the next few decades was to make that exception well-delineated. Chimel v. California attempted to clarify several clashing precedents regarding the scope incident to arrest by focusing on the “twin rationales” for a search both of an arrestee and his or her “grab space”: (1) officer safety and (2) destruction of evidence. The twin rationales assume that an arrestee might hastily destroy evidence within his or her grab space or grab a weapon to threaten an officer and escape. Chimel specifically identifies these harms as the reason the exception exists and further insists that the scope of a search incident to arrest remain strictly tied to addressing these harms.

Three later cases expounded upon, and largely expanded, the scope of the search incident to arrest described in Chimel. United States v. Robinson held that the fact of lawful arrest alone establishes the right to conduct a search incident to arrest, even absent the possibility of the suspect reaching for a weapon or destroying evidence. In Robinson, the defendant was arrested for operating a motor vehicle without a license. A search incident to arrest produced heroin. The defendant argued that the crime for which he was arrested did not trigger the twin rationales since “persons arrested for [traffic offenses] are less likely to possess dangerous weapons than those arrested for other crimes.” In disagreeing with this argument, the Court did not discredit the Chimel rationales, but instead focused on the danger of forcing police officers to make ad hoc judgments about “what a court may later decide was the probability in a particular situation that weapons or evidence would in fact be found” in the possession of the arrestee.

The loosening of the tie between the Chimel justifications for a search incident to arrest and the authority to conduct the search itself continued in Belton v. New York. In Belton, a police officer conducted a search incident to arrest of the passenger compartment of a vehicle after the occupants had exited the vehicle. Belton argued that after exiting the car, the passenger compartment was out of his grab space and thus outside the permissible scope of the search incident to arrest. The Court dismissed this argument, relying as they had in Robinson on the need for a bright-line rule to ensure officers did not have to make endangering, split-second decisions at the scene of the arrest. After Belton, an officer who made a “lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile . . . may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of the automobile” and containers contained within it. Finally, Thornton v. United States, decided in 2004, extends Belton to all “recent occupants” of vehicles. In Thornton, the police did not make contact with the arrestee till he had exited the vehicle. Rather than emphasize the ability of the arrestee to reach into the car to obtain a weapon or destroy evidence, the Court focused again on the wisdom of not asking police officers to make ad hoc determinations of the dangerousness of a particular arrestee during a street level arrest.

The issue of the permissible scope of a search incident to arrest arose again on August 25, 1999. Two uniformed police officers approached a residence on a tip of narcotics activity. Respondent Rodney Gant answered the door and told the officers that the owners of the residence were not home but would return later in the afternoon. After leaving the residence, the officers performed a records check on Gant that revealed an outstanding warrant for driving on a suspended license. Later that evening, the officers returned to the residence. While the officers were there, Gant drove up, parked his car, and exited the vehicle, at which point a police officer summoned him. Gant walked away from the car and was immediately arrested. The officer searched the passenger compartment of his car, finding a baggie containing cocaine and a gun. During the entire search, Gant was handcuffed and locked in the back of a patrol car, as were two other arrestees also present at the scene. Also on the scene were at least four police officers, but no other persons were around. A police officer testified at the trial that the scene was “secure” while Gant’s car was searched.

Gant’s original motion to suppress the evidence found in the search of the car was denied. He was convicted and appealed. The court of appeals reversed, finding that the evidence discovered during the search incident to arrest should have been suppressed. The Arizona Supreme Court denied review, and the State petitioned to the Supreme Court. The Court remanded for consideration in light of Arizona v. Dean, which was decided in 2003. Dean held that when an arrestee is not a recent occupant of his or her vehicle at the time of arrest, the reasons supporting a warrantless search are not present and the search is therefore not justified. The question on remand to the superior court thus became whether Gant was a recent occupant of the vehicle at the time of his arrest. The superior court found that he was and affirmed his conviction based on the evidence the search incident to arrest produced. Gant appealed again, and the court of appeals again reversed, finding the search not contemporaneous to Gant’s arrest and not otherwise satisfying the Chimel rationales.

On the state’s appeal, the Arizona Supreme Court vacated the opinion below but affirmed the judgment in Gant’s favor. In that court’s view, Belton, Robinson, and Thornton were distinguishable because they only addressed the permissible scope of a search incident to arrest. By contrast, this case, it reasoned, presents the threshold question of whether a search of a car incident to arrest is permissible at all when the scene is secure – a question that, in the court’s view, should be resolved by looking at the totality of the circumstances. Because neither of the Chimel rationales were present, and “no other exception to the warrant requirement appears to apply,” the court affirmed the judgment below suppressing the evidence. The dissent countered that both the majority’s rationale and conclusion were directly at odds with Belton, as Belton was clear that the “particularized concerns for officer or safety or preservation of evidence” need not be present at the time of the search. Rather, the search of the car was automatic upon the lawful arrest. The dissent bolstered its perspective by pointing out the similarity in the court’s reasoning with the dissent’s reasoning Belton and by emphasizing the widespread application of Belton by lower courts. Though the dissent acknowledged that the “bright-line rule embraced in Belton has long been criticized and probably merits reconsideration,” it vigorously emphasized the only appropriate forum for this reconsideration was the Supreme Court.

