THORNTON v. U.S

Before Officer Nichols could pull over petitioner, petitioner parked and got out of his car. Nichols then parked, accosted petitioner, and arrested him after finding drugs in his pocket. Incident to the arrest, Nichols searched petitioner's car and found a handgun under the driver's seat. Petitioner was charged with federal drug and firearms violations. In denying his motion to suppress the firearm as the fruit of an unconstitutional search, the District Court found, inter alia, the automobile search valid under New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, in which this Court held that, when a police officer makes a lawful custodial arrest of an automobile's occupant, the Fourth Amendment allows the officer to search the vehicle's passenger compartment as a contemporaneous incident of arrest, id., at 460. Petitioner appealed his conviction, arguing that Belton was limited to situations where the officer initiated contact with an arrestee while he was still in the car. The Fourth Circuit affirmed.

Held: Belton governs even when an officer does not make contact until the person arrested has left the vehicle. In Belton, the Court placed no reliance on the fact that the officer ordered the occupants out of the vehicle, or initiated contact with them while they remained within it. And here, there is simply no basis to conclude that the span of the area generally within the arrestee's immediate control is determined by whether the arrestee exited the vehicle at the officer's direction, or whether the officer initiated contact with him while he was in the car. In all relevant aspects, the arrest of a suspect who is next to a vehicle presents identical concerns regarding officer safety and evidence destruction as one who is inside. Under petitioner's proposed "contact initiation" rule, officers who decide that it may be safer and more effective to conceal their presence until a suspect has left his car would be unable to search the passenger compartment in the event of a custodial arrest, potentially compromising their safety and placing incriminating evidence at risk of concealment or destruction. The Fourth Amendment does not require such a gamble. Belton allows police to search a car's passenger compartment incident to a lawful arrest of both "occupant[s]" and "recent occupant[s]." Ibid. While an arrestee's status as a "recent occupant" may turn on his temporal or spatial relationship to the car at the time of the arrest and search, it certainly does not turn on whether he was inside or outside the car when the officer first initiated contact with him. Although not all contraband in the passenger compartment is likely to be accessible to a "recent occupant," the need for a clear rule, readily understood by police and not depending on differing estimates of what items were or were not within an arrestee's reach at any particular moment, justifies the sort of generalization which Belton enunciated. Under petitioner's rule, an officer would have to determine whether he actually confronted or signaled confrontation with the suspect while he was in his car, or whether the suspect exited the car unaware of, and for reasons unrelated to, the officer's presence. Such a rule would be inherently subjective and highly fact specific, and would require precisely the sort of ad hoc determinations on the part of officers in the field and reviewing courts that Belton sought to avoid. Pp. 619-624.

325 F. 3d 189, affirmed.

REHNQUIST, C.J., delivered the opinion of the Court except as to footnote 4. KENNEDY, THOMAS, and BREYER, JJ., joined that opinion in full, and O'CONNOR, J., joined as to all but footnote 4. O'CONNOR, J., filed an opinion concurring in part, post, p. 624. SCALIA, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which GINSBURG, J., joined, post, p. 625. STEVENS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which SOUTER, J., joined, post, p. 633.

JUSTICE O'CONNOR, concurring in part.

I join all but footnote 4 of the Court's opinion. Although the opinion is a logical extension of the holding of New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454 (1981), I write separately to express my dissatisfaction with the state of the law in this area. As JUSTICE SCALIA forcefully argues, post, at 627-629 (opinion concurring in judgment), lower court decisions seem now to treat the ability to search a vehicle incident to the arrest of a recent occupant as a police entitlement rather than as an exception justified by the twin rationales of Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752 (1969). That erosion is a direct consequence of Belton's shaky foundation. While the approach JUSTICE SCALIA proposes appears to be built on firmer ground, I am reluctant to adopt it in the context of a case in which neither the Government nor the petitioner has had a chance to speak to its merit.

JUSTICE SCALIA, with whom JUSTICE GINSBURG joins, concurring in the judgment.

In Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 762-763 (1969), we held that a search incident to arrest was justified only as a means to find weapons the arrestee might use or evidence he might conceal or destroy. We accordingly limited such searches to the area within the suspect's "`immediate control'" — i.e., "the area into which an arrestee might reach in order to grab a weapon or evidentiary ite[m]." Id., at 763. In New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 460 (1981), we set forth a bright-line rule for arrests of automobile occupants, holding that, because the vehicle's entire passenger compartment is "in fact generally, even if not inevitably," within the arrestee's immediate control, a search of the whole compartment is justified in every case.

