Criminal Procedure - Outline Part 10

Search at Station After Arrest – where the police arrest a driver, take him and his car to the station, and search the car at the station

• Chambers v. Maroney (1970) → a warrantless search which results in the finding of incriminating evidence is valid, despite the fact that, since the car was in police possession, a warrant could have been procured without endangering the preservation of evidence
  • Rationale: (1) the destruction-or-removal-of-evidence exception at least permitted the arresting officers to seize the car and deny its use to anyone; and (2) that being the case, “there is little to choose in terms of practical consequences between an immediate search [at the station] without a warrant and the car’s immobilization until a warrant is obtained.”
  • Houses v Cars → as a general principle, a lesser showing of exigent circumstances will allow a warrantless search of a vehicle than of a house b/c “a man’s home is his castle.”
• Carroll v. US (1974) → automobiles and other conveyances may be searched without a warrant in circumstances that would not justify the search without a warrant of a house or an office, provided that there is probable cause to believe that the car contains articles that the officers are entitled to seize
  • Driver has three (3) interests at stake (when conducting the respective search without a warrant):
    1. interest in locomotion (continuing to travel);
    2. an interest in control over his property; and
    3. a privacy interest in the car’s content

Search at Place Where Vehicle is Stopped → California v. Carney (1985) – police generally have a right to conduct a warrantless search of a vehicle immediately at the place where they have stopped it (assuming that they had probable cause to make the stop)

• The warrantless search here was valid, and fell within the vehicle exception to the requirement of a search warrant, recognized by Carroll
• Carney also establishes that a mobile home will be treated as a “vehicle” (with its lesser expectation of privacy), rather than a fixed dwelling, at least where the home is parked in a parking lot (may be different if the home was fixed)

Automobile Inventories: Another Warrant “Exception” → A warrantless search of a car may be permissible on various grounds:

1. If the police have probable cause to search a car, the Carroll-Chambers-Carney “automobile exception” comes into play;
2. if an occupant (or recent occupant) of an automobile is arrested, the police may sometimes conduct, as an incident of the arrest, a contemporaneous search of the passenger compartment of the vehicle, even without probable cause to search;
3. Automobile Inventory Warrant Exception – South Dakota v. Opperman → if the car is impounded because it has been towed for illegal parking, the Court has held, it may similarly be subjected to a warrantless “inventory search,” even though the police have never had probable cause to believe it contains contraband or evidence of crime

Collins v. Virginia (2018) → Whether the automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment permits a police officer, uninvited and without a warrant, to enter the curtilage of a home in order to search a vehicle parked therein – the warrantless search fell outside the scope of the automobile exception and could not be justified on that basis

• The dual rationales for the automobile exception – mobility and reduced expectation of privacy – are based on the premise that automobiles are different and, therefore, less constitutionally protected than homes, b/c a home is the “first among equals”
• And, “to give full protection of that right, the Court considers the curtilage – the area immediately surrounding and associated w/ the home – to be part of the home itself for 4th Amendment purposes
• QUESTION – Is a warrant always needed if a vehicle is sitting in the driveway of a person’s home? → NO
  1. the motorcycle was “parked and unattended” – did not discuss whether a warrantless search of a vehicle in a driveway might be justified on other warrant-exception grounds, e.g., exigency or hot pursuit of a vehicle on a public road that turns into a driveway
  2. Precisely where the motorcycle was parked in the driveway, fell within the curtilage of the home → based on its location, it was parked in the curtilage of the house and entitled to the same protections that a home would receive

• In Chambers – police found criminal evidence concealed in the compartment of the vehicle they searched
• In Coolidge – police found particles of gun powder on the car upholstery/floor
• In Carney – drugs and related paraphernalia were in plain view on a table inside the motor home
  • In all the cases, the criminal evidence was in plain view in the open