Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-05-03047/USCOURTS-caDC-05-03047-1/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Ronald Powell
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued January 25, 2007 Decided April 17, 2007

No. 05-3047

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

v.

RONALD POWELL,

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 04cr00164-01)

Beverly G. Dyer, Assistant Federal Public Defender,

argued the cause for appellant. With her on the briefs was A. J.

Kramer, Federal Public Defender. Neil H. Jaffee, Assistant

Federal Public Defender, entered an appearance.

Suzanne C. Nyland, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the

cause for appellee. With her on the brief were Jeffrey A. Taylor,

U.S. Attorney, and Roy W. McLeese III, Assistant U.S. Attorney.

Before: GINSBURG, Chief Judge, and SENTELLE,

HENDERSON, RANDOLPH, ROGERS, TATEL, GARLAND, BROWN,

GRIFFITH, and KAVANAUGH, Circuit Judges.

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Opinion for the Court filed by Chief Judge GINSBURG.

Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge ROGERS.

GINSBURG, Chief Judge: Ronald T. Powell challenged the

district court’s order denying his motion to suppress evidence of

the gun and ammunition found in the back seat of his car. A

jury convicted Powell of being a felon in possession of the gun

and ammunition, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). Powell

appealed the district court’s order and a divided panel of this

court reversed his conviction as having been based upon the

fruits of an unlawful search. The panel majority reasoned that

even when the police have probable cause to arrest a suspect,

they may not conduct a warrantless search incident to arrest

before taking the suspect into custody. See United States v.

Powell, 451 F.3d 862, 863 (D.C. Cir. 2006). 

Upon the Government’s motion, the full court vacated that

decision and granted rehearing en banc. Concluding this case is

controlled by Rawlings v. Kentucky, 448 U.S. 98 (1980), we now

affirm the order of the district court and hold the search of

Powell’s car was conducted incident to Powell’s arrest.

Accordingly, unlike the panel, we go on to consider whether the

officers had reason to believe Powell was a “recent occupant” of

the vehicle and conclude they did, wherefore the search was

lawful.

I. Background

One evening at approximately 9:00 p.m. three Metropolitan

Police officers were riding in an unmarked police car in the

vicinity of 1700 West Virginia Avenue, NE, an industrial area,

when they saw Powell and another man standing and urinating

to the rear of and a “few feet” from a parked car. The officers

“pulled [their] vehicle toward” the men and came to a stop.

Officers Masalona and Trudy got out and walked toward the two

men while Officer Jones, who had seen a third person sitting in

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the front passenger seat, approached the driver’s side of the car.

As the officers approached, one of the men outside the car said,

“[W]e were just going to a friend’s house and we had to go,

man. We had to go.” 

Officers Masalona and Trudy detained the two men outside

the car because “they were going to be placed under arrest” for

urinating in public. Meanwhile, Officer Jones leant through the

open window on the driver’s side of the vehicle and shined his

flashlight inside the car, where he saw three clear cups

containing a yellowish liquid, two in the cupholders of an

armrest in the front seat and one in an armrest in the back seat.

Based upon the smell, Officer Jones concluded the liquid was

“alcoholic ... in nature.” Upon cross-examination Officer Jones

conceded that “a portion” of his “head and ... upper body” were

inside the vehicle when he first saw the cups. 

Officer Jones directed the passenger to get out of the car

with the intention of arresting him for possession of an open

container of alcohol in a vehicle upon a public way. See D.C.

Code § 25-1001(a)(2) (2001). He then searched the vehicle and

found on the back seat a capped cognac bottle with a “small

portion” of cognac inside and a backpack. Inside the backpack

he found an Intertech 9 semi-automatic pistol with 23 rounds in

the magazine and one round in the chamber, as well as a

certificate of title for the vehicle and a credit card receipt, both

in the name of Ronald Powell. Upon finding the gun, Officer

Jones said to Officer Masalona, “[H]ook him up,” which was the

officers’ signal “that something serious is happening right now”

and the suspects should be “placed in handcuffs.” The men

were taken into custody and variously charged with a firearms

violation, possession of an open container of alcohol, and

urinating in public.

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A grand jury indicted Powell on a single count of being a

felon in possession of a firearm and of ammunition, in violation

of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). Powell moved to suppress the

physical evidence found in his car as the fruits of an unlawful

search. The Government opposed on the ground that, because

the police had probable cause to arrest the two men for urinating

in public and probable cause to arrest the occupant of the vehicle

for possession of an open container of alcohol, the search of the

car was conducted incident to an arrest and therefore was lawful

under New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 460 (1981).

At the hearing on Powell’s motion the prosecutor

represented that Officer Jones had seen and smelled the alcohol

before he leant his head into the vehicle. Defense counsel

contended Powell had neither seen nor smelled the alcohol until

after he had “physically” entered the vehicle “with his body.”

The district court upheld the search on the ground that Officer

Jones had seen the cups of yellowish liquid in the beam of his

flashlight before he leant into the vehicle. This conclusion was

directly contrary to Officer Jones’s testimony, as the

Government has since conceded in its brief for this appeal.

Officer Jones’s search, and his consequent discovery of the gun

and ammunition in the backpack, therefore cannot be justified

on the ground that the open containers of alcohol were in plain

view; “a search not justified when it is begun cannot be used to

elicit evidence with which to justify the search after the fact.”

United States v. Spinner, 475 F.3d 356, 359 n.* (D.C. Cir. 2007)

(citations omitted). The search of the car can be justified, if at

all, only if it was incident to the arrest of Powell and the other

man for urinating in public. 

Powell was convicted by a jury and sentenced to 46 months

in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release.

He appealed and a divided panel of this Court reversed the

district court’s order denying Powell’s motion to suppress,

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holding the police may not conduct a warrantless search of the

passenger compartment of a car incident to arrest “before

informing [an occupant of the car] that he was under arrest or

restraining his movement in a manner that would lead a

reasonable person in his position to believe he was under arrest.”

Powell, 451 F.3d at 864. The full court vacated the panel’s

decision in order to consider whether “the search of the car was

lawfully conducted as a search incident to Powell’s arrest.” 

