grasmicc said:
The case held invalid the search of a vehicle after the suspects had already been taken into custody in an area that wasn't proximal to the vehicle.
Once police have probable cause to believe there is contraband in a vehicle, they may remove it from the scene to the stationhouse in order to conduct a search, without thereby being required to obtain a warrant.
''[T]he justification to conduct such a warrantless search does not vanish once the car has been immobilized; nor does it depend upon a reviewing court's assessment of the likelihood in each particular case that the car would have been driven away, or that its contents would have been tampered with, during the period required for the police to obtain a warrant.''
Michigan v. Thomas, 458 U.S. 259, 261 (1982). See also Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42 (1970); Texas v. White, 423 U.S. 67 (1975); United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 807 n.9 (1982),Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U.S. 583 (1974). Justice Powell concurred on other grounds;Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433 (1973); South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364 (1976). See also Cooper v. California, 386 U.S. 58 (1967); United States v. Harris, 390 U.S. 234 (1968). Police, in conducting an inventory search of a vehicle, may open closed containers in order to inventory contents. Colorado v. Bertine, 479 U.S. 367 (1987).
It is not lawful for the police in undertaking a warrantless search of an automobile to extend the search to the passengers therein. But because passengers in an automobile have no reasonable expectation of privacy in the interior area of the car, a warrantless search of the glove compartment and the spaces under the seats, which turned up evidence implicating the passengers, invaded no Fourth Amendment interest of the passengers.
Luggage and other closed containers found in automobiles may also be subjected to warrantless searches based on probable cause, the same rule now applying whether the police have probable cause to search only the containers or whether they have probable cause to search the automobile for something capable of being held in the container.
Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128 (1978),United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581 (1948). While Di Re is now an old case, it appears still to control. See Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 94 -96 (1979),California v. Acevedo, 500 U.S. 565 (1991) (overruling Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U.S. 753 (1979),United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798 (1982). A Ross search of a container found in an automobile need not occur soon after its seizure. United States v. Johns, 469 U.S. 478 (1985) (three-day time lapse).
See also Florida v. Jimeno, 500 U.S. 248 (1991) (consent to search automobile for drugs constitutes consent to open containers within the car that might contain drugs).
Now, do you REALLY want to go round and round with me on this? You will lose. The U.S. Supreme Court in
Chambers unlike all of the cited cases involved contraband, but in
Chambers ,
399 U.S. 42 (1970), the Court, without discussion, and over Justice Harlan's dissent, extended the rule to evidentiary searches.
Not shut the hell up when you don't know what you're talking about. I'm tired of teaching you law.
