Source: http://supreme.nolo.com/us/395/818/case.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 02:39:55+00:00

Document:
of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Since we agree with the petitioner that the evidence was taken in the course of an unconstitutional search of his home, the judgment of the California Court of Appeal must be reversed. Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643.
Informed that the petitioner had been involved in a robbery, police officers went to his residence. The petitioner was not at home, but a 15-year-old girl who identified herself as the petitioner's wife allowed the officers to enter and search her belongings. When several rings taken by the robbers were found, the officers "staked out" the house and awaited the petitioner's return. Upon his arrival late that night, he was immediately arrested as he alighted from his car. The officers searched the petitioner and the car, and then again entered and searched the house, where they discovered under a couch a jewelry case stolen in the robbery. The car was parked outside the house and 15 or 20 feet away from it, and the officers did not request permission to conduct the second search of the house. No warrant was ever obtained. The trial court nevertheless upheld the second search on the ground that it was incident to the petitioner's arrest, and the Court of Appeal agreed, holding that the area searched was "under the [petitioner's] effective control" at the time of the arrest.
"can be incident to an arrest only if it is substantially contemporaneous with the arrest and is confined to the immediate vicinity of the arrest. "
"it has always been assumed that one's house cannot lawfully be searched without a search warrant, except as an incident to a lawful arrest therein."
MR. JUSTICE BLACK concurs in granting certiorari, but dissents from the reversal and remand of the judgment without a hearing.
* Because of our disposition of the case on this ground, we find it unnecessary to consider the contentions of the petitioner that his "wife" did not voluntarily consent to the first search, and that the officers lacked probable cause to arrest the petitioner.
I found inexplicable the Court's acceptance of the warrantless arrest in Chimel v. California, ante, p. 395 U. S. 752, while at the same time holding the contemporaneous search invalid without considering the exigencies created by the arrest itself. See id., p. 395 U. S. 770 (dissenting opinion). Even more mystifying are the opinions and the orders issued in the instant case and six others which have been held pending the decision in Chimel: No. 837, Von Cleef v. New Jersey, ante, p. 395 U. S. 814; No. 1097, Misc., Harris v. Illinois, post, p. 985; No. 1037, Misc., Mahoney v. LaVallee, post, p. 985; No. 500, Schmear v. Ganon, post, p. 978; No. 550, Misc., Jamison v. United States, post, p. 986, and No. 395, Misc., Chrisman v. California, post, p. 985. I fear that the summary dispositions in these cases, which strain so hard to avoid deciding the retroactivity of Chimel, will only magnify the confusion in this important area of the law.
arrest and its bearing on the warrantless search. Finally, the per curiam in Von Cleef invokes Kremen v. United States, 353 U. S. 346 (1957), without noting that the seizures in Von Cleef were limited to evidence and instrumentalities of the crimes being investigated and for which the arrests were made.
I join the grant of certiorari in this case, but dissent from the summary reversal.

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