II. Analysis

Powell argues the search was unlawful because he “had no

reason to believe he was being arrested at the time of the search”

and the “search incident to arrest” exception to the warrant

requirement of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the

United States does not apply to a search conducted prior either

to the announcement of a formal arrest or to the suspect being

taken into custody. We reject that view because we believe this

case is controlled by Rawlings. 

A. Rawlings

In Rawlings the Supreme Court held the police may search

a suspect whom they have probable cause to arrest if the “formal

arrest follow[s] quickly on the heels of the challenged search,”

448 U.S. at 111. The Court was quite clear in stating that,

assuming such proximity in time, it is not “particularly

important that the search preceded the arrest rather than vice

versa.” Id. This court applied the Supreme Court’s clear

teaching in United States v. Riley, 351 F.3d 1265, 1269 (D.C.

Cir. 2003) (where “police had probable cause to arrest” before

search, it was “of no import that the search came before the

actual arrest”). So, too, did the Ninth Circuit in United States v.

Smith, 389 F.3d 944, 951 (9th Cir. 2004) (“So long as an arrest

that follows a search is supported by probable cause independent

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of the fruits of the search, the precise timing of the search is not

critical” (citations omitted)), and the Tenth Circuit in United

States v. Lugo, 170 F.3d 996, 1003 (10th Cir. 1999) (“A

legitimate ‘search incident to arrest’ need not take place after the

arrest” (citation omitted)). Indeed, every circuit that has

considered the question — save one — has concluded that a

search incident to arrest may precede the arrest. See, e.g.,

United States v. Bizier, 111 F.3d 214, 217 (1st Cir. 1997);

United States v. Donaldson, 793 F.2d 498, 503 (2d Cir. 1986);

United States v. Currence, 446 F.3d 554, 557 (4th Cir. 2006);

United States v. Hernandez, 825 F.2d 846, 852 (5th Cir. 1987);

United States v. Montgomery, 377 F.3d 582, 588 (6th Cir. 2004);

United States v. Ilazi, 730 F.2d 1120, 1126-27 (8th Cir. 1984);

Smith, 389 F.3d at 951; Lugo, 170 F.3d at 1003; United States v.

Banshee, 91 F.3d 99, 102 (11th Cir. 1996). Only the Seventh

Circuit has held that a Belton search may not precede a custodial

arrest, but it did so in an opinion that, like the briefs then before

it, betrayed no awareness of the Supreme Court’s holding in

Rawlings. See Ochana v. Flores, 347 F.3d 266, 270 (7th Cir.

2003).

Applying the teaching of Rawlings to the facts of this case,

we must uphold Officer Jones’s search of the car. Powell

acknowledges the officers had probable cause to arrest him and

his companion for urinating in public before they searched his

car. See D.C. Code § 22-1321 (2001); Scott v. United States,

878 A.2d 486, 488 (D.C. 2005). Indeed, Officer Jones testified

that the officers “detain[ed]” the two men because “they were

going to be placed under arrest” for “[u]rinating in public.”

Immediately following the search, the two were indeed

handcuffed and formally placed under arrest for public urination

as well as for the firearms violation brought to light by the

search. As in Rawlings, that is, “the formal arrest followed

quickly on the heels of the challenged search.” 448 U.S. at 111.

Therefore, as in Riley, because “the police had probable cause

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to arrest [before the search], the search was valid as one incident

to arrest.” 351 F.3d at 1269.

B. Custodial Arrest Versus Formal Arrest

Powell argues that Rawlings applies only in cases where the

challenged search was preceded by a custodial arrest. Noting,

as did the Seventh Circuit in Ochana, that a custodial arrest

takes place “when a reasonable person in the suspect’s position

would have understood the situation to constitute a restraint on

freedom of movement of the degree which the law associates

with formal arrest,” 347 F.3d at 270, Powell apparently reads

our decision in Riley to mean that a search may precede “the

formal announcement of arrest” if and only if it follows the

functionally more important custodial arrest. 

In cases involving a search incident to arrest neither we nor

the Supreme Court have previously expanded upon the

distinction between a “custodial” and a “formal” arrest, but the

Supreme Court did at least advert to such a distinction in

Rawlings, 448 U.S. at 111 (search may lawfully precede arrest

so long as “formal arrest follow[s] quickly on [its] heels”), and

the taxonomy is, of course, familiar from the Miranda line of

cases, see, e.g., Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420, 440 (1984)

(“[T]he safeguards prescribed by Miranda become applicable as

soon as a suspect’s freedom of action is curtailed to a degree

associated with formal arrest. If a motorist who has been

detained pursuant to a traffic stop thereafter is subjected to

treatment that renders him ‘in custody’ for practical purposes, he

will be entitled to the full panoply of protections prescribed by

Miranda.” (internal quotation marks and citations omitted)). 

Powell argues — and it is possible, though ultimately

inconsequential — that the suspects in Rawlings and Riley were

under “custodial” but not “formal” arrest when they were

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searched. In Riley police officers ordered the suspect to

dismount his moped and searched his sock only after they had

surrounded him in such a way that he “couldn’t have moved

without actually making contact with” one of them. Riley, 351

F.3d at 1267. The court noted the seizure (of the suspect’s

person) that preceded the search might have been deemed an

investigative stop pursuant to Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 20

(1968), but for some reason that “elude[d]” the court, the

Government conceded the initial seizure was not a Terry stop.

351 F.3d at 1267. The court accordingly treated the encounter

as an “arrest” from the moment the officers “converged on the

moped.” Id. The suspect was therefore under custodial arrest,

or so the argument goes, before the challenged search took

place. 

In Rawlings, the suspect was “detained” at the residence he

was visiting and, unless he would consent to a body search, was

not permitted to leave for the 45 minutes it took the police to

obtain a search warrant. 448 U.S. at 100. When an officer

returned with the warrant, Rawlings admitted the drugs found in

another guest’s purse were his. Id. at 100-01. Having thus

obtained probable cause to arrest Rawlings, the officers first

searched him and then placed him under arrest. Id. at 101. The

Supreme Court expressly reserved the question whether the

temporary detention of the occupants of the house was a lawful

seizure that was “less intrusive than a traditional arrest,” id. at

110 & n.5, that is, something less than a custodial arrest, but the

Court assumed for the sake of the argument it was an “illegal

detention,” id. at 106. 

