Opinion ID: 1917628
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Thornton: From Bright-Line to Cloudy

Text: Five years before Debruhl's arrest, a Supreme Court majority in Thornton v. United States [60] had signaled its unease with Belton. The supposed bright line rule was cracking; its application had become uncertain. In Thornton, decided in 2004, police officers on patrol who were suspicious of a passing car discovered, after a radio check, that the tags and the car did not match. [61] Before the officers could stop the car, the driver pulled into a parking lot and got out of the car. [62] The officers approached and arrested the driver, patted him down, and found marijuana and cocaine. [63] The police handcuffed him, put him in the patrol car, then searched his car and found a handgun. [64] In affirming the denial of the motion to suppress, the Supreme Court rejected the defense argument that a Belton search was limited to situations in which the police initiated contact with a suspect while he was still in the car. [65] On the facts, therefore, Thornton reflects an extension of Belton (although not on the security issue addressed in Gant ). In reaching its result, however, the Thornton Court fractured, with one justice concurring dubitante, [66] two justices concurring only in the judgment on an alternative theory, [67] and two justices dissenting. [68] A Court majority, therefore, concluded that Belton, as commonly interpreted, had come to undermine the traditional limitation on searches incident to arresta limitation that Belton's bright line rule had supposedly been fashioned to protect. Without doubt, a Court majority telegraphed its belief that Belton lay on a shaky foundation, [69] had become a swollen rule, [70] indeed a rule stretched beyond its breaking point. [71] In short, by 2004 five sitting justices had strongly advocated either revision or abandonment of Belton, with some pointing out the very flaws stressed five years later in the Court's corrective decision in Gant. Careful Court watchers could not have failed to notice. We hasten to add that we are not at all suggesting that these ruminations from a majority of the justices amount to a formal rejection of Belton. Thornton's interpretation of Belton remained good law until the Court itself ruled in Gant. [72] We cite the justices' disquiet, however, simply to demonstrate that bright-line rules do not easily remain radiant. Although Belton was announced as a bright-line rule intended for simple, clear cut application, it is evident from Belton's history that such rules are often likely to remain truly bright line only for a limited period of time as factual scenarios test their limits. [73] Belton has become a classic case of a rule beclouded over time by exceptions generated by unique facts that pushed decisions beyond the bright line licenseas evidenced by the three federal circuits that anticipated Gant. [74] Consequently, the likelihood of a police officer's finding settled law attributable to Belton has diminished over time as new factual scenarios outpace Belton -type decisions that do not quite tell an officer what is, and is not, allowed in the new situation the officer faces. Belton's rule is not yet as amorphous a rule as those reflecting the totality of the circumstances or excusing the warrant requirement for exigent circumstances. But it has been heading in that opaque direction; it has been losing its currency. Accordingly, an appellate court confronted by the government's argument that the good-faith exception applies in a particular case Belton -type or otherwisemust be very careful in appraising whether a police officer has relied on truly settled law in the jurisdiction meaning settled as to the material facts at issue. Two federal circuits have recently applied that strict limitation when applying the good-faith exception. United States v. Davis [75] concerned a pre- Gant search of an automobile after all the occupants had been secured with handcuffs and placed in a patrol car. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, ruling after Gant came down, applied the exception and allowed admission of the seized firearm. The court stressed, however, that the governing law in this circuit unambiguously allowed Sergeant Miller to search the car. [76] Added the court: Relying on a court of appeals' well-settled and unequivocal precedent is analogous to relying on a statute [citing Krull ]. [77] In United States v. McCane, [78] a similar case concerning suspects secured in a patrol car, the Tenth Circuit emphasized that the police officers, in seizing a firearm from the occupants' car, had relied on settled case law factually indistinguishable from the instant case. [79] To repeat: there is a crucial predicate that must be satisfied before the warrantless search of an automobile under Belton law can be a candidate for the good-faith exception. The tribunal's interpretation of the Supreme Court's rule on which the officer relies must be settled as applied to all the material facts the officer faces. Short of satisfying that strict requirement i.e., a requirement of explicit protection or cover from the court on which the officer relieswe cannot say that the officer's search would be objectively reasonable enough for the good faith exception to apply. Otherwise that officer, conducting a search later held unlawful by the Supreme Court, would be in no better position than that of the officer in a typical mistake-of-law situation who arguably makes a reasonable, but ultimately incorrect, guess at the lawfulness of the search. It is important to emphasize that we are not defining settled law to mean case law that has addressed facts identical to those confronting the officer who conducts the search. We are referring, rather, only to the material factsto the handful of variables, material to ascertaining a lawful Belton search, that police officers permissibly take into account. These include the degree to which the search is contemporaneous with the arrest, [80] the proximity of the occupant to the vehicle, both temporally and spatially, when the officer makes a lawful arrest; [81] the need to search the vehicle in relation to the offense that justified the stop, [82] and, the extent of sequestering the suspect and other occupants in relation to the search. [83]