[edit] Petition For Certiorari

On October 17, 2007, the State of Arizona filed a petition for certiorari presenting a single question: Did the Arizona Supreme Court effectively “overrule” the bright-line rule in Belton by requiring the State to prove in each case, after the fact, that the inherent dangers of officer safety and preservation of evidence actually existed at the time of the arrest? The State made essentially two arguments. First, it argued that the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision in Gant conflicted with both the Supreme Court’s precedent in Belton and Thornton and the numerous decisions of federal courts of appeals and state supreme courts. Second, the State argued that the holding in Gant would be antithetical to Belton’s purpose of establishing a bright-line rule. Moreover, the petition posited, an abdication of a bright-line rule would also compromise officer safety by forcing spur-of-the-moment decisions regarding the risk of violence posed by a particular arrestee. Because Gant was a recent occupant of the vehicle at the time of his arrest, the State argued, a straightforward application of Belton should result in the admission of the cocaine against Gant.

In opposing the petition, Gant argued that the relevant question is whether a search incident to arrest can be conducted when the search is not contemporaneous to the arrest and the exigencies of officer safety and preservation of evidence no longer exist because the scene is secure. Gant further argued that the State was misconstruing Belton and Thornton and imputing a bright-line rule where none exists. In Gant’s view, a two-step test should be used to determine the validity of a search incident to arrest. First, was the arrestee a recent occupant of a vehicle; and, second, was the search substantially contemporaneous with the arrest? Whether the search was substantially contemporaneous with the arrest, Gant argued, involves evaluating the presence or absence of the Chimel rationales based on the totality of the circumstances. Because the scene was secure when the search was conducted, the twin rationales of officer safety and destruction of evidence were not threatened. Therefore, the search could not be contemporaneous.

The Court granted review on February 25, 2008 to answer the question: Does the Fourth Amendment require law enforcement officers to demonstrate a threat to their safety or a need to preserve evidence related to the crime of arrest in order to justify a warrantless vehicular search incident to arrest conducted after the vehicle’s recent occupants have been arrested and secured?

[edit] Merits Briefs

The State makes three main arguments why the Court should reaffirm the Belton rule and apply it to this case. First, the State argues that the Belton rule is reasonable and that reasonableness is the cornerstone of Fourth Amendment principles. The reasonableness of the Belton rule lies in both its limitation to lawful arrests and the balancing of the individual’s interests against the state’s interests. Moreover, the State argues, when an individual’s reduced expectation of privacy in his or her automobile is balanced against the State’s interest in officer safety and the preservation of evidence, the State’s interests prevail. Second, the State argues that searches incident to arrest have a special need for a bright-line rule because police officers should not be forced to further risk their safety to assess whether the Chimel rationales apply. Clarity not only protects the police officer by granting him or her the authority to conduct a search of the passenger compartment contemporaneously with an arrest, but it also allows the arrestee to know precisely what his or her rights are. Finally, the State points to stare decisis as a reason for upholding and applying the Belton rule. In the State’s view, no special justifications exist for overturning precedent on which lower courts have repeatedly relied for twenty-seven years.

In an amicus brief supporting the State, the United States argues forthrightly that a search of a vehicle incident to a lawful custodial arrest of the vehicle’s recent occupant is lawful even when the arrestee is secured in a patrol car at the time of the search. The United States endorses the State’s view that the Arizona Supreme Court effectively overturned Belton by replacing Belton’s bright line rule with a “totality of the circumstances” test. The brief notes that “this Court has . . . long held that a search incident to arrest is per se reasonable regardless of whether the circumstances of a particular case involve one of the twin rationales for a search.” The United States also notes that the Belton rule already has built-in limitations which are “clear” and “workable” – namely, that the arrestee be a “recent occupant” and the search be “contemporaneous” to the arrest. The government expresses its concern that requiring proof of a threat to officer safety would not only obfuscate Belton’s rule, but would do so in a way that would consequently threaten officer safety by requiring split second decision-making by the arresting officer.

Also filing an amicus brief in support of the petitioner is the Los Angeles County District Attorney. Weighing the limited expectation of privacy of a person who recently occupied a vehicle and who has been arrested based on probable cause against the needs of law enforcement to secure a mobile vehicle, obtain evidence, and seize weapons, the brief strikes the balance in favor of the needs of law enforcement. Florida, in conjunction with twenty-four other states, has also filed an amicus brief that emphasizes stare decisis and urges the Court to uphold Belton’s bright-line rule due to its clarity and the State’s critical interest in protecting law enforcement officers.

