On August 25, 1999, acting on an anonymous tip that the residence in question was being used to sell drugs, Tucson police officers Griffith and Reed knocked on the front door and asked to speak to the owner. Rodney Gant answered the door and, after identifying himself, stated that he expected the owner to return later. The officers' records check revealed Gant’s driver’s license had been suspended and he had an outstanding arrest warrant for driving with a suspended license.
When the officers returned, they found a man near the back of the house and a woman in a car parked in front of it. The man was arrested for providing a false name and the woman for possessing drug paraphernalia. They were handcuffed and taken away. Then Gant returned, pulling his car into the driveway. Gant got out of his car, shut the door, and when he got to 10-to-12 feet from his car, Griffith immediately arrested and handcuffed him, putting him in the backseat of the police car.
Once Gant was secured, two officers searched his car. One of them found a gun, and the other discovered a bag of cocaine in the pocket of a jacket on the backseat.
In a 5-4 decision handed down this morning, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that this warrantless post-arrest search of Gant's car violated the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, thus excluding from evidence against Gant the fruit of the illegal search.
Justice Stevens' majority opinion (with Justices Scalia, Souter, Thomas and Ginsburg) (not a typo, and we've seen this five together before in the criminal law context) essentially erases ~30 years of precedent (Belton) which had allowed a vehicle to be searched following the arrest of a recent occupant even when there was no possibility that the arrestee could gain access to the vehicle at the time of the search. According to today's majority, that's no longer the rule; the officers are required to obtain a warrant (based on probable cause) before doing the search:
Neither the possibility of access nor the likelihood of discovering offense-related evidence authorized the search in this case. ... [T]he five officers in this case outnumbered the three arrestees, all of whom had been handcuffed and secured in separate patrol cars before the officers searched Gant’s car. Under those circumstances, Gant clearly was not within reaching distance of his car at the time of the search. An evidentiary basis for the search was also lacking in this case. ... Gant was arrested for driving with a suspended license—an offense for which police could not expect to find evidence in the passenger compartment of Gant’s car. Because police could not reasonably have believed either that Gant could have accessed his car at the time of the search or that evidence of the offense for which he was arrested might have been found therein, the search in this case was unreasonable.
[All emphasis mine; numerous cites deleted for readability.]
Why? Privacy:
Although we have recognized that a motorist’s privacy interest in his vehicle is less substantial than in his home, the former interest is nevertheless important and deserving of constitutional protection. It is particularly significant that Belton searches authorize police officers to search not just the passenger compartment but every purse, briefcase, or other container within that space. A rule that gives police the power to conduct such a search whenever an individual is caught committing a traffic offense, when there is no basis for believing evidence of the offense might be found in the vehicle, creates a serious and recurring threat to the privacy of countless individuals. Indeed, the character of that threat implicates the central concern underlying the Fourth Amendment —- the concern about giving police officers unbridled discretion to rummage at will among a person’s private effects. ...
Under our view, [the law still permits] an officer to conduct a vehicle search when an arrestee is within reaching distance of the vehicle or it is reasonable to believe the vehicle contains evidence of the offense of arrest. Other established exceptions to the warrant requirement authorize a vehicle search under additional circumstances when safety or evidentiary concerns demand. For instance, Michigan v. Long permits an officer to search a vehicle’s passenger compartment when he has reasonable suspicion that an individual, whether or not the arrestee, is "dangerous" and might access the vehicle to "gain immediate control of weapons." If there is probable cause to believe a vehicle contains evidence of criminal activity, United States v. Ross authorizes a search of any area of the vehicle in which the evidence might be found. [] Ross allows searches for evidence relevant to offenses other than the offense of arrest, and the scope of the search authorized is broader. Finally, there may be still other circumstances in which safety or evidentiary interests would justify a search -- incident to arrest, an officer may conduct a limited protective sweep of those areas of a house in which he reasonably suspects a dangerous person may be hiding.
These exceptions together ensure that officers may search a vehicle when genuine safety or evidentiary concerns encountered during the arrest of a vehicle’s recent occupant justify a search. Construing Belton broadly to allow vehicle searches incident to any arrest would serve no purpose except to provide a police entitlement, and it is anathema to the Fourth Amendment to permit a warrantless search on that basis. For these reasons, we are unpersuaded by the State’s arguments that a broad reading of Belton would meaningfully further law enforcement interests and justify a substantial intrusion on individuals’ privacy.
So, what's the conclusion?
Police may search a vehicle incident to a recent occupant’s arrest only if the arrestee is within reaching distance of the passenger compartment at the time of the search or it is reasonable to believe the vehicle contains evidence of the offense of arrest. When these justifications are absent, a search of an arrestee’s vehicle will be unreasonable unless police obtain a warrant or show that another exception to the warrant requirement applies.
Justice Scalia adds these thoughts in a concurring opinion:
When an arrest is made in connection with a roadside stop, police virtually always have a less intrusive and more effective means of ensuring their safety -- and a means that is virtually always employed: ordering the arrestee away from the vehicle, patting him down in the open, handcuffing him, and placing him in the squad car.
