Court Opinion

ID: 9499028
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:35:53.459455+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:14.498391
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. GIBSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. On July 2, 2004, at 3:45 p.m. Nebraska State Trooper Jeff Wallace stopped the truck driven by Zach*1104ary Hrasky, having reason to believe that he was driving without a proper license. When this proved to be true, the trooper handcuffed Hrasky and placed him in the back of the patrol car. Shortly after 4:00 p.m., an investigator arrived at the scene and spoke with Hrasky in the patrol car for the next forty-five minutes. Finally, at 5:05 p.m., officers began a search of Hrasky’s truck and found two handguns.2 The question before us is whether this warrant-less search of Hrasky’s truck, which occurred more than one hour after Hrasky’s arrest for driving with a suspended license, falls on the permissible side of the “bright-line” rule of New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981). Because, unlike the majority, I believe that it does not, I would affirm the district court’s order suppressing the firearms.
“[I]t is a cardinal principle that ‘searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment — subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.’ ” Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 390, 98 S.Ct. 2408, 57 L.Ed.2d 290 (1978) (quoting Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967)). One such exception permits the warrantless search of a vehicle’s passenger compartment “as a contemporaneous incident” of the arrest of that vehicle’s occupant or recent occupant. Belton, 453 U.S. at 460-61, 101 S.Ct. 2860. Although “[sjueh searches have long been considered valid because of the need ‘to remove any weapons that [the arrestee] might seek to use in order to resist arrest or effect his escape’ and the need to prevent the concealment or destruction of evidence,” id. at 457, 101 S.Ct. 2860 (quoting Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 763, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969)), it is equally well-established that “[s]earches incident to arrests are not limitless.” United States v. Pratt, 355 F.3d 1119, 1121-22 (8th Cir.2004). Instead, they are to be treated as the exception to Constitutional norms that they are, lest officers in the field treat them as a “police entitlement.” Thornton v. United States, 541 U.S. 615, 624, 124 S.Ct. 2127, 158 L.Ed.2d 905 (2004) (O’Connor, J., concurring); United States v. Barnes, 374 F.3d 601, 605 (8th Cir.2004) (Smith, J., dissenting), cert. denied, 543 U.S. 1079, 125 S.Ct. 938, 160 L.Ed.2d 822 (2005); see also Thornton, 541 U.S. at 627, 124 S.Ct. 2127 (Sealia, J., joined by Ginsburg, J., concurring) (“But conducting a Chimel search is not the Government’s right; it is an exception-justified by necessity-to a rule that would otherwise render the search unlawful”). Although the Supreme Court has made it clear that courts are not to determine on a case-by-case basis whether or not one of the Chimel justifications was present, Belton, 453 U.S. at 459,101 S.Ct. 2860 (quoting United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 235, 94 S.Ct. 467, 38 L.Ed.2d 427 (1973)), it nonetheless remains the government’s burden to establish its entitlement to the search incident to arrest exception; if the government fails to make such a showing, the evidence must be suppressed. See Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 455, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971).
To invoke the search incident to arrest exception, the government must first demonstrate that there was a “lawful custodial arrest.” Belton, 453 U.S. at 460, 101 S.Ct. 2860; see also United States v. Wells, 347 F.3d 280, 287 (8th Cir.2003) (“Once [defendant] was arrested, law enforcement was authorized to conduct a search incident to the arrest.”). We have previously held that, for purposes of Belton, “a seizure of a *1105person predicated upon probable cause is properly regarded as an arrest.” Pratt, 355 F.3d at 1123. Police had probable cause to believe that Hrasky was driving under suspension when Trooper Wallace handcuffed him and placed him in the patrol car. Therefore, as the magistrate judge correctly recognized and notwithstanding the majority’s suggestion to the contrary,3 it was at this point that Hrasky was under arrest for purposes of Belton, since it was at this point that “a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave.” Pratt, 355 F.3d at 1122 (quoting California v. Hodari D., 499 U.S. 621, 628, 111 S.Ct. 1547, 113 L.Ed.2d 690 (1991)).
