csmonitor writes:
Now, police will have new rules to follow. Justice Stevens said the location of the arrested person is important. If that person is still "within reaching distance of the passenger compartment" — in other words, able to potentially disturb evidence or grab a weapon — police can conduct a warrantless search, he wrote. The majority justices said the justification for a warrantless automobile search disappears once the motorist has been handcuffed and placed safely in a patrol car. After that, police must obtain a court-authorized search warrant from a neutral judge.
subbie writes:
Taz, you are close on your understanding. Searches as you describe are generally acceptable if the car is impounded. They are routinely conducted when cars are impounded, for the reason you describe, as well as to secure any valuables that the arrested person may actually have in the car so they don't disappear from the car before the arrested person can get back to it. Although I haven't yet read the recent opinion, it appears to me that this rule is still good law. At least from the write-up that the CSM did, it doesn't look like this case involved a routine inventory search. What's more, the doctrine of inventory searches is so well established, I can't imagine that it would be discarded without significant discussion of the matter which this opinion doesn't appear to have.
It seems that if you remain in your car, they can search it because you could be in reach of a weapon but if you get out of your car and are arrested, they search the car anyway. I must be missing something...probable cause that you have a weapon, perhaps?
Seems that the only way to keep your car from being searched is to step out of it once you are stopped. They frown on that here in Maryland....and they're the ones with the guns.
The reason that I bring up probable cause is because my wife was stopped for "speeding" and the trooper right away asked if he could look through the car. She said "no" and he said "Ok" and wrote up the traffic ticket.
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