Whether the suspects in Rawlings and Riley were under

custodial arrest when they were searched, however, is of no

moment. Neither the Supreme Court in Rawlings nor this court

in Riley suggested the lawfulness of the search turned upon the

suspect being in custody before he was searched. On the

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contrary, the Supreme Court in Rawlings said that the “formal

arrest” may follow “quickly on the heels of the challenged

search,” id. at 111, and this court in Riley similarly held it was

“of no import that the search came before the actual arrest”

because the “actual arrest” followed quickly after the search,

351 F.3d at 1269 — exactly as happened in this case. 

Powell and our dissenting colleague nonetheless seem to

find implicit in these decisions the requirement that the search

follow the custodial arrest because to hold otherwise would

sever the search-incident-to-arrest exception to the warrant

requirement from its two historical rationales — namely,

protection of the officer’s safety and the preservation of

evidence, see, e.g., Belton, 453 U.S. at 457 — which are not

triggered until an encounter ripens into an arrest, that is, until the

suspect is taken into custody. But that is not correct. If

anything, both concerns are greater before the police have taken

a suspect into custody than they are thereafter. See, e.g.,

Thornton v. United States, 541 U.S. 615, 618 (2004) (upholding

search under Belton where officer “handcuffed petitioner,

informed him that he was under arrest, and placed him in the

back seat of the patrol car” before searching his vehicle); cf. id.

at 627-28 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment) (noting cases

upholding search after suspect is handcuffed and secured in back

of squad car “are legion” and mordantly criticizing application

of Belton to suspects who no longer pose a danger to police).

By searching the suspect before they arrest him, the officers can

secure any weapon he might otherwise use to resist arrest or any

evidence he might otherwise destroy.

In this case the presence of another person in the searched

vehicle illustrates the need for police who have probable cause

to make an arrest in some circumstances, in the interest of

safety, to conduct a search before making the arrest. Here the

police approached two suspects in proximity to a probable

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associate who, for all they knew, had access to a weapon. Cf.

Maryland v. Buie, 494 U.S. 325, 334 (1990) (holding that,

incident to an arrest in a home, officers may “as a precautionary

matter and without probable cause or reasonable suspicion, look

in closets and other spaces immediately adjoining the place of

arrest from which an attack could be immediately launched”).

Powell and our dissenting colleague also contend our

decision is inconsistent with Knowles v. Iowa, 525 U.S. 113

(1998) (holding an officer may not conduct a search incident to

arrest when, although the officer has probable cause to make an

arrest, he issues a citation instead of arresting the suspect). But

that is not correct either. Had the officers failed to arrest Powell

and merely issued him a citation, then indeed the search would

be invalid under Knowles. 525 U.S. at 117 (“The threat to

officer safety from issuing a traffic citation ... is a good deal less

than in the case of a custodial arrest”). That, of course, is not

what happened, and we do not say that having probable cause to

arrest is by itself sufficient to bring a search within the Belton

exception to the warrant requirement. Rather, it is the “fact of

the arrest” that makes all the difference. Id. (quoting United

States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 234 n.5 (1973) (“The danger

to the police officer flows from the fact of the arrest, and its

attendant proximity, stress, and uncertainty”)); see also

Washington v. Chrisman, 455 U.S. 1, 7 (1982) (“Every arrest

must be presumed to present a risk of danger to the arresting

officer”). As we have recently noted: “The key point in

Knowles ... was not that the officer had a lawful ground for

arrest upon which he did not rely, but that he did not arrest the

defendant at all.” United States v. Bookhardt, 277 F.3d 558, 566

(D.C. Cir. 2002).

Two additional considerations impel our conclusion that

Rawlings controls this case. The first is the Supreme Court’s

teaching that in this area of the law bright-line rules are

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necessary. See, e.g., Thornton v. United States, 541 U.S. at 623

(“need for a clear rule ... justifies the sort of generalization

which Belton enunciated”). The second is that, even if Knowles

could be taken by implication to call Rawlings into question, we

are not at liberty to disregard the Supreme Court’s

straightforward statement that it is not “particularly important

that the search preceded the arrest rather than vice versa,” 448

U.S. at 111. See Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/American

Express, Inc., 490 U.S. 477, 484 (1989) (“If a precedent of [the

Supreme] Court has direct application in a case, yet appears to

rest on reasons rejected in some other line of decisions, the

Court of Appeals should follow the case which directly controls,

leaving to [the Supreme] Court the prerogative of overruling its

own decisions”).

C. Recent Occupant/Thornton

Because we conclude the search in this case was “incident

to [an] arrest,” as the Supreme Court has explicated that phrase,

we must go on to answer the question whether the officers had

reason to believe Powell or his companion was a “recent

occupant” of the vehicle. See Thornton, 541 U.S. at 622

(“Belton allows police to search the passenger compartment of

a vehicle incident to a lawful custodial arrest of both ‘occupants’

and ‘recent occupants’” (quoting Belton, 453 U.S. at 460)). We

conclude they did. Although Officer Jones testified he did not

“know” Powell or the other man was a recent occupant, a

reasonable police officer would have had good reason to believe

as much: indeed, the only reasonable inference, upon finding

two men urinating at night in an industrial area a “few feet”

from a car, the only occupant of which was sitting in a passenger

seat, is that the two men were recent occupants of the car. 

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III. Conclusion

Because the search of the car was a lawful search incident

to Powell’s arrest for urinating in public and the officers had

reason to believe Powell was a “recent occupant” of the vehicle,

the district court properly denied Powell’s motion to suppress.

The judgment of conviction is therefore

Affirmed.

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ROGERS,Circuit Judge, dissenting: The Fourth Amendment

provides that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their

persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable

searches and seizures, shall not be violated and no Warrants

shall issue, but upon probable cause.” In a line of cases

stretching back to United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218

(1973), the Supreme Court, when considering the moments

surrounding an arrest, has carefully balanced a citizen’s right to

privacy against police officer safety. The court today upsets that

balance and spins the “search incident to arrest” exception to the

Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement in a new direction —

and away from more than a quarter-century of Supreme Court

precedent.

When construing the Fourth Amendment, “[t]he

touchstone . . . is always ‘the reasonableness in all the

circumstances of the particular governmental invasion of a

citizen’s personal security.’” Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S.

