Opinion ID: 205219
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Search Incident to Arrest and Arizona v. Gant

Text: Slone advances a second argument that would apply only to the vehicle evidence that police recovered during a search of the truck's passenger compartment. He maintains that, under the Supreme Court's decision in Arizona v. Gant , the search of his vehicle was unconstitutional. We respectfully disagree. Although Gant limits the circumstances when officers may conduct a search of a passenger compartment incident to a lawful arrest, the search was lawful because it would have been reasonable for officers to believe that they might find evidence related to the crime for which Slone was arrested. In Gant, the Court reminded lower courts that established precedent authorizes police to search a vehicle incident to a recent occupant's arrest only when the arrestee is unsecured and within reaching distance of the passenger compartment at the time of the search. 129 S.Ct. at 1719; see also New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 461, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981) (announcing the holding whose reach Gant clarified and explaining that officer safety provides the underlying rationale for the search-incident-to-arrest exception to the warrant requirement). Slone argues that he was neither unsecured nor within reaching distance of the passenger compartment when the search was conducted and that, therefore, the vehicle evidence must be suppressed. However, Slone fails to grapple with the rest of the Court's decision. Critically, the Court held in Gant that police may search the passenger compartment incident to arrest if a third, standalone criterion is satisfiedalthough that criterion had not been made clear by the Court's prior precedent. [W]e also conclude that circumstances unique to the vehicle context justify a search incident to a lawful arrest when it is reasonable to believe evidence relevant to the crime of arrest might be found in the vehicle.  Id. at 1719 (emphasis added). While a traffic arrest, for example, will not often furnish the basis for a search, in other cases the offense of arrest will supply a reasonable basis for searching a car's passenger compartment. Id.; see also id. at 1723-24 (clearly stating the case holding); United States v. Stotler, 591 F.3d 935, 939 (7th Cir.2010) (discussing the Court's decision and its implications). In this case, it was reasonable to believe that evidence related to the offense of arrest would be found in the passenger compartment, because agents had arrested Slone while he was in the process of conducting security or countersurveillance operations in a drug trafficking conspiracy. As the district court observed, officers could have reasonably expected to find money, cell phones, maps, drawings, or other evidence linking the occupants of the red Dodge pickup to the crime. Slone's argument that the district court erred because the enumerated pieces of possible evidence are not contraband, nor necessarily evidence of any crime, misperceives the inquiry. The offense of arrest was conspiracyevidence that the parties were engaged in a joint venture was what officers reasonably would have been seeking. See United States v. Carrasco, 887 F.2d 794, 807-08 (7th Cir.1989) (conspiracy, which requires proof of an agreement to carry out illegal activity, may be proved by both direct and circumstantial evidence). Indeed, circumstantial evidence of an agreement to engage in drug trafficking activity is precisely what the officers found. United States v. Harris, 585 F.3d 394, 400 (7th Cir.2009) (teaching that $8,900, an exceedingly large quantity of cash, provided circumstantial evidence of involvement in drug trafficking). Therefore, the search incident to Slone's arrest was reasonable, and the vehicle evidence was properly admitted against him.