Opinion ID: 1800687
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Heading Rank: 4

Heading: search incidental to lawful arrest

Text: After making an arrest, an officer has the right to much more thoroughly search a defendant and his wing span, or lunge space, for weapons or evidence incident to a valid arrest. State v. Sanders, 36,941 (La.App.2d Cir.4/11/03), 842 So.2d 1260, writ denied, 03-1695 (La.5/14/04), 872 So.2d 516. This rule is justified by the need to remove any weapon the arrestee might seek to use to resist arrest or to escape, and the need to prevent the concealment or destruction of evidence. Thornton v. United States, 541 U.S. 615, 124 S.Ct. 2127, 158 L.Ed.2d 905 (2004); Chimel, supra . In State v. Williams, 398 So.2d 1112(La.1981), this Court held: When a custodial arrest is made, there is always some danger that the person arrested may seek to use a weapon, or that evidence may be concealed or destroyed. To safeguard himself and others, and to prevent the loss of evidence, it is reasonable for the arresting officer to conduct a prompt, warrantless search of the arrestee's person, and the area `within his immediate control' construing that phrase to mean the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence. United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 14, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 2485, 53 L.Ed.2d 538, 550 (1977); Chimel v. California, supra ; State v. Clift, 339 So.2d 755 (La.1976). A search incident to a lawful arrest not only may be conducted without a warrant, but it may also be made whether or not there is probable cause to believe that the person arrested has a weapon or is about to destroy evidence. The potential dangers lurking in all custodial arrests make warrantless searches of items within the `immediate control' area reasonable without requiring the arresting officer to calculate the probability that weapons or destructible evidence may be involved. United States v. Chadwick supra. at 2485 (dicta); United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 94 S.Ct. 467, 38 L.Ed.2d 427 (1973). The federal Fifth Circuit interpreted evidence some eight feet away from the defendant to be outside the area within [the defendant's] immediate control, and thus, the search was invalid. See United States v. Johnson, 18 F.3d 69, 73 (5th Cir.1994) (search by four officers of defendant's briefcase, yielding checkbooks and other evidence supporting the city employee's fraudulent loans and misappropriations of grants, while defendant sat unrestrained at his desk some eight feet away showed callous disregard for fourth amendment). On rehearing, the Fifth Circuit upheld its previous ruling, but described the distance between defendant Johnson and the open briefcase as only five to six feet. See United States v. Johnson, supra., n. 3. See also United States v. Morales, 923 F.2d 621, 626-27 (8th Cir.1991)(warrantless search of bags valid as incident to arrest when contemporaneous with arrest, arrestee held bags as officers approached, and was approximately three feet away and not handcuffed during search). Even if the arrestee has been handcuffed, courts are still inclined to find that he might have been able to get at a nearby case, at least if his hands were cuffed in front of him rather than behind him. See 3 Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure, § 5.5(a), p. 212 (4th ed.2004); see also United States v. Nohara, 3 F.3d 1239, 1243 (9th Cir.1993)(warrantless search of bag valid as incident to arrest when contemporaneous with arrest and arrestee held bag as officers approached, even though arrestee handcuffed during search). Similarly, in United States v. Bennett, supra , the court of appeals upheld as reasonable the warrantless search of the motel room registered to persons ultimately convicted of robbing numerous banks in the Chicago area. Upon observing a car, parked at a motel, which fit the description of the getaway car in several of the robberies, an officer ascertained that the car was registered to the occupants in room 120. After calling for back-up, the officers knocked on the door of room 120, and a voice with a southern accent, asked who was at the door. Eyewitnesses had described one of the robbers as having a southern accent. The officer identified himself and indicated that he wanted to speak to them about their car. When defendant Bennett exited the room, the officer immediately recognized him from bank surveillance photos, and arrested him in the hallway. The officers learned from Bennett that Steven Keith was inside the room. When the officers entered room 120, they observed a large revolver in an open suitcase near the front door, and Keith in the nearby bed. The officers also recognized Keith from the bank surveillance photos and placed him under arrest. Keith admitted that the revolver and the grey suitcase were his. The officers searched the grey suitcase and a black suitcase in which they found a loaded .357 magnum handgun and a loaded 12-gauge sawed-off shotgun. They also found a loaded .38 caliber snub-nose revolver under the mattress of one of the beds, and a light colored reddish-brown wig in an blue nylon bag. Bennett, 908 F.2d at 191. Following their convictions on numerous counts stemming from their bank robbery spree, Bennett and Keith challenged the district court's decision to deny their motions to suppress the evidence seized during the officers' warrantless search of the luggage in their motel room in violation of their Fourth Amendment rights. The district court determined the search was reasonable based on the exigent circumstances confronting the officers, and further determined that the officers properly seized the evidence under the plain view and search incident to arrest exceptions to the warrant requirement. Id. at 192. The Federal United States Seventh Circuit deemed the officers' subsequent search of the defendants' luggage was justified under Chimel, even under circumstances where both defendants were handcuffed and placed against the wall of the room following their arrest, crediting the testimony of one officer who testified that the officers conducted the search because they feared that the defendants would gain access to the weapons, or that other accomplices who knew where the weapons were would storm the room. Id. at 193. Moreover, the officers were previously aware that the perpetrators of the bank robberies had used several different weapons, and thereafter observed a single revolver in plain view. The Federal United States Seventh Circuit discounted the defendants' claim that they were handcuffed and thus not a threat during the search for weapons, reasoning that [c]ustodial arrests are often dangerous; the police must act decisively and cannot be expected to make punctilious judgments