106, 108-09 (1977) (per curiam). That reasonableness “depends

‘on a balance between the public interest and the individual’s

right to personal security free from arbitrary interference by law

officers,’” Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U.S. 408, 412 (1997). In the

context of the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, the

Supreme Court has held without exception that the right of

privacy is “too precious to entrust to those whose job is the

detection of crime and the arrest of criminals,” Chimel v.

California, 395 U.S. 752, 761 (1969) (quoting McDonald v.

United States, 355 U.S. 451, 456 (1948)), and has authorized

only “narrow and well-delineated exceptions” such as a

warrantless search when a suspect is in police custody to protect

the safety of the officer and to preserve evidence, Flippo v. West

Virginia, 528 U.S. 11, 13 (1999); California v. Acevedo, 500

U.S. 505, 580 (1991).

In Robinson, the Supreme Court determined that an

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individual’s Fourth Amendment right of privacy is overcome

only at the point when the police make a custodial arrest, 414

U.S. at 234; see Chimel, 395 U.S. at 762-63. In striking this

balance, then-Justice Rehnquist wrote for the Court that the

“extended exposure which follows the taking of a suspect into

custody and transporting him to the police station” endangers

the officer. Robinson, 414 U.S. at 234-35. The Court further

explained: “It is the fact of the lawful arrest which establishes

the authority to search, and we hold that in the case of a lawful

custodial arrest a full search of the person is not only an

exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment,

but is also a ‘reasonable’ search under the Amendment.” Id. at

236. 

In subsequent decisions, the Supreme Court has adhered to

this analysis: custodial arrest establishes the exigencies allowing

for an exception to the warrant requirement. In the seminal case

of New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454 (1981), where the Court

established a bright-line rule for law enforcement officers to

follow in conducting searches incident to a prior arrest, id. at

459; see also id. at 463 (Brennan, J., dissenting), the Court

explained that “when a policeman has made a lawful custodial

arrest of the occupant of an automobile, he may, as a

contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger

compartment of that automobile,” including the contents of any

containers found therein, id. at 460 (emphasis added). More

recently, in Knowles v. Iowa, 525 U.S. 113 (1998), Chief Justice

Rehnquist writing for a unanimous Court reaffirmed its

commitment to the Robinson balance, stating that “the danger to

the police officer flows from the fact of the arrest, and its

attendant proximity, stress, and uncertainty,” id. at 117, and

reiterating the two historical rationales for allowing the

exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement: “(1)

the need to disarm the suspect in order to take him into custody,

and (2) the need to preserve evidence for later use at trial,” id. at

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1

 Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968).

117-18 (citing Robinson, 414 U.S. at 234).

Today, the court abandons Robinson and its progeny in

favor of a new rule: Whenever a police officer has probable

cause to arrest a suspect, the officer may conduct a search

incident to the possibility of a later arrest so long as the officer

later ratifies the search by making the arrest. See Op. at 7. This

rule finds no basis in Supreme Court precedent or in logic and

imperils the constitutional right against unwarranted intrusions.

I respectfully dissent.

The Supreme Court has made clear that mere probable

cause to arrest a suspect is insufficient to justify the intrusion of

a full-fledged search. In Knowles, the Court rejected extending

the exception under the Robinson and Belton rationale to

searches incident to traffic citations, where state law provided

that the officer could have arrested the suspect if he so desired,

see 525 U.S. at 114-15 & n.1. The Court emphasized in

Knowles that while concerns for officer safety are “both

legitimate and weighty,” id. at 117 (internal quotation marks

omitted), because “‘[t]he danger to the police officer flows from

the fact of the arrest, and its attendant proximity, stress, and

uncertainty, and not from the grounds for arrest,’” id. (quoting

Robinson, 414 U.S. at 234 n.5), the issuance of a citation could

justify no more than ordering the driver and passengers out of

the car and performing a Terry1

 patdown, id. at 118. The Court

made clear that the concern for officer safety stemming from a

citation “does not by itself justify the often considerably greater

intrusion attending a full field-type search.” Id. at 117. The

Court explicitly rejected the government’s request “to extend

th[e] ‘bright-line rule’ [under Robinson] to a situation where

concern for officer safety is not present to the same extent [as

when a suspect is taken into custody] and the concern for the

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destruction or loss of evidence is not present at all.” Id. at 119.

In a situation strikingly similar to Knowles, the court today

insists that the opposite result is justified because Powell was

ultimately arrested, whereas Knowles was not. See Op. at 11.

Certainly, it is not enough that the officers had grounds to arrest

Powell; Robinson says so explicitly, see 414 U.S. at 234 n.5.

Moreover, if the “threat to officer safety” is what justifies the

search of a lawfully parked car several feet from Powell, then

the threat must exist when the search occurs. It tortures all

principles of reasoned logic to conclude that somehow the risk

to officers at the time of the search is retroactively heightened

based on the officer’s subsequently communicated decision to

arrest. Consistent with Robinson and Knowles, the officer-safety

rationale justifies abridging a suspect’s Fourth Amendment

rights only if, at the time of the search, the suspect is under

custodial arrest. The risks attendant to the “fact of the arrest”

ripen only when a suspect is sufficiently on notice that he is no

longer free to leave. Contrary to the court’s suggestion, Op. at

9, the Supreme Court has made both the sequencing of events

and the distinction between a lawful custodial arrest and a

formal arrest explicit in addressing the warrant exception. E.g.,

Knowles, 525 U.S. at 114; Belton, 453 U.S. at 460; Robinson,

414 U.S. at 233-34.

The court further maintains that the concerns for officer

safety are greater before the officer completes the arrest. See

Op. at 9. But this assertion rewrites Supreme Court

jurisprudence and does so without even so much as an

evidentiary proffer by the government, much less findings of

fact from the district court. The court’s analysis of police safety

in explaining the exigencies that trigger the warrant exception

has never been adopted by the Supreme Court as it runs entirely

counter to the Robinson and Belton line of cases. Moreover, the

court cannot explain why, if the concern for officer safety is

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elevated because of the possibility that the officer will arrest the

suspect, before the suspect knows the officer’s intentions, it

matters whether the officer subsequently makes an arrest.