Thus, having established that Hrasky was subject to a lawful custodial arrest for driving while suspended at the point when he was handcuffed and placed in the patrol car, the government must then show that the search of Hrasky’s truck, which occurred more than one hour later, was “a contemporaneous incident of that arrest.” Belton, 453 U.S. at 460, 101 S.Ct. 2860. Admittedly, a review of the law in this area demonstrates that “what is ‘contemporaneous’ is in the eye of the beholder.” United States v. Smith, 389 F.3d 944, 954 (9th Cir.2004) (Wardlaw, J., concurring), cert. denied, 544 U.S. 956, 125 S.Ct. 1721, 161 L.Ed.2d 538 (2005). Nonetheless, it is well-established that “[sjearches incident to arrest have both a geographic and temporal limitation.” United States v. Currence, 446 F.3d 554, 557 (4th Cir.2006); see also Thornton, 541 U.S. at 622, 124 S.Ct. 2127 (“[A]n arrestee’s status as a ‘recent occupant’ may turn on his temporal or spatial relationship to the car at the time of the arrest and search.”); United States v. Doward, 41 F.3d 789, 792 (1st Cir.1994) (discussing “temporal and spatial limits of the bright-line rule announced in Belton ”). Thus, if a search is too “remote in time or place” it cannot be fairly characterized as a contemporaneous incident of the arrest, since the justifications permitting the search to be conducted without a warrant no longer apply. Chimel, 395 U.S. at 754, 89 S.Ct. 2034 (quoting Preston v. United States, 376 U.S. 364, 367, 84 S.Ct. 881, 11 L.Ed.2d 777 (1964)); United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 15, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977), overruled in part on other grounds by California v. Acevedo, 500 U.S. 565, 111 S.Ct. 1982, 114 L.Ed.2d 619 (1991).
The search here, conducted at the scene of the arrest, does not run afoul of the geographical limitation, notwithstanding the fact that a handcuffed Hrasky, held in the back seat of a patrol car, would have been hard-pressed to reach either evidence or weaponry stowed in the passenger compartment of his truck. See, e.g., Barnes, 374 F.3d at 604 (“The lawfulness of the search does not depend on whether the occupant was actually capable of reaching the area during the course of the police encounter.”) (emphasis in original); see also Thornton, 541 U.S. at 626, 124 S.Ct. 2127 (Scalia, J., concurring, joined by Ginsburg, J., concurring) (recalling Justice Goldberg’s reference to “the mythical arrestee ‘possessed of the skill of Houdini and the strength of Hercules.’ ”) Howev*1106er, the greater than one-hour delay here between the arrest and the search does run afoul of the temporal limitation.
For a search incident to an arrest to be timely it must be “substantially contemporaneous” with the arrest. Stoner v. California, 376 U.S. 483, 486, 84 S.Ct. 889, 11 L.Ed.2d 856 (1964). Although this does not mean it must be “made at the same time” as the arrest, see Webster’s Third New Intei-national Dictionary, 391 (1981) (defining “contemporaneous”), we have nonetheless characterized the timeliness requirement as “constitutionally fairly strict.” Curd v. City Court of Judsonia, 141 F.3d 839, 843 (8th Cir.1998). Thus, we require police to conduct the search “hard upon the heels of the arrest.” Wells, 347 F.3d at 287 (holding that where facts created doubt as to whether search followed closely after arrest, court would not sanction search as “contemporaneous” incident of arrest); see also United States v. Castaneda, 438 F.3d 891, 894 (8th Cir.2006) (distinguishing a Belton vehicle search from a warrantless search conducted pursuant to the automobile exception, since under the latter, “the vehicle need not be immediately searched.”). Accordingly, we routinely sanction searches as incident to arrest where they are conducted shortly after an arrest. E.g., Barnes, 374 F.3d at 603 (immediately after arrest); United States v. McCrady, 774 F.2d 868, 871-72 (8th Cir.1985) (same); United States v. Snook, 88 F.3d 605, 606 (8th Cir.1996) (approximately five minutes after arrest).