While acknowledging Belton’s legitimacy, Gant’s brief on the merits disputes the State’s interpretation of its “bright-line” rule. Gant classifies Belton as a decision that extended the area that might be “within the immediate control” of the arrestee to include the interior of the arrestee’s automobile. What constitutes the “area of immediate control” was, according to Gant, settled by the Court in Chimel, and the twin rationales of grabbing a weapon and destroying evidence cannot be met in a case in which the arrestee was secured in the police car at the time of the search. And even if the State correctly characterizes the current rule under Belton, Gant contends that the Court should limit Belton to its facts for two reasons. First, the empirical assumption that an arrestee may destroy evidence or seize a weapon from the passenger compartment of his car is not plausible under current police practice of placing an arrestee in handcuffs in the back of a police car. Second, the State’s interpretation of Belton simply substitutes one supposedly bright-line rule for another. Instead of evaluating the Chimel rationales, Gant argues, the officer must assess whether the search is both spatially and temporally a “contemporaneous incident” to the arrest.

The case is now scheduled for oral argument on Tuesday, October 7, 2008. It is the middle of three cases scheduled for oral argument that day.

[edit] Oral Argument Recap

Kevin Russell penned the following for SCOTUSblog.

Yesterday, the Court heard oral argument in two Fourth Amendment cases involving the scope of the rules used to implement that provisions’ protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. Although the cases involve quite distinct questions - one about the scope of the Fourth Amendment itself and the other about the scope of the exclusionary rule when the Amendment is violated - the arguments in both cases focused in large part on the traditional tensions between the need for rules that make sense in all of their application and desire to craft rules that are clear and easy to administer.

The oral arguments were particularly interesting because the Government and the defendant were called upon to take different sides of the debate in the two cases: in Herring, the defendant argued the virtue of simplicity and clarity, while in Gant it was the Government that was insisting on the need for a bright-line rule.

I should disclose that the Stanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic represented the petitioner in Herring and filed an amicus brief supporting the respondent in Gant.

Gant

The question in Gant turned not on the scope of the exclusionary rule, but the meaning of the Fourth Amendment itself. In New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454 (1981), the Court held that “when a policeman has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile, he may, as a contemporaneous incident to that arrest, search the passenger compartment.” In so doing, the Court expanded a rule developed in the context of arrests in a home, which was justified as necessary to protect officer safety (from weapons that might be in reach of the suspect during the arrest) and to preserve evidence (that might be destroyed by the arrestee).

Officers arrested Gant for driving with a suspended license and for an outstanding warrant for failure to appear in court on a prior charge of driving with a suspended license. At the time of his arrest, Gant had walked a short distance from his car before being arrested, and was then handcuffed and placed in the back of a squad car. The police then searched his car.

The question in Gant is whether the rule of Belton should be modified or rejected, at least as applied to arrests for minor violations when the arrestee is handcuffed and placed in a police car prior to the search.

The Arizona Supreme Court had held that the rule makes no sense in such circumstances and therefore does not apply. In the United State Supreme Court, the State’s counsel, Joesph Maziarz, placed great emphasis on the fact that Belton was settled precedent and the need for a clear, bright-line rule.

[A brief aside: Maziarz must have had a brief moment of panic when he stood up and the Chief Justice announced that the Court would hear argument not in Gant, but in another case, Kennedy v. Plan Administrator, which was heard later in the day. The Chief quickly corrected himself and noted that “It’s still early in the term.” Justice Kennedy then asked Mr. Maziarz if he had any views on the other case, which he did not.]

Maziarz’s great difficulty (shared by Assistant Solicitor General Anthony Yang, who shared time as amicus supporting the State), was widespread skepticism on the Court that the bright-line rule made any sense - in terms of its traditional justifications - in the common situation in which officers arrest someone, cuff him, and put him in the back of a squad car before searching the vehicle. 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.

Although members of the Court gave a good deal of grief to Arizona and United States, a number of Justices were also openly troubled by the suggestion from Gant’s attorney, Thomas F. Jacobs, that the Court should depart from the bright-line rule established in Belton.

Jacobs’ first question came from Justice Scalia - a traditional proponent of clear rules over flexible standards - noting that the Court had a bright-line rule permitting the search of the person of an arrestee regardless of whether or not the person posed any realistic threat to officers. “I mean, if the police arrest Mother Teresa, they are still entitled to frisk her, right, even though there’s little likelihood that she has a Gatt?”

Other Justices were concerned about how the Court could draw an administrable line if it backed away from Belton. The Chief Justice, for example, expressed his view that the “The whole point of a bright-line rule is that you don’t look at the specific facts and it presents a problem here you say the guy is handcuffed and in the back of the car? Well what if he is in the back of the car but not handcuffed? What if there are five people around who might break open the police car and free him? What if there are three people around? You have exactly the same case by case inquiry that Belton said we are not going to do.” Justice Alito asked similar questions.