Instead, the court chooses to ignore the Fourth Amendment

balance carefully struck by the Supreme Court over the decades,

unmooring the rationales from their historical groundings at the

behest of a concurring opinion that, in fact, leaves intact the

Robinson balance based on a prior custodial arrest and argues

for limiting the scope of the subsequent search in a manner that

would not support Powell’s arrest for a firearms violation. See

Op. at 9 (citing Thornton v. United States, 541 U.S. 615, 617,

631-32 (2004) (Scalia, J., with whom Ginsburg, J., joins,

concurring in the judgment) (proposing to “limit Belton searches

to cases where it is reasonable to believe evidence relevant to

the crime of arrest might be found in the vehicle”)); see also

Thornton, 541 U.S. at 634 (Stevens, J., with whom Souter, J.,

joins, dissenting). 

The only benefit of the court’s new approach is that it

purports to establish a bright line. But just because a line is

bright does not make it defensible — it would be a “bright-line

rule,” for example, to say “police officers may do whatever they

want.” In this instance, the court’s bright-line rule, Op. at 11, is

particularly unwise as a matter of policy. First, there is no bright

line. An officer cannot know the permissible scope of a search

until the basis for the arrest is known, which it is not when he

conducts the search. Thus an officer who has all the evidence

needed to make an arrest will proceed to conduct an unrelated

search, as occurred in Knowles, 525 U.S. at 488. A later

warrantless arrest, based on any discovered contraband, will be

condoned under the court’s new rule as long as the officer also

arrests the nearby person for the unrelated offense for which the

officer had probable cause to arrest prior to the search. Along

the way, the protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment are

lost. 

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6

Second, the court’s new rule creates perverse incentives for

law enforcement that run contrary to the policy determinations

made by the Supreme Court in recognizing narrow exceptions

to the warrant requirement. By authorizing the post hoc

ratification of unconstitutional conduct, the court’s approach

encourages law enforcement officers to use minor pretextual

arrestable offenses — ones for which, in practice, an offender

would rarely be arrested — to justify fishing expeditions for

evidence unrelated to the offense for which the officer originally

had probable cause to arrest. If the officer happens to find

evidence of a serious law violation, the officer can make the

arrest and everything will have been proper; if the officer finds

nothing and lets the offender off, courts of law are unlikely to

have the opportunity to ensure that police conduct is consonant

with the Fourth Amendment. The record in the instant case

demonstrates that a police officer who first searches and then

arrests will testify, when pressed, that he intended, before the

search, to arrest the suspect who was “detained.” Not even

critics of Belton’s scope-of-search rule propose this outcome.

See Thornton, 541 U.S. at 632 (Scalia, J., with whom Ginsburg,

J., joins, concurring in the judgment); id. at 634 (Stevens, J.,

with whom Souter, J. joins, dissenting). The bright line

established by the Supreme Court in Robinson and in Belton and

its progeny is thus overturned in favor of a rule allowing

virtually standardless warrantless searches. The Supreme Court

has never endorsed such an approach, even for cars. See, e.g.,

Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433 (1973).

Instead of following the long line of cases beginning at least

with Robinson, the court holds that Rawlings v. Kentucky, 448

U.S. 98 (1980), is dispositive of Powell’s appeal. Op. at 2, 5.

In Rawlings, then-Justice Rehnquist, writing for the Court,

upheld a search “as incident to [Rawlings’] formal arrest.” Id.

at 111 (emphasis added). Rawlings and a companion were

detained by the police for approximately forty-five minutes

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7

2

 Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966).

before Rawlings was searched and then formally arrested. See

id. at 107, 110-11. The Court concluded that “[w]here the

formal arrest followed quickly on the heels of the challenged

search of [his] person, we do not believe it particularly

important that the search preceded the arrest rather than vice

versa.” Id. at 111 (emphasis added). The court today latches

onto this language and states that “[a]pplying the teaching of

Rawlings to the facts of this case, we must uphold Officer Jones’

search of the car. . . . As in Rawlings, that is, the ‘the formal

arrest followed quickly on the heels of the challenged search.’”

Op. at 6-7 (quoting 448 U.S. at 111). But the court cannot

explain why the Supreme Court in Rawlings emphasized that

only the formal arrest followed the challenged search. The court

can reach its result only by ignoring both the language of

Rawlings and its factual context, which shows that the holding

was not a wide-ranging abandonment of the Robinson balance

but rather a straightforward application of existing law. Doing

so distorts the rule of Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/American

Express, Inc., 490 U.S. 477, 484 (1989), that a lower court

should follow a Supreme Court decision that directly controls.

Op. at 11.

To state the obvious, the holding of an opinion can be

understood only in the context of the case that was before the

court. See Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 735-36 (1991);

Phelps v. United States, 421 U.S. 330, 333-34 (1975); Aka v.

Wash. Hosp. Ctr., 156 F.3d 1284, 1291 (D.C Cir. 1998) (en

banc). The context defines the case or controversy that the court

is entitled to resolve. In Rawlings, the defendant not only was

in police custody prior to the search of his person by the police

— he had been given his Miranda warnings.2

 Rawlings, 448

U.S. at 100. During the forty-five minutes of detention while

the police were seeking a search warrant for unlawful drugs, the

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8

police had informed Rawlings that he could leave the apartment

only if he consented to a body search. Id. The police had come

to the apartment with an arrest warrant for drug violations by

another man and seen marijuana seeds in plain view on a mantel.

Id. The fact that Rawlings was in police custody — the police

instructions and the Miranda warnings eliminated any ambiguity

about the intentions of the police — before the search of his

person created the exigencies underlying the exception to the

warrant requirement discussed in Robinson. Moreover, before

Rawlings was searched, the police had obtained a search warrant

for the apartment. It was in this context — a context without

ambiguity, in which Rawlings was clearly under custodial arrest

— that the Supreme Court made its statement that it was “not

particularly important” whether Rawlings was searched before

his “formal arrest” by the police. Id. at 111 (emphasis added).

The Court’s reference to “formal arrest” signals that it

recognized that Rawlings was in custody prior to the search.

After all, the Court had just completed an extended discussion

of Rawlings’ suppression claim based on his having been

unlawfully detained for forty-five minutes. Id. at 104-06. The

evidence in Rawlings thus avoided the conundrum presented to

law enforcement under the court’s new rule because Rawlings

was already in police custody before they searched his person

and any further search of the premises occurred pursuant to a

search warrant for the apartment. Id. at 100-01 . 

