Court Opinion

ID: 9600585
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:28:29.159736+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:53.052328
License: Public Domain

DURHAM, Justice
(concurring in the result):
I agree with the majority opinion’s conclusion that the defendant was properly arrested. I also agree that the search of his vehicle was reasonable, but not on the basis of the “open view doctrine” relied upon by the majority, because the shotgun in question in this case was not in plain or open view. However, New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981), is controlling on the question of whether the search in the present case was incident to an arrest, and I join the majority opinion on that ground:
Our reading of the cases suggests the generalization that articles inside the relatively narrow compass of the passenger compartment of an automobile are in fact generally, even if not inevitably, within “the area into which an arrestee might reach in order to grab a weapon or evi-dentiary ite[m].” Chimel [v. California] 395 U.S. [752] at 763 [89 S.Ct. 2034, 2040, 23 L.Ed.2d 685]. In order to establish the workable rule this category of cases requires, we read Chimel’s definition of the limits of the area that may be searched in light of that generalization. Accordingly, we hold that when a policeman has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile, he may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of that automobile.
Id. at 460, 101 S.Ct. at 2864 (citations omitted) (emphasis added).
HOWE, J., concurs in the concurring opinion of DURHAM, J.