Syllabus | Opinion [ Rehnquist ] | Concurrence [ OConnor ] | Concurrence [ Scalia ] | Dissent [ Stevens ] |
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HTML version PDF version | HTML version PDF version | HTML version PDF version | HTML version PDF version | HTML version PDF version |
The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of
the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions
for the convenience of the reader.
See United States
v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U.S. 321,
337.
THORNTON v. UNITED STATES
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
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 petitioners car and found a handgun under the drivers 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 automobiles occupant, the Fourth Amendment allows the officer to search the vehicles 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 arrestees immediate control is determined by whether the arrestee exited the vehicle at the officers 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 petitioners 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 cars passenger compartment incident to a lawful arrest of both occupants and recent occupants. Ibid. While an arrestees 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 arrestees reach at any particular moment, justifies the sort of generalization which Belton enunciated. Under petitioners 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 officers 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. 48.
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 OConnor, J., joined as to all but footnote 4. OConnor, J., filed an opinion concurring in part. Scalia, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which Ginsburg, J., joined. Stevens, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Souter, J., joined.