It is telling that the court can point to no instance in which

the Supreme Court has adopted its out-of-context interpretation

of Rawlings. The court today chooses to believe that the

Supreme Court’s use of the modifier “formal” was a mere

superfluity because the Supreme Court did not speak at length

about the difference between custodial and formal arrest. Op. at

7-8. But the context of the one-paragraph discussion speaks

otherwise and the court can point to no indication that the

Supreme Court intended to depart so dramatically from its

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9

previous approach. The Supreme Court’s decisions subsequent

to Rawlings, in Belton and its progeny, adhere to the Robinson

balance even when citing Rawlings and require that the suspect

be in lawful police custody prior to a warrantless search. Such

a momentous departure from decades of precedent would not be

hidden. Cf. Whitman v. Am. Trucking Ass’ns, 531 U.S. 457, 468

(2001). Nor would so significant a turnabout be subsequently

ignored by the Court when, as in Belton, 453 U.S. at 459, the

Court was formulating a “straightforward rule” for the police. 

Moreover, the court today points to no instance in which the

Supreme Court has used the phrase “incident to” to mean

anything other than a search that has followed a lawful custodial

arrest; the formal arrest may follow the search, but for the

warrant exception to apply, the police must have unambiguously

taken prior action such that a reasonable person in the suspect’s

position would understand that he was in police custody and that

formal arrest would follow shortly. See Belton, 453 U.S. at 461;

Robinson, 414 U.S. at 226 (quoting Chimel, 395 U.S. at 762-63);

id. at 232 (quoting People v. Chiagles, 142 N.E. 583, 584 (N.Y.

1923) (Brandeis, J.)); Ochana v. Flores, 347 F.3d 266, 270 (7th

Cir. 2003). While the Supreme Court has shifted ground over

the years on the scope of the area that the police may reasonably

search incident to an arrest, compare Smith v. Ohio, 494 U.S.

541, 543 (1990), with Chimel, 395 U.S. 752, it has adhered to

the position that the suspect’s prior lawful custody by the police

creates the exigencies justifying the exception to the warrant

requirement. For example, in Smith, 494 U.S. at 543, the

Supreme Court cited Rawlings for the proposition that “[i]t is

axiomatic that an incident search may not precede an arrest and

serve as part of its justification.” Ignored by this court today,

the Supreme Court in Rawlings, in rejecting Rawlings’

challenge to the lawfulness of the search of his person,

referenced only cases in which police custody served as the

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10

3

 Each of the cases cited in Rawlings, 448 U.S. at 111,

involved police action that clearly signaled to the suspect that he was

in police custody prior to the search: 

In Bailey v. United States, 389 F.2d 305 (D.C. Cir. 1967), the

police had spotted a car matching a “look-out” for a car wanted in

connection with a robbery and assault, forced Bailey’s car to the side

of the road while two other police cars blocked his car at the front and

rear, and an officer, “apparently with gun in hand, ordered the

occupants to sit still and keep their hands in plain sight.” Id. at 307.

In Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U.S. 291 (1973), Murphy had

voluntarily come to the police station upon learning of his estranged

wife’s murder. Suspecting Murphy might be implicated, the police

asked Murphy if they could take a sampling from his fingernails. See

id. at 292. When Murphy refused, the police took the sampling over

his objection. Murphy “was not formally ‘arrested’ until

approximately a month later.” Id. at 294. The Court noted that at the

time the sampling was taken Murphy, “was obviously aware of the

detectives’ suspicions [that he had murdered his wife].” Id. at 296.

That was sufficient, the Court concluded, to motivate him “to attempt

to destroy any incriminating evidence,” and in order to preserve

evidence, the Court held that the police were justified “in subjecting

him to the very limited search necessary to preserve the highly

evanescent evidence they found under his fingernails.” Id. 

In United States v. Gorman, 355 F.2d 151 (2d Cir. 1965), the

district court found that the police officer approached two known drug

addicts (Gorman and Roche) whom he suspected of using narcotics,

saw Gorman injecting himself with a hypodermic needle, and ordered

the men to stay in the car where they were seated; the officer then

placed Gorman under arrest, and thereafter searched the car. Rejecting

Roche’s claim that he had not consented to the car search, the Second

Circuit injected dictum into its opinion, considering an alternative

basis not argued by the government, for holding that the search was

reasonable because the police had probable cause to arrest Roche

precondition to triggering the warrant exception.3

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11

although the formal arrest was postponed. Id. at 160.

The final case cited in Rawlings involved a plain view seizure.

In United States v. Brown, 463 F.2d 949 (D.C. Cir. 1972), a police

officer observed two men in a telephone both and suspected a drug

transaction was taking place. The officer approached and identified

himself, and upon noticing Brown’s eyes were glassy concluded he

was high on narcotics. The officer seized an envelope sticking out of

Brown’s shirt pocket — an “envelope of the type in which he had

found narcotics on previous occasions” — and found capsules with

white power and “formally notified [Brown] that he was under arrest.”

Id. at 950. The district court ruled that an envelope was in plain view;

on appeal, this court cited Bailey and Gorman, upholding the search

even though Brown “ha[d] not formally been placed under arrest.” Id.

4

 The Seventh Circuit, in considering this issue in Ochana,

347 F.3d at 270, held that “[i]n order to conduct a Belton search, the

occupant of the vehicle must actually be held under custodial arrest.”

As the court’s opinion notes, Op. at 6, however, since the Supreme

Court’s decision in Knowles, other circuits to consider this issue have

reached different conclusions by focusing on the language in

Rawlings. What the court fails to acknowledge, however, is that the

evidence in those cases, and in the pre-Knowles cases, is very different

from the instant case and that those courts’ citations to Rawlings

reflect that Rawlings speaks to searches of suspects who are under

custodial arrest. See United States v. Currence, 446 F.3d 554, 557

(4th Cir. 2006) (prior to search, police approached suspect identified

by confidential informant, told him to get off his bicycle, and upon

learning of an outstanding warrant for his arrest, handcuffed him;

police then searched bicycle and after finding drugs in the bicycle

placed defendant under formal arrest); United States v. Smith, 389

The court overstates the support in the circuit cases, Op. at 6, for

in evaluating the reasonableness of police action, the circuit

cases involved direct communication by the police that a suspect

was not free to leave and would be arrested, and thus do not

align with the court’s extrapolation of Rawlings.