Law enforcement officers face a risk of being shot whenever they pull a car over. But that risk is at its height at the time of the initial confrontation; and it is not at all reduced by allowing a search of the stopped vehicle after the driver has been arrested and placed in the squad car. I observed in Thornton that the government had failed to provide a single instance in which a formerly restrained arrestee escaped to retrieve a weapon from his own vehicle; Arizona and its amici have not remedied that significant deficiency in the present case.
It must be borne in mind that we are speaking here only of a rule automatically permitting a search when the driver or an occupant is arrested. Where no arrest is made, we have held that officers may search the car if they reasonably believe "the suspect is dangerous and ... may gain immediate control of weapons." Michigan v. Long (1983). In the no-arrest case, the possibility of access to weapons in the vehicle always exists, since the driver or passenger will be allowed to return to the vehicle when the interrogation is completed.
That said, he'd apply a different rule going forward:
I believe that [today's] standard fails to provide the needed guidance to arresting officers and also leaves much room for manipulation, inviting officers to leave the scene unsecured (at least where dangerous suspects are not involved) in order to conduct a vehicle search. In my view we should simply abandon the Belton-Thornton 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. Because respondent was arrested for driving without a license (a crime for which no evidence could be expected to be found in the vehicle), I would hold in the present case that the search was unlawful....
No other Justice, however, shares my view that [precedent] in this context should be entirely abandoned. It seems to me unacceptable for the Court to come forth with a 4-to-1-to-4 opinion that leaves the governing rule uncertain. I am therefore confronted with the choice of either leaving the current understanding [of precedent] in effect, or acceding to what seems to me the artificial narrowing of those cases adopted by Justice Stevens. The latter, as I have said, does not provide the degree of certainty I think desirable in this field; but the former opens the field to what I think are plainly unconstitutional searches -- which is the greater evil. I therefore join the opinion of the Court.
Who stands for precedent? Justice Alito, writing on behalf of himself, the Chief Justice, Justice Kennedy and (mostly) Justice Breyer in dissent:
The Court adopts a new two-part rule under which a police officer who arrests a vehicle occupant or recent occupant may search the passenger compartment if (1) the arrestee is within reaching distance of the vehicle at the time of the search or (2) the officer has reason to believe that the vehicle contains evidence of the offense of arrest. The first part of this new rule may endanger arresting officers and is truly endorsed by only four Justices; Justice Scalia joins solely for the purpose of avoiding a "4-to-1-to 4 opinion." The second part of the new rule is taken from Justice Scalia’s separate opinion in Thornton without any independent explanation of its origin or justification and is virtually certain to confuse law enforcement officers and judges for some time to come. The Court’s decision will cause the suppression of evidence gathered in many searches carried out in good-faith reliance on well-settled case law....
The Belton rule has been taught to police officers for more than a quarter century. Many searches -- almost certainly including more than a few that figure in cases now on appeal -- were conducted in scrupulous reliance on that precedent. It is likely that, on the very day when this opinion is announced, numerous vehicle searches will be conducted in good faith by police officers who were taught the Belton rule....
Abandonment of the Belton rule cannot be justified on the ground that the dangers surrounding the arrest of a vehicle occupant are different today than they were 28 years ago. The Court claims that "[w]e now know that articles inside the passenger compartment are rarely ‘within "the area into which an arrestee might reach,"'" but surely it was well known in 1981 that a person who is taken from a vehicle, handcuffed, and placed in the back of a patrol car is unlikely to make it back into his own car to retrieve a weapon or destroy evidence....
[T]he Court can hardly have failed to appreciate the following two facts. First, in the great majority of cases, an officer making an arrest is able to handcuff the arrestee and remove him to a secure place before conducting a search incident to the arrest. Second, because it is safer for an arresting officer to secure an arrestee before searching, it is likely that this is what arresting officers do in the great majority of cases. (And it appears, not surprisingly, that this is in fact the prevailing practice.) Thus, if the area within an arrestee’s reach were assessed, not at the time of arrest, but at the time of the search, the Chimel rule would rarely come into play.
Moreover, if the applicability of the Chimel rule turned on whether an arresting officer chooses to secure an arrestee prior to conducting a search, rather than searching first and securing the arrestee later, the rule would "create a perverse incentive for an arresting officer to prolong the period during which the arrestee is kept in an area where he could pose a danger to the officer." If this is the law, the D. C. Circuit observed, "the law would truly be, as Mr. Bumble said, ‘a ass.’" See also United States v. Tejada, 524 F. 3d 809, 812 (CA7 2008) ("[I]f the police could lawfully have searched the defendant’s grabbing radius at the moment of arrest, he has no legitimate complaint if, the better to protect themselves from him, they first put him outside that radius").
Justice Breyer has a brief separate dissent which basically states as follows: if we were looking at this the first time, I'd probably vote with the majority. But we're not, and there's precedent here, and I'm not convinced that the precedent is so wrong as to merit overturning here.
[As per previous disclaimers, I'm involved in a matter currently pending in the cert pool; as such, any reporting I'm doing on the Court will be descriptive and not analytical. You'll have to draw your own conclusions as to which side ought to have prevailed.]