Interestingly, neither the Chief Justice nor Justice Alito seemed particularly concerned about adopting a more case-by-case approach to the exclusionary rule in Herring. While it may simply be a case of inconsistency on their part, the Justices might also think that it is far more important to have a bright line rule governing police officers’ primary conduct than it is to have a simple rule for judges to apply after-the-fact in administering the exclusionary rule.

Justice Alito was also quite concerned that whether Belton made sense or not, it was established precedent. He asked,”what’s the justification for overruling Belton? Is it, has there been no reliance on it, is the Belton rule less workable than the rule that, the case by case rule that you’re proposing, is it undermined by subsequent developments and precedent or does stare decisus simply not count in these cases?” Getting himself in a bit of trouble, Jacobs seemed to answer that it was enough that Belton was wrong, provoking Justice Breyer to say that he would require more. “Now, is there some indication that that’s turned out to be abusive? Is there indication that there are other problems with the rule as it turned out to be complicated? What kinds of things you could say that will overcome what I’m putting forth as a kind of reluctance.” Jacobs answered that modern police procedures - including the pervasive practice of handcuffing suspects and putting them in the back of a police car - have undermined the premise of Belton.

The arguments in these cases illustrate the complexity of arguing Fourth Amendment cases before this Court. It is not simply a question of appealing to Justices’ support for, or skepticism of, the exclusionary rule or broad discretion for law enforcement officers. Many of the Justices are also concerned about need for clear, administrable rules, while others simultaneously resist the inflexibility and illogical results a bright-line rule inevitably gives rise to. And while some Justices are more than ready to abandon old decisions and doctrines they believe were wrongly adopted or no longer make sense (be it the exclusionary rule or Belton) others feel strongly about the Court’s obligation to adhere to its prior precedent absent strong justification for departure. And to make matters worse, these various considerations often point in different directions and cut across the traditional liberal-conservative lines on the Court: Justices Breyer and Alito worry about stare decisis, while Justice Thomas is much less concerned; Justice Kennedy wants a rule that makes pragmatic sense, while Justice Scalia doesn’t care if the rule is nonsensical if it has a historical pedigree; Scalia worries about a vague standard for applying the exclusionary rule, but the Chief Justice not so much. In the end, the cross-currents can sometimes give advocates more to work with in crafting arguments that can attract five votes. But at the same time, it sometimes makes the task of holding together a coalition quite complicated.

[edit] Opinion Analysis

Dividing 5-4, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that police may conduct a warrantless vehicle search incident to an arrest only if the arrestee is within reaching distance of the vehicle or the officers have reasonable belief that “evidence of the offense of arrest might be found in the vehicle.”

The decision in Arizona v. Gant (07-542) limits the rule established in New York v. Belton, in which the Court held that “when a policeman has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile, he may, as a contemporaneous incident to that arrest, search the passenger compartment.” The Court affirmed the Arizona Supreme Court ruling for the defendant, Rodney Gant, on whom police found cocaine during an arrest for driving with a suspended license. The state court held that Gant could not have reached his car during the search and posed no safety threat to the officers, making a vehicle search unreasonable under the “reaching-distance rule” of Chimel v. California, as applied to Belton.

Justice Stevens’s opinion for the majority, which was joined by an uncommon coalition of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H. Souter, Clarence Thomas, and Antonin Scalia, held that stare decisis cannot justify unconstitutional police practice, especially in a case — such as this one — that can clearly be distinguished on its facts from Belton and its progeny.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Scalia disparaged that line of cases as “badly reasoned” with a “fanciful reliance” upon the officer safety rule. Justice Scalia was clearly the swing vote in the case, explaining that a “4-to-1-to-4 opinion that leaves the governing rule uncertain” would be “unacceptable.” In his view, the “charade of officer safety” in Belton, Chimel, and Thornton v. United States (extending Belton to all “recent occupants” of a vehicle) should be abandoned in favor of the rule that the majority ultimately adopts in its opinion.

By contrast, the dissenting justices — Justice Breyer, who wrote his own dissenting opinion, and Justice Alito, whose dissent was joined by the Chief Justice and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and was joined in part by Justice Breyer — would have adhered rigorously to stare decisis principles to maintain Belton’s “bright-line rule.” The dissenters predicted that the Court’s decision will lead to the unnecessary suppression of evidence and confusion by law enforcement officers.

[edit] Links and further information

[edit] Podcasts

Ohio State Law Professor Joshua Dressler previews this case in a 11-minute podcast. [[Category:]]

Retrieved from "http://www.scotuswiki.com/index.php?title=Arizona_v._Gant"
Personal tools