4

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12

F.3d 944, 951 (9th Cir. 2004) (prior to search, driver pulled over for

speeding was unable to produce license and registration or

identification and was told by the police to get out of car and walk to

patrol car; upon determining driver did not have valid driver’s license

and registration and had given the police a false social security

number, police patted down driver and searched the car); United States

v. Montgomery, 377 F.3d 582, 586 (6th Cir. 2004) (prior to search,

police told defendant she was in “investigative custody” and she was

given Miranda warnings); United States v. Lugo, 170 F.3d 996, 1003

(10th Cir. 1999) (prior to search, driver of speeding car stopped by

police was told he was not free to go and told several times that he

would be arrested if he could not produce any identification; driver did

not produce identification and when motor vehicle records indicated

driver had not been issued a license, police patted down driver and

searched passenger compartment of car); United States v. Bizier, 111

F.3d 214, 217 (1st Cir. 1997) (prior to search of car, driver pulled over

for speeding consented to the search of the car trunk and made

incriminating admissions that drugs were inside the passenger

compartment); United States v. Banshee, 91 F.3d 99, 102 (11th Cir.

1996) (search upheld under Terry in view of probable cause to arrest

and exigent circumstances — no female officer available to search

female passenger; dictum citing Rawlings where, prior to search,

passenger in stopped car was asked by police whether she had

“anything” on her person and what she had “stuck” around her waist;

when passenger claimed to be pregnant, passenger was frisked and

then handcuffed); United States v. Hernandez, 825 F.2d 846, 852 (5th

Cir. 1987) (prior to search, defendant matching witness’s description

of money passer was stopped by police and asked to show paper

money and upon production, police frisked defendant for weapons;

upon feeling crumpled paper in pocket and defendant’s refusal to

produce it, police officer reached into pocket and retrieved

mimeographed copy of twenty dollar bill; Fifth Circuit viewed

defendant as being under custodial arrest at time of search); United

States v. Donaldson, 793 F.2d 498, 503 (2d Cir. 1986) (prior to search,

police confronted defendant with his culpability for harboring a

fugitive, based on statement of fugitive’s father that fugitive was in

defendant’s apartment, and placed defendant under custodial arrest;

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13

defendant formally arrested after search of apartment revealed

fugitive); United States v. Ilazi, 730 F.2d 1120, 1126-27 (8th Cir.

1984) (prior to search, police made investigatory stops of two men

without luggage deplaning at airport and told them they were under

arrest; subsequent search of their boots and underwear revealed

drugs).

To the extent the circuits speak in broad terms in citing

Rawlings, the factual context of these cases paints a very different

picture than is suggested by the court’s string citation. Notably, the

opinions from the Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Circuits do not indicate any

awareness of Knowles — it is absent from their analysis. The Sixth

Circuit, without explanation, simply indicates that Knowles may not

be fully consistent with Rawlings. Montgomery, 377 F.3d at 586. The

Seventh Circuit, in contrast, considered the effect of Knowles with

respect to the timing of Belton searches. 

Heretofore, this court’s precedent has reflected the limits of

the language in Rawlings on which the court today relies. For

example, in United States v. Riley, 351 F.3d 1265 (D.C. Cir.

2003), three police officers surrounded Riley, whom the police

had probable cause to arrest for selling drugs, and ordered him

to get off his moped. Id. at 1267. At that point one of the

officers noticed a bulge in Riley’s sock and reached down and

pulled out a package from his sock. Id. As the court today

notes, this court held, citing Rawlings, that under the

circumstances, it mattered little that Riley’s arrest followed the

search of his person. Id. at 1269. What the court today fails to

acknowledge is the court’s recognition in Riley that there was a

prior custodial arrest when the police ordered Riley to get off his

moped and surrounded him so he could not move; the court

stated “it seems clear that by [the time of the search] a

reasonable person in Riley’s shoes would have believed he was

not free to leave.” Id. 

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5

 The absence of both evidence and district court findings is

explained by the government’s changing theories to justify the search

of the car and the seizure of the contents of the backpack on the rear

seat. See Powell v. United States, 451 F.3d 862 (D.C. Cir. 2006)

(vacated upon grant of rehearing en banc). In the district court, the

government argued that the search of the car was incident to the arrest

of a third man, who was sitting in the car, because open containers of

alcohol were in plain view inside the car. Hence, the government

offered evidence focusing on the third man and the search of the car

after he was removed from the car by the police. On appeal, the

government confessed error because the district court’s finding of a

lawful search based on plain view was clearly erroneous, being

directly contrary to the officer’s testimony. The government then

changed its theory, contending that the existence of probable cause to

arrest Powell for disorderly conduct for public urination was alone

sufficient to uphold the search of the car. Id. at 866-67 (D.C. Cir.

2006). The government relied on Rawlings and Riley, 351 F.3d at

1269. After the court unanimously rejected that theory, the

government before the en banc court has adopted the panel dissent’s

theory, relying on Rawlings, that an arrest must, in fact, occur based

on the probable cause existing prior to the search of the car. Id. at

873. 

Unlike Rawlings or Riley, there is no evidence that Powell

or the other urinating man was under custodial arrest when the

police searched the car, nor any such finding by the district

court.5

 The court relies on Officer Jones’ conclusory statement

at the suppression hearing that two other officers were detaining

Powell and the other man in order to arrest them for urinating in

public. Op. at 6. Although Officer Jones asserted that the two

men were not free to leave and that they were going to be

arrested for urinating in public, he offered no factual description

or temporal identification whatsoever to support his bald

assertions, much less to explain in what manner the two men

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15

were “detained” prior to the search of the car. In fact, Jones

admitted that prior to the search of the car, unlike in Rawlings,

see supra note 3 and in the circuit cases cited by the court, see

supra note 4, the police had not said anything to the two men;

nor had the men been frisked or handcuffed. Jones also

admitted that prior to the search the police had no information

about the two urinating men or about the car, and no information

linking the men to the car. There is no evidence that either

Powell or the other man said anything to suggest that they knew,

prior to the car search, that they were in police custody. The

evidence thus shows only that three police officers saw two men

urinating in public in a non-residential area late at night, they got

out of their car, and two officers began approaching the two men

from the rear while the third officer approached a car in which

a third man was sitting and searched it. The conclusory

testimony — they were “detained” — affords no way for an

appellate court to determine, particularly in the absence of any

district court findings of fact, whether Powell was, like

Rawlings and Riley, in police custody prior to the search of the

car, much less whether he understood prior to the search that he

was going to be arrested for urinating in public. To so conclude

would require rank speculation at the appellate level.

