Court Opinion

ID: 9584932
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:54:03.030822+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:22:59.163303
License: Public Domain

Justice Mitchell
concurring.
I completely concur in both the reasoning and the result reached by the majority. I would, however, rest this Court’s action in affirming the Court of Appeals upon an additional basis.
This case presents a situation in which certain facts are undisputed. A law enforcement officer, acting upon probable cause, stopped the vehicle in which the defendant was a passenger. After stopping the vehicle, the officer lawfully took the driver into custody and placed him in a law enforcement vehicle. Patrolman Cruzan, who was assisting the arresting officer, approached the defendant who had remained seated in the automobile. When the defendant thrust his hand inside the front of his pants in the manner described in the majority opinion, Patrolman Cruzan found the plastic bag on the defendant’s person.
I am of the opinion that the Supreme Court of the United States has clearly indicated that Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 20 L.Ed. 2d 917, 88 S.Ct. 1889 (1968) is not controlling authority in eases involving searches of the occupants of automobiles. In New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 69 L.Ed. 2d 768, 101 S.Ct. 2860 (1981), the Supreme Court clearly indicated that a police officer who has effected a lawful custodial arrest of a driver of a vehicle may, contemporaneous with that arrest, conduct a search of the passenger compartment of the vehicle extending to the contents of containers found therein. I believe the Supreme Court wisely attempted to establish a brightline rule which could be followed by law enforcement officers without the necessity of having police attorneys or constitutional scholars present to assist them in the search. Under the authority of Belton, Patrolman Cruzan clearly could have conducted a thorough search of any containers or clothing located in the passenger compartment of the automobile including those belonging to passengers such as the defendant. To *744hold that Belton would not also authorize at least a “frisk” or “pat down” of a passenger in the same automobile would seem to me to create an anomaly in the law of search and seizure and draw the sort of fine distinction far more useful to students in a classroom than to law enforcement officers conducting searches of automobiles on our public streets at night. I do not find Sibron controlling or even very relevant to the decision of the case at hand.
In United States v. DiRe, 332 U.S. 581, 92 L.Ed. 210, 68 S.Ct. 222 (1948) the Supreme Court indicated that authority to conduct a warrantless search of an automobile does not automatically give rise to authority to search an occupant of the automobile. I do not believe, however, that DiRe should be considered controlling in the present case. It is important to note that DiRe involved a full search and was decided well before the “stop and frisk” principle of Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 20 L.Ed. 2d 889, 88 S.Ct. 1868 (1968) and the “search of the area within an arrestee’s immediate control” doctrine of Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 23 L.Ed. 2d 685, 89 S.Ct. 2034 (1969) were enunciated by the Supreme Court. In my view, the principles articulated in Terry and Chimel now converge with the holding in Belton to require a second brightline rule authorizing law enforcement officers to “pat down” or “frisk” the passengers in an automobile1 when they have lawfully stopped the automobile and lawfully arrested the driver. United States v. Wiga, 662 F. 2d 1325 (9th Cir. 1981); United States v. Poms, 484 F. 2d 919 (4th Cir. 1973) (per curiam); United States v. Berryhill, 445 F. 2d 1189 (9th Cir. 1971); see also Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 98, 62 L.Ed. 2d 238, 250, 100 S.Ct. 338, 346 (1979) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting). Contra United States v. Simmons, 567 F. 2d 314 (7th Cir. 1977).
Further, this authority to “pat down” or “frisk” the passengers is not, in my view, based upon a requirement that the law enforcement officer involved have a belief, reasonable or otherwise, that the passenger is armed or possesses contraband. Instead, I believe that we can and should legitimately take judicial notice in fashioning such a rule that there is a substantial potential threat to the lives of our law enforcement officers by passengers of automobiles in all cases in which officers are re*745quired in the exercise of their duties to stop such automobiles and arrest the drivers. For me, a proper balancing of the competing interests to be considered in Fourth Amendment analysis compels the conclusion that a “pat down” or “frisk” is a justifiable and reasonable intrusion into the privacy of a passenger in an automobile under such circumstances. More particularly under the facts of the present case, Patrolman Cruzan, being possessed of the authority to “pat down” or “frisk” a passenger such as the defendant, was certainly within his authority to grab the defendant’s wrist and hand and pull them from inside the front of the defendant’s pants where the defendant had thrust them while Cruzan was questioning him.
I believe that a brightline rule such as I have outlined is absolutely required lest we encourage our law enforcement officers to ignore the law of search and seizure or unnecessarily endanger their lives in cases such as this. I strongly fear that their healthy instincts for survival will require them to adopt one approach or the other in similar cases if we fail to adopt such a rule.
It is appropriate here to point out that the officers of our North Carolina Highway Patrol do not ordinarily have the assistance of other officers immediately available as did Patrolman Cruzan in the present case. Instead, these patrolmen almost always perform their duties alone, frequently in the more remote areas of our large and primarily rural State. When they are required in the performance of their lawful duties to stop automobiles, it is more often than not the case that no other law enforcement officers are close enough to them to render assistance in any reasonable period of time. Although I recognize that these facts are not compelling when establishing a general rule of law, they are the facts with which these officers are required to live every day and night of the year.
As one court has correctly observed, “It is inconceivable that a peace officer effecting a lawful arrest of an occupant of a vehicle must expose himself to a shot in the back from defendant’s associate because he cannot, on the spot, make the nice distinction between whether the other is a companion in crime or a social acquaintance.” United States v. Berryhill, 445 F. 2d at 1193.
I would affirm the opinion of the Court of Appeals finding no error in the trial of the defendant on the basis of the rule I have *746outlined previously herein as well as for the reasons set forth by the majority.

. The case before us does not involve a common carrier.