A VERY GOOD DAY FOR THE FOURTH AMENDMENT IN TEXAS.
Today, the United States Supreme Court issued its opinion in the case of Arizona v. Gant, and breathed life back into the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizures as it relates to automobile searches.
For almost thirty years, beginning with the United States Supreme Court decision in New York v. Belton, 395 U.S. 454 (1981), the police have been allowed to search your car after they arrest you for any offense under the so called "search incident to arrest" doctrine. The original justification and rationale for the search incident to arrest rule was that the police must be entitled to secure the scene and recover any weapons that an arrested person might be able to reach in their car. As years went by however, that original rationale was cast aside and courts justified any search incident to arrest regardless of whether the arrested person could access their car or not. Courts approved of search incident to arrest searches of a person's car even when that person was in handcuffs in a police cruiser and could clearly not access their own car. Some courts even approved of search incident to arrest searches of the arrested person's car after the arrested person was removed from the scene and was miles away from their car.
With today's decision, police will only be entitled to make a search incident to arrest when 1) the arrestee is unsecured and 2) the arrestee is within reaching distance of the the passenger compartment at the time of the search, or 3) when it is reasonable to believe that evidence of the crime of arrest might be found in the vehicle. Hopefully, the days of police searching a person's car for anything and everything following an arrest are in the past.
I am prepared to litigate the issue of search incident to arrest cases in Collin or Dallas county or statewide in Texas and seek to have evidence excluded from court. If you have been arrested for a weapons or drug or other cases arising from a police search of your car, please call my office toll free 866 977 4394.