The Supreme Court has never suggested that a mere

conversation with a police officer, much less an officer’s

approach, suffices to trigger either of the historical exceptions

to the warrant requirement. Absent police action that would

alert a suspect that he is in custody, thereby providing a motive

for a suspect to resist the police or to destroy evidence, even the

existence of probable cause does not suffice. See Knowles, 525

U.S. at 116-17. For all we know from the barren evidentiary

record in this case, the two officers who approached the

urinating men as the other officer searched the car simply said:

“Don’t you know you can’t pee in public?” just like an officer

might say to a pedestrian, “Don’t you know you can’t cross the

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16

street when the light is red?” or to the driver of a car, “Don’t you

know you can’t go through a stop sign without stopping?”

Unlike the statements by the police in the cases cited in

Rawlings, see supra note 3, and in the circuit cases, supra note

4, such statements do not indicate that the officer has decided to

take any further police action, either by issuing a citation or by

taking the person into custody or by arresting him. Neither does

police silence. Moreover, as Powell suggests, there is nothing

to indicate the police would have arrested the two men solely for

urinating in public when to do so would have entailed

transporting them for booking and several hours of paperwork.

The government proffered no evidence, much less statistical

data, to support an inference that the officers would have

arrested Powell in the absence of the fruits of the car search.

Alternatively, the court attempts to justify the search of the

car because the presence of a passenger indicated the need for

the police to search the car before taking anyone into custody or

making a formal arrest. Op. at 10. The third man is a red

herring insofar as neither the government nor the court purports

to justify the search on the basis of Terry, 392 U.S. 1. In any

event, the car was lawfully parked a few feet in front of the two

urinating men. The police had no information about the car or

any of the men, nor any indication that the men were armed or

dangerous. The police never saw Powell or the second man in

the car. The police did not speak with even one of the three men

before a police officer searched the car. As the Supreme Court

observed in Knowles, 525 U.S. at 117-18, there were lawful

ways for officers to protect themselves and to search for

weapons. Perhaps the district court would have found that the

police officers could have justified having the third man exit the

car, see Wilson, 519 U.S. at 414, and conducting a patdown

search, see Terry, 392 U.S. 1. But there is no evidence here that

the police had any reason to suspect that the passenger was

dangerous or that the car itself contained contraband or

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17

dangerous weapons. Cf. Cady, 413 U.S. at 446-47. The

government offered no evidence to suggest that removing the

passenger would not have addressed any concern about police

safety; nor has it made that argument on appeal. As the Supreme

Court indicated in Maryland v. Buie, 494 U.S. 325, 334 (1990),

where the police arrived on the scene with an arrest warrant for

Buie, “there must be articulable facts which . . . would warrant

a reasonably prudent officer in believing that the area to be

swept harbors an individual posing a danger to those on the

arrest scene.” Id. The Court took pains to note that:

despite the danger that inheres in on-the-street

encounters and the need for police to act quickly for

their own safety, the Court in Terry did not adopt a

bright-line rule authorizing frisks for weapons in all

confrontational encounters. Even in high crime areas,

where the possibility that any given individual is armed

is significant, Terry requires reasonable, individualized

suspicion before a frisk for weapons can be conducted.

Buie, 494 U.S. at 334 n.2. The district court here made no such

finding and this court has recently reaffirmed that not every

potentially dangerous situation confronting the police can justify

a warrantless search of an occupied car. See United States v.

Spinner, 475 F.3d 356 (D.C. Cir. 2007). 

In Thornton the Supreme Court held, embracing the

Robinson balance, 541 U.S. at 620-21, that the Belton exception

applies regardless of whether the suspect was in the car before

the police took him into custody or had been seen in the car by

the police and recently exited the car, id. at 621-22. There is no

district court finding that the police had reasonable grounds to

conclude that Powell was a recent occupant of the lawfully

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18

6

 Urinating in public is a violation of the District of

Columbia’s disorderly conduct statute, D.C.CODE § 22-1321 (2001);

Scott v. United States, 878 A.2d 486, 487-88 (D.C. 2005). 

parked car. But even assuming an arrest for disorderly conduct6

would justify the search of a lawfully parked car several feet

away, and even assuming Thornton can be stretched to fit the

evidence (or lack thereof) here, see Op. at 11; but see United

States v. Mapp, 476 F.3d 1012, 1019 (D.C. Cir. 2007), the court

ignores the requirements of the Fourth Amendment for

searching cars and for triggering the warrant exception,

requirements underlying the government’s concession that the

search of the car in Powell’s case could not be justified on the

basis of the fruits of the search. See supra note 5. See also

Thornton, 541 U.S. at 624 (“[L]ower court decisions now seem

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)” [adopted in Robinson.])

(O’Connor, J., concurring in part).

Accordingly, with no consideration of the history that gave

rise to the Fourth Amendment’s proscription of “unreasonable

searches and seizures,” see Chimel, 395 U.S. at 760-61, and no

acknowledgment that Rawlings embraces the balance struck by

the Supreme Court in Robinson between privacy interests and

police safety as carried forward in Belton and its progeny, the

court today leaves the venerable balance embodied in the

exception to the warrant requirement in tatters. The “few

specifically established and well-delineated exceptions” to the

warrant requirement, Acevedo, 500 U.S. at 580; Katz v. United

States, 389 U.S. 347, 357 (1967), based on the Robinson balance

were neither expanded nor abandoned in Rawlings. Because the

government bears the burden of showing that an exception to the

warrant requirement applies, see Robinson, 414 U.S. at 243;

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19

United States v. Most, 876 F.2d 191, 193 (D.C. Cir. 1989), and

it has failed to show that Powell, like the defendant in Rawlings,

was in police custody prior to the search of the car, even

assuming his connection to the car, the conviction cannot stand.

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