Opinion ID: 1035248
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Search Incident to Arrest Exception

Text: “Among the exceptions to the warrant requirement is a search incident to a lawful arrest. The exception derives from interests in officer safety and evidence preservation that are typically implicated in arrest situations.” Gant, 556 U.S. at 338 (internal citations omitted). “[P]olice may search incident to arrest only the space within an arrestee’s ‘immediate control,’ meaning ‘the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.’” Id. at 335 (quoting Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 763 (1960)). However, “[o]nce law enforcement officers have [exclusive control over] luggage or other personal property not immediately associated with the person of the arrestee . . . , and there is no longer any danger that the arrestee might gain access to 10 the property to seize a weapon or destroy evidence, a search of that property is no longer an incident of the arrest.” United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 15 (1977) abrogated on other grounds by California v. Acevedo, 500 U.S. 565 (1991). In United States v. Shakir, 616 F.3d 315 (3d Cir. 2010), we held that as long as there is “a reasonable possibility” that an arrestee could destroy evidence or gain access to a weapon in the container or area being searched, the search is permissible. Id. at 321. Although this standard is a “lenient” one, it “requires something more than the mere theoretical possibility that a suspect might access a weapon or evidence.” Id. “In determining whether an object is conceivably accessible to the arrestee, we are to assume that he was neither an acrobat nor Houdini.” United States v. Myers, 308 F.3d 251, 267 (3d Cir. 2002) (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). Here, there was no reasonable possibility that Matthews could have accessed the backpack at the time Officer Pomeroy executed the search, as he was handcuffed in the back of a locked police car. Thus, the District Court was correct in concluding that the search could not be justified under the search incident to arrest exception.