Redefining Searches Incident to Arrest: Gant’s Effect on Chimel
By Jackie L. Starbuck.
One of the Supreme Court’s “most important responsibilities is to offer clear guidance to lower courts,” especially in matters of constitutional law. For decades, the Supreme Court has held that warrantless search or seizure is “per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment—subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.” One such exception is a search incident to a lawful arrest. When an officer makes an arrest, the officer may search the arrestee’s person and the area within the arrestee’s immediate control. The Supreme Court established two rationales behind the search incident to arrest in Chimel v. California: (1) the police may remove any weapons the arrestee may use to resist arrest or to escape; and (2) the police may search for and seize any evidence to prevent its concealment or destruction.
Defining the area within the arrestee’s immediate control has proven troublesome, especially in the context of arresting a vehicle occupant. With respect to vehicle search, the Court in New York v. Belton handled this issue by creating a bright-line rule that an officer making a lawful arrest of the occupant of a vehicle may search the passenger compartment of the vehicle and all containers therein. Although the Court’s rule appeared to be applicable only in the vehicle context, lower courts expanded the rule to searches incident to arrest outside of the vehicle context, and the Supreme Court did nothing to curb or encourage that expansion. The Court recently limited the Belton rule in Arizona v. Gant, where the Court held that police may search a vehicle incident to an arrest of the vehicle’s occupant only when the arrestee is “unsecured and within reaching distance of the passenger compartment” at the time of the search.
In the short time since Gant was decided, lower courts have split on whether the new rule announced in Gant applies to searches incident to arrest outside of the vehicle context. The Third Circuit has applied the Gant rationale to a bag held by the arrestee at the time of arrest and dropped when the police placed him under arrest. Noting that courts have used vehicle cases to justify searches in non-vehicle contexts for years, the court used Gant to justify a search of the bag because the bag was accessible to the arrestee. The District Court for the District of Nebraska also would have expanded Gant, but the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated the court’s reasoning and limited Gant to vehicular searches incident to arrest. Again, the Supreme Court has remained silent on the issue of whether Gant is applicable outside of the vehicle context.