When petitioner's car was searched in this case, he was neither in, nor anywhere near, the passenger compartment of his vehicle. Rather, he was handcuffed and secured in the back of the officer's squad car. The risk that he would nevertheless "grab a weapon or evidentiary ite[m]" from his car was remote in the extreme. The Court's effort to apply our current doctrine to this search stretches it beyond its breaking point, and for that reason I cannot join the Court's opinion.

I see three reasons why the search in this case might have been justified to protect officer safety or prevent concealment or destruction of evidence. None ultimately persuades me.

The first is that, despite being handcuffed and secured in the back of a squad car, petitioner might have escaped and retrieved a weapon or evidence from his vehicle — a theory that calls to mind Judge Goldberg's reference to the mythical arrestee "possessed of the skill of Houdini and the strength of Hercules." United States v. Frick, 490 F. 2d 666, 673 (CA5 1973) (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part). The United States, endeavoring to ground this seemingly speculative fear in reality, points to a total of seven instances over the past 13 years in which state or federal officers were attacked with weapons by handcuffed or formerly handcuffed arrestees. Brief for United States 38-39, and n. 12. These instances do not, however, justify the search authority claimed. Three involved arrestees who retrieved weapons concealed on their own person. See United States v. Sanders, 994 F. 2d 200, 210, n. 60 (CA5 1993) (two instances); U.S. Dept. of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports: Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted 49 (2001). Three more involved arrestees who seized a weapon from the arresting officer. See Sanders, supra, at 210, n. 60 (two instances); U.S. Dept. of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports: Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted 49 (1998). Authority to search the arrestee's own person is beyond question; and of course no search could prevent seizure of the officer's gun. Only one of the seven instances involved a handcuffed arrestee who escaped from a squad car to retrieve a weapon from somewhere else: In Plakas v. Drinski, 19 F. 3d 1143, 1144-1146 (CA7 1994), the suspect jumped out of the squad car and ran through a forest to a house, where (still in handcuffs) he struck an officer on the wrist with a fireplace poker before ultimately being shot dead.

Of course, the Government need not document specific instances in order to justify measures that avoid obvious risks. But the risk here is far from obvious, and in a context as frequently recurring as roadside arrests, the Government's inability to come up with even a single example of a handcuffed arrestee's retrieval of arms or evidence from his vehicle undermines its claims. The risk that a suspect handcuffed in the back of a squad car might escape and recover a weapon from his vehicle is surely no greater than the risk that a suspect handcuffed in his residence might escape and recover a weapon from the next room — a danger we held insufficient to justify a search in Chimel, supra, at 763.

The second defense of the search in this case is that, since the officer could have conducted the search at the time of arrest (when the suspect was still near the car), he should not be penalized for having taken the sensible precaution of securing the suspect in the squad car first. As one Court of Appeals put it: "`[I]t does not make sense to prescribe a constitutional test that is entirely at odds with safe and sensible police procedures.'" United States v. Mitchell, 82 F. 3d 146, 152 (CA7 1996) (quoting United States v. Karlin, 852 F. 2d 968, 971 (CA7 1988)); see also United States v. Wesley, 293 F. 3d 541, 548-549 (CADC 2002). The weakness of this argument is that it assumes that, one way or another, the search must take place. But conducting a Chimel search is not the Government's right; it is an exception — justified by necessity — to a rule that would otherwise render the search unlawful. If "sensible police procedures" require that suspects be handcuffed and put in squad cars, then police should handcuff suspects, put them in squad cars, and not conduct the search. Indeed, if an officer leaves a suspect unrestrained nearby just to manufacture authority to search, one could argue that the search is unreasonable precisely because the dangerous conditions justifying it existed only by virtue of the officer's failure to follow sensible procedures.