We have not, however, until today, approved of a delay between an arrest and a warrantless search claimed to be an incident of it, anywhere near as lengthy as the delay that occurred here. Nor would we have had any reason to, since the Supreme Court has refused to apply the search incident to arrest exception in the context of a similar delay, Chadwick, 433 U.S. at 15, 97 S.Ct. 2476 (holding that evidence obtained from search conducted ninety minutes after arrest must be suppressed because “no exigency” justified the search as incident to the arrest), and other Circuits have, for the most part, followed suit. See, e.g., United States v. $639,558 in U.S. Currency, 955 F.2d 712, 716-18 (D.C.Cir. 1992) (holding that a thirty to forty-five minute delay rendered search too “remote in time” to sustain as incident to an arrest); United States v. Vasey, 834 F.2d 782, 787 (9th Cir.1987) (search conducted thirty to forty-five minutes after arrest did not “follow!] closely on the heels of the arrest” and was therefore, too remote in time); see also Doward, 41 F.3d at 793 n. 3 (expressly reserving question of whether delay between an arrest and search “might become so protracted as to raise judicial eyebrows in an exceptional case” and citing the delay in Vasey as this kind of “exceptional case.”); but see United States v. Fiala, 929 F.2d 285, 288 (7th Cir.1991) (holding that one and one-half hour delay between arrest and search while officers waited for drug dog to arrive was “not unreasonable”).
Unlike the majority, I would follow this authority and conclude that the search here was simply too remote in time to be fairly characterized “as a contemporaneous incident” of Hrask/s arrest more than one hour earlier. Cf. Belton, 453 U.S. at 462, 101 S.Ct. 2860 (approving a search that “followed immediately upon that arrest”) (emphasis added). In order to reach the opposite conclusion, the majority adopts a new rule under which a search “may be conducted well after the arrest, so long as it occurs during a continuous sequence of events,” Maj. at 1102 (citing United States v. Smith, 389 F.3d 944, 951 (9th Cir.2004); United States v. McLaughlin, 170 F.3d 889, 892 (9th Cir.1999)).4 The majority characterizes the “determinative question” *1107under this standard as whether the delay between search and arrest was a “reasonable” one. Maj. at 1102 (quoting United States v. Han, 74 F.3d 537, 543 (4th Cir.1996)); see also Maj. at 1103 (citing Fiala, 929 F.2d at 288 (evaluating delay between arrest and search for reasonableness in the circumstances)). Not only does the majority’s amorphous new rule appear to conflict with our Circuit’s requirement that the search “follow hard upon the heels of the arrest,” Wells, 347 F.3d at 287, it makes an “impressionistic blur” of Belton’s bright-line rule, McLaughlin, 170 F.3d at 894 (Trott, J., concurring), thereby placing police officers in the position of making precisely the sort of ad hoc determinations Belton’s bright-line rule sought to avoid. See Thornton, 541 U.S. at 623, 124 S.Ct. 2127; see also United States v. Pittman, 411 F.3d 813, 816 (7th Cir.2005) (“Police shouldn’t have to carry well-thumbed copies of the multivolume La-Fave treatise on search and seizure with them wherever they go.”). Admittedly, the majority’s new rule may not prove problematic to apply in the run-of-the-mill situation, since the delay between arrest and search will almost always be far less than that which occurred here, see,e.g., Smith, 389 F.3d at 947, 951 (search and arrest conducted at roughly the same time); McLaughlin, 170 F.3d at 891-92 (five minute delay).5 However, by holding *1108that, in some not-fully-delineated circumstances constituting a “continuous sequence of events,” officers may conduct a warrantless search of a vehicle, even when more than an hour has elapsed since the arrest, the majority comes dangerously close to “transforming] the search incident to arrest exception into a search following arrest exception.” Vasey, 834 F.2d at 788 (emphasis in original). The Constitution provides for no such exception.
For these reasons, I conclude that the search of Hrasky’s truck fell on the impermissible side of Belton’s bright-line. Accordingly, I would affirm the well-reasoned order of the district court.

. This is the timing and sequence of events as found by the magistrate judge, and which a review of the videotape made by the officer's dashboard camera confirms.