regarding what is within and what is just beyond the arrestee's grasp. Id. (quoting United States v. Queen, 847 F.2d 346, 353 (7th Cir.1988) and U.S. v. Lyons, 706 F.2d 321, 330 (D.C.Cir.1983)); See, e.g., United States v. Mason, 523 F.2d 1122, 1125-26 (D.C.Cir.1975) (sustaining search of a closet three or four feet away from a standing, handcuffed defendant who had attempted to obtain a jacket hanging therein). But the touchstone remains the justification articulated in Chimel. Thus, considering the Supreme Court's admonition that [e]very arrest must be presumed to present a risk of danger to the arresting officer, Washington v. Chrisman, 455 U.S. 1, 7, 102 S.Ct. 812, 817, 70 L.Ed.2d 778 (1982), searches have been upheld even when hindsight might suggest that the likelihood of the defendant reaching the area in question was slight. Queen, 847 F.2d at 353. Even when the contraband seized is not as inherently dangerous as the weapons seized in Bennett, at least one state court has upheld the warrantless search and seizure of drugs from luggage after the defendant had been arrested and handcuffed. See State v. Galpin, 01-0445 (11/25/03), 318 Mont. 318, 80 P.3d 1207, 1217-18. Defendant's coat and duffel handcuffed and placed on his knees, which the court determined, placed him in even closer proximity to his coat and duffel bag and a man leaning his body and reaching, even with his hands in cuffs, could potentially reach the articles within that range. In the present scenario, defendant argues that his hands were cuffed behind him, and in such cases, a warrantless search incident to arrest is rarely justified because most any location is outside the area of his control. See, e.g., United States v. Jones, 475 F.2d 723 (5th Cir. 1973), in which the court observed: [I]f defendant's hands were cuffed in front and he were in close proximity to the suitcase, then the search here could probably be justified under Chimel. Even with the presence of numerous FBI agents in the room, we cannot say that it would be unreasonable to believe that Jones might attempt to lay his hands on a weapon located inside the suitcase. But if defendant's hands were cuffed behind him in such a manner that he was denied access to the suitcase, then the search could not be upheld under Chimel because the suitcase would not be within his immediate control or within an area from which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence. Jones, 475 F.2d at 728. Guns and drugs frequently go hand-in-hand, see United States v. Trullo, 809 F.2d 108, 113 (1st Cir.1987) ([T]o substantial dealers in narcotics, firearms are as much tools of the trade as are most common recognized articles of drug paraphernalia.) (internal citations omitted). The officers in the instant case acted reasonably in assuming as much and in conducting a protective sweep for weapons. Indeed, the officers testified that they were looking for weapons when they searched the black duffel bag. Defendant's hands were cuffed behind his back, and he was seated at the doorway to the motel room, some six feet away from the bag. The District of Columbia Circuit noted that the area searched for a weapon must be conceivably accessible to the arrestee-assuming that he was neither `an acrobat [nor] a Houdini.' Lyons, 706 F.2d at 330 ( quoting United States v. Mapp, 476 F.2d 67, 80 (2d Cir.1973)); accord United States v. Scios, 590 F.2d 956, 964 n. 15 (D.C.Cir. 1978) ( en banc ); United States v. Griffith, 537 F.2d 900, 904 (7th Cir.1976). In Thornton v. United States, 541 U.S. 615, 124 S.Ct. 2127, 158 L.Ed.2d 905(2004), the United States Supreme Court, held that the Fourth Amendment allows an officer to search vehicle's passenger compartment as a contemporaneous incident of arrest, even when officer does not make contact until the person arrested has already left the vehicle. [4] Similarly, in New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981), the United States Supreme Court, held that: when a policeman has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupants of an automobile he may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of the vehicle and may also examine the contents of any container found within the passenger compartment and such container, i.e., an object capable of holding another object, may be searched whether it is open or closed, and where defendant, an automobile occupant, was subject of lawful custodial arrest on charge of possessing marijuana, search of defendant's jacket, which was found inside passenger compartment immediately following arrest, was incident to lawful custodial arrest, notwithstanding that officer unzipped pockets and discovered cocaine. Here, it is undisputed that the defendant admitted to the police officer that he had smoked a blunt (hand-rolled marijuana cigar marijuana), and admitted that the partially-smoked remains of that blunt in the ashtray was his at the time of the custodial arrest. It is indisputable this was a lawful arrest of the defendant. However, the defendant argues that the duffel bag was outside the scope of the permissible search area, i.e. it was neither on his person nor within an area under his immediate control. We disagree. Although the chance of the defendant freeing himself to imperil the officers or to destroy evidence was remote. However, the officers could not take the chance that the black duffel bag contained weapons, which the defendant could use to arm himself; or more importantly, the two other occupants could have returned to the room at anytime, potentially armed themselves with weapons and attempted to liberate the defendant or destroy the evidence. A custodial arrest is fluid and [t]he danger to the police officer flows from the fact of the arrest, and its attendant proximity, stress, and uncertainty, Robinson, supra, at 234-235, and n. 5, 414 U.S. 218, 94 S.Ct. 467, 38 L.Ed.2d 427 (emphasis added). See Washington v. Chrisman, 455 U.S. 1, 7, 102 S.Ct. 812, 70 L.Ed.2d 778 (1982). Thus, we find that the search of the black duffel was incidental to a lawful arrest of the defendant. Based on the totality of these circumstances, the trial court's decision to grant defendant's motion to suppress the bundles of marijuana seized from the black duffel bag was in error. Thus, we find the court of appeal erred in affirming the trial court's ruling granting the defendant's motion to suppress the evidence. Accordingly, the decisions of the lower courts are reversed and this matter is remanded to the district court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. REVERSED AND REMANDED. CALOGERO, C.J., concurs and assigns reasons. KIMBALL, J., dissents for the legal reasons cited by Traylor. VICTORY, J., concurs in the result. TRAYLOR, J., dissents and assigns reasons. WEIMER, J., concurs in the result and assigns reasons.