The third defense of the search is that, even though the arrestee posed no risk here, Belton searches in general are reasonable, and the benefits of a bright-line rule justify upholding that small minority of searches that, on their particular facts, are not reasonable. The validity of this argument rests on the accuracy of Belton's claim that the passenger compartment is "in fact generally, even if not inevitably," within the suspect's immediate control. 453 U.S., at 460. By the United States' own admission, however, "[t]he practice of restraining an arrestee on the scene before searching a car that he just occupied is so prevalent that holding that Belton does not apply in that setting would . . . `largely render Belton a dead letter.'" Brief for United States 36-37 (quoting Wesley, supra, at 548). Reported cases involving this precise factual scenario — a motorist handcuffed and secured in the back of a squad car when the search takes place — are legion. See, e.g., United States v. Doward, 41 F. 3d 789, 791 (CA1 1994); United States v. White, 871 F. 2d 41, 44 (CA6 1989); Mitchell, supra, at 152; United States v. Snook, 88 F. 3d 605, 606 (CA8 1996); United States v. McLaughlin, 170 F. 3d 889, 890 (CA9 1999); United States v. Humphrey, 208 F. 3d 1190, 1202 (CA10 2000); Wesley, supra, at 544; see also 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 7.1(c), pp. 448-449, n. 79 (3d ed. 1996 and Supp. 2004) (citing cases). Some courts uphold such searches even when the squad car carrying the handcuffed arrestee has already left the scene. See, e.g., McLaughlin, supra, at 890-891 (upholding search because only five minutes had elapsed since squad car left).

The popularity of the practice is not hard to fathom. If Belton entitles an officer to search a vehicle upon arresting the driver despite having taken measures that eliminate any danger, what rational officer would not take those measures? Cf. Moskovitz, A Rule in Search of a Reason: An Empirical Reexamination of Chimel and Belton, 2002 Wis. L. Rev. 657, 665-666 (citing police training materials). If it was ever true that the passenger compartment is "in fact generally, even if not inevitably," within the arrestee's immediate control at the time of the search, 453 U.S., at 460, it certainly is not true today. As one judge has put it: "[I]n our search for clarity, we have now abandoned our constitutional moorings and floated to a place where the law approves of purely exploratory searches of vehicles during which officers with no definite objective or reason for the search are allowed to rummage around in a car to see what they might find." McLaughlin, supra, at 894 (Trott, J., concurring). I agree entirely with that assessment.

If Belton searches are justifiable, it is not because the arrestee might grab a weapon or evidentiary item from his car, but simply because the car might contain evidence relevant to the crime for which he was arrested. This more general sort of evidence-gathering search is not without antecedent. For example, in United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56 (1950), we upheld a search of the suspect's place of business after he was arrested there. We did not restrict the officers' search authority to "the area into which [the] arrestee might reach in order to grab a weapon or evidentiary ite[m]," Chimel, 395 U.S., at 763, and we did not justify the search as a means to prevent concealment or destruction of evidence. Rather, we relied on a more general interest in gathering evidence relevant to the crime for which the suspect had been arrested. See 339 U.S., at 60-64; see also Harris v. United States, 331 U.S. 145, 151-152 (1947); Marron v. United States, 275 U.S. 192, 199 (1927); Agnello v. United States, 269 U.S. 20, 30 (1925); cf. Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 392 (1914).

Numerous earlier authorities support this approach, referring to the general interest in gathering evidence related to the crime of arrest with no mention of the more specific interest in preventing its concealment or destruction. See United States v. Wilson, 163 F. 338, 340, 343 (CC SDNY 1908); Smith v. Jerome, 47 Misc. 22, 23-24, 93 N.Y.S. 202, 202-203 (Sup.Ct. 1905); Thornton v. State, 117 Wis. 338, 346-347, 93 N.W. 1107, 1110 (1903); Ex parte Hurn, 92 Ala. 102, 112, 9 So. 515, 519-520 (1891); Thatcher v. Weeks, 79 Me. 547, 548-549, 11 A. 599, 599-600 (1887); 1 F. Wharton, Criminal Procedure § 97, pp. 136-137 (J. Kerr 10th ed. 1918); 1 J. Bishop, Criminal Procedure § 211, p. 127 (2d ed. 1872); cf. Spalding v. Preston, 21 Vt. 9, 15 (1848) (seizure authority); Queen v. Frost, 9 Car. P. 129, 131-134 (1839) (same); King v. Kinsey, 7 Car. P. 447 (1836) (same); King v. O'Donnell, 7 Car. P. 138 (1835) (same); King v. Barnett, 3 Car. P. 600, 601 (1829) (same). Bishop's 1872 articulation is typical:

"The officer who arrests a man on a criminal charge should consider the nature of the charge; and, if he finds about the prisoner's person, or otherwise in his possession, either goods or moneys which there is reason to believe are connected with the supposed crime as its fruits, or as the instruments with which it was committed, or as directly furnishing evidence relating to the transaction, he may take the same, and hold them to be disposed of as the court may direct." Bishop, supra, § 211, at 127.