. The majority suggests that the search took place "immediately after the police determined to proceed with a full custodial arrest/’ Maj. at 1103, and finds it "significant” that "the officers were unsure whether [Hrasky] would be transported to the police station for booking, or released at the scene with only a citation.” Maj. at 1102. This is irrelevant to the question of whether Hrasky was subject to a "lawful custodial arrest” within the meaning of Belton. Pratt, 355 F.3d at 1124 ("An officer’s uncommunicated subjective intent is irrelevant to the question of whether an individual has been seized.”) (citing United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544, 554 n. 6, 100 S.Ct. 1870, 64 L.Ed.2d 497 (1980); United States v. Bloomfield, 40 F.3d 910, 916 (8th Cir.1994) (enbanc))

. The majority's reliance on the Ninth Circuit's decision in Smith is all the more proble*1107matic because the precise issue there was whether "the warrantless search of a vehicle incident to a contemporaneous arrest may precede the arrest,” id. at 952 (emphasis added), and not how long police may delay after arresting a suspect before searching her vehicle. Smith's holding on this issue, namely that probable cause to arrest is a sufficient substitute for a custodial arrest to trigger the Belton rule, has been specifically rejected by at least one Circuit, see United States v. Powell, 451 F.3d 862, 869 (D.C.Cir.2006), and is in tension with our Circuit's cases holding that it is only after a lawful custodial arrest that law enforcement may conduct a warrant-less vehicle search pursuant to Belton. E.g., United States v. Rowland, 341 F.3d 774, 783 (8th Cir.2003) ("Because Rowland was not arrested, law enforcement could not have conducted a search incident to arrest pursuant to [Belton ]"); Wells, 347 F.3d at 287 (“Once [defendant] was arrested, law enforcement was authorized to conduct a search incident to the arrest.”).

. As law enforcement and reviewing courts continue to be called upon to apply Belton, its bright-line rule may become increasingly less illuminating, especially in close cases such as this. Indeed, some have expressed concern with the soundness of the entire Belton framework. See e.g., Thornton, 541 U.S. at 624, 124 S.Ct. 2127 (O'Connor, J., concurring) (noting that "lower court decisions seem now to treat the ability to search a vehicle incident to the arrest of a recent occupant as a police entitlement rather than as an exception justified by the twin rationales of Chimel ... [This is] a direct consequence of Belton's shaky foundation."); Thornton, 541 U.S. at 625, 632, 124 S.Ct. 2127 (Scalia, J., concurring, joined by Ginsburg, J., concurring) (arguing that the majority's "effort to apply [Belton ] to this search stretches it beyond its breaking point” and suggesting instead that the Court "limit Belton searches to cases where it is reasonable to believe evidence relevant to the crime of arrest might be found in the vehicle.”); Belton, 453 U.S. at 463-64 (Brennan, J., dissenting) (fearing that the Belton majority "may signal a wholesale retreat from our carefully developed search-incident-to-arrest analysis” by "formulating an arbitrary 'bright-line' rule ... that fails to reflect Chimel 's underlying policy justifications”); United States v. Weaver, 433 F.3d 1104, 1107 (9th Cir.2006) ("respectfully suggesting] that the Supreme Court may wish to re-examine this issue”); United States v. Osife, 398 F.3d 1143, 1147 (9th Cir.), cert. denied,-U.S. --, 126 S.Ct. 417, 163 L.Ed.2d 318 (2005) ("Moreover, it seems to us that Justice Scalia’s view is more analytically sound than the prevailing approach, which relies on the legal fiction that a suspect handcuffed and locked in a patrol car might escape and grab a weapon from the passenger compartment of his own car.”); Barnes, 374 F.3d at 605 (Smith, J., dissenting) ("I share the concerns expressed by Justices O’Connor and Scalia in Thornton that some may view a search incident to an arrest as 'a police entitlement.” '); McLaughlin, 170 F.3d at 894 (Trott, J., concurring) (stating that "in our search for clarity, we *1108have now abandoned our constitutional moorings and floated to a place where the law approves of purely exploratory searches of vehicles”). However, the Supreme Court declined to upset Belton in Thornton, and thus it remains the standard by which to judge warrantless vehicle searches conducted as a contemporaneous incident of an arrest. See Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203, 237, 117 S.Ct. 1997, 138 L.Ed.2d 391 (1997).