Only in the years leading up to Chimel did we start consistently referring to the narrower interest in frustrating concealment or destruction of evidence. See Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 67 (1968); Preston v. United States, 376 U.S. 364, 367 (1964).

There is nothing irrational about broader police authority to search for evidence when and where the perpetrator of a crime is lawfully arrested. The fact of prior lawful arrest distinguishes the arrestee from society at large, and distinguishes a search for evidence of his crime from general rummaging. Moreover, it is not illogical to assume that evidence of a crime is most likely to be found where the suspect was apprehended.

Nevertheless, Chimel's narrower focus on concealment or destruction of evidence also has historical support. See Holker v. Hennessey, 141 Mo. 527, 539-540, 42 S.W. 1090, 1093 (1897); Dillon v. O'Brien, 16 Cox C.C. 245, 250 (Exch. Div. Ir. 1887); Reifsnyder v. Lee, 44 Iowa 101, 103 (1876); S. Welch, Essay on the Office of Constable 17 (1758). And some of the authorities supporting the broader rule address only searches of the arrestee's person, as to which Chimel's limitation might fairly be implicit. Moreover, carried to its logical end, the broader rule is hard to reconcile with the influential case of Entick v. Carrington, 19 How. St. Tr. 1029, 1031, 1063-1074 (C.P. 1765) (disapproving search of plaintiff's private papers under general warrant, despite arrest). But cf. Dillon, supra, at 250-251 (distinguishing Entick); Warden, Md. Penitentiary v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 303-304 (1967).

In short, both Rabinowitz and Chimel are plausible accounts of what the Constitution requires, and neither is so persuasive as to justify departing from settled law. But if we are going to continue to allow Belton searches on stare decisis grounds, we should at least be honest about why we are doing so. Belton cannot reasonably be explained as a mere application of Chimel. Rather, it is a return to the broader sort of search incident to arrest that we allowed before Chimel — limited, of course, to searches of motor vehicles, a category of "effects" which give rise to a reduced expectation of privacy, see Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295, 303 (1999), and heightened law enforcement needs, see id., at 304; Rabinowitz, supra, at 73 (Frankfurter, J., dissenting).

Recasting Belton in these terms would have at least one important practical consequence. In United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 235 (1973), we held that authority to search an arrestee's person does not depend on the actual presence of one of Chimel's two rationales in the particular case; rather, the fact of arrest alone justifies the search. That holding stands in contrast to Rabinowitz, where we did not treat the fact of arrest alone as sufficient, but upheld the search only after noting that it was "not general or exploratory for whatever might be turned up" but reflected a reasonable belief that evidence would be found. 339 U.S., at 62-63; see also Smith, 47 Misc., at 24, 93 N.Y.S., at 203 ("This right and duty of search and seizure extend, however, only to articles which furnish evidence against the accused"); cf. Barnett, supra, at 601 (seizure authority limited to relevant evidence); Bishop, supra, § 211, at 127 (officer should "consider the nature of the charge" before searching). The two different rules make sense: When officer safety or imminent evidence concealment or destruction is at issue, officers should not have to make fine judgments in the heat of the moment. But in the context of a general evidence-gathering search, the state interests that might justify any over-breadth are far less compelling. A motorist may be arrested for a wide variety of offenses; in many cases, there is no reasonable basis to believe relevant evidence might be found in the car. See Atwater v. Lago Vista, 532 U.S. 318, 323-324 (2001); cf. Knowles v. Iowa, 525 U.S. 113, 118 (1998). I would therefore limit Belton searches to cases where it is reasonable to believe evidence relevant to the crime of arrest might be found in the vehicle.

In this case, as in Belton, petitioner was lawfully arrested for a drug offense. It was reasonable for Officer Nichols to believe that further contraband or similar evidence relevant to the crime for which he had been arrested might be found in the vehicle from which he had just alighted and which was still within his vicinity at the time of arrest. I would affirm the decision below on that ground.

JUSTICE STEVENS, with whom JUSTICE SOUTER joins, dissenting.

Prior to our decision in New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454 (1981), there was a widespread conflict among both federal and state courts over the question "whether, in the course of a search incident to the lawful custodial arrest of the occupants of an automobile, police may search inside the automobile after the arrestees are no longer in it." Id., at 459. In answering that question, the Court expanded the authority of the police in two important respects. It allowed the police to conduct a broader search than our decision in Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 762-763 (1969), would have permitted, and it authorized them to open closed containers that might be found in the vehicle's passenger compartment. Belton's basic rationale for both expansions rested not on a concern for officer safety, but rather on an overriding desire to hew "to a straightforward rule, easily applied, and predictably enforced." 453 U.S., at 459. When the case was decided, I was persuaded that the important interest in clarity and certainty adequately justified the modest extension of the Chimel rule to permit an officer to examine the interior of a car pursuant to an arrest for a traffic violation. But I took a different view with respect to the search of containers within the car absent probable cause, because I thought "it palpably unreasonable to require the driver of a car to open his briefcase or his luggage for inspection by the officer." Robbins v. California, 453 U.S. 420, 451-452 (1981) (dissenting opinion). I remain convinced that this aspect of the Belton opinion was both unnecessary and erroneous. Whether one agrees or disagrees with that view, however, the interest in certainty that supports Belton's bright-line rule surely does not justify an expansion of the rule that only blurs those clear lines. Neither the rule in Chimel nor Belton's modification of that rule would have allowed the search of petitioner's car.

A fair reading of the Belton opinion itself, and of the conflicting cases that gave rise to our grant of certiorari, makes clear that we were not concerned with the situation presented in this case. The Court in Belton noted that the lower courts had discovered Chimel's reaching-distance principle difficult to apply in the context of automobile searches incident to arrest, and that "no straightforward rule ha[d] emerged from the litigated cases." 453 U.S., at 458-459. None of the cases cited by the Court to demonstrate the disarray in the lower courts involved a pedestrian who was in the vicinity, but outside the reaching distance, of his or her car. Nor did any of the decisions cited in the petition for a writ of certiorari present such a case. Thus, Belton was demonstrably concerned only with the narrow but common circumstance of a search occasioned by the arrest of a suspect who was seated in or driving an automobile at the time the law enforcement official approached. Normally, after such an arrest has occurred, the officer's safety is no longer in jeopardy, but he must decide what, if any, search for incriminating evidence he should conduct. Belton provided previously unavailable and therefore necessary guidance for that category of cases.

The bright-line rule crafted in Belton is not needed for cases in which the arrestee is first accosted when he is a pedestrian, because Chimel itself provides all the guidance that is necessary. The only genuine justification for extending Belton to cover such circumstances is the interest in uncovering potentially valuable evidence. In my opinion, that goal must give way to the citizen's constitutionally protected interest in privacy when there is already in place a well-defined rule limiting the permissible scope of a search of an arrested pedestrian. The Chimel rule should provide the same protection to a "recent occupant" of a vehicle as to a recent occupant of a house.

Unwilling to confine the Belton rule to the narrow class of cases it was designed to address, the Court extends Belton's reach without supplying any guidance for the future application of its swollen rule. We are told that officers may search a vehicle incident to arrest "[s]o long as [the] arrestee is the sort of `recent occupant' of a vehicle such as petitioner was here." Ante, at 623-624. But we are not told how recent is recent, or how close is close, perhaps because in this case "the record is not clear." 325 F. 3d 189, 196 (CA4 2003). As the Court cautioned in Belton itself, "[w]hen a person cannot know how a court will apply a settled principle to a recurring factual situation, that person cannot know the scope of his constitutional protection, nor can a policeman know the scope of his authority." 453 U.S., at 459-460. Without some limiting principle, I fear that today's decision will contribute to "a massive broadening of the automobile exception," Robbins, 453 U.S., at 452 (STEVENS, J., dissenting), when officers have probable cause to arrest an individual but not to search his car.

Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.