Court Opinion

ID: 9428487
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:23:56.843129+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:13.773821
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens,
dissenting.
It is quite clear to most of us that this case and New York v. Belton, post, p. 454, should be decided in the same way.1 Both cases involve automobile searches. In both cases, the automobiles had been lawfully stopped on the highway, the occupants had been lawfully arrested, and the officers had probable cause to believe that the vehicles contained contraband. In my opinion, the “automobile exception” to the warrant requirement therefore provided each officer the authority to make a thorough search of the vehicle — including the glove compartment, the trunk, and any containers in the vehicle that might reasonably contain the contraband.
Such was the state of the law prior to the Court’s discursive writing in Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U. S. 753.2 Be*445cause — as The Chief Justice cogently demonstrated in his separate opinion in Sanders — the actual holdings in both Sanders and United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1, are entirely consistent with that view of the law, I would apply it in this case. Sanders and Chadwick are both plainly distinguishable from this case because neither case truly involved the automobile exception.3 In Chadwick, federal *446narcotic agents had probable cause to search a footlocker which was seized immediately after being placed in the trunk of a car. In Sanders, the officers had probable cause to believe a particular piece of luggage contained contraband before it was placed in the trunk of a taxicab. The officers, however, had no reason to search the vehicle in either case, and no right to arrest the driver in Sanders. The issue in Chadwick and Sanders would have been exactly the same if the officers had apprehended the suspects before they placed the footlocker in the trunk of the car in Chadwick or before they hailed the taxi in Sanders.4 The officers’ duty to obtain a warrant in both cases could not be evaded by simply waiting until the luggage was placed in a vehicle.
I therefore believe that neither Sanders nor Chadwick precludes application of the automobile exception to authorize *447searches of containers found in cars that police have probable cause to search. Moreover, neither the law as it had developed before Sanders, nor the holding in Sanders, requires the Court to draw distinctions among different kinds of containers. Justice Blackmun is surely correct in his forceful demonstration that the Fourth Amendment cannot differentiate between “an orange crate, a lunch bucket, an attaché case, a duffelbag, a cardboard box, a backpack, a totebag, and a paper bag.” Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U. S., at 772 (dissenting opinion). Except for the author of the Sanders' dictum,5 all Members of the Court wisely avoid the pitfalls of such an approach; unfortunately, however, instead of adhering to the simple view that when a warrantless search is within the automobile exception the entire vehicle may be searched, the Court today simultaneously moves too far in opposite directions in these two cases. In Robbins v. California the plurality and Justice Powell forbid a reasonable search of a container found in the functional equivalent of a trunk, and in New York v. Belton the Court authorizes unreasonable searches of vehicles and containers without probable cause to believe that contraband will be found. I disagree with both of these new approaches and would decide both cases by a consistent application of the automobile exception.
I
Although a routine application of the automobile exception would provide an adequate basis for upholding the search in this case, the plurality instead quixotically concludes that notwithstanding an officer’s probable cause to believe that *448there is marihuana in a recessed luggage compartment in a station wagon, a green opaque plastic covering provides the contraband with a mantle of constitutional protection. Instead of repudiating the unnecessarily broad dictum that it employed in Sanders — a course the Court recognized as necessary in other cases this Term6 — the plurality engages in an unprecedented and unnecessary narrowing of the automobile exception.
In Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U. S. 42, the Court reaffirmed the automobile exception established a half century earlier in Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132, and upheld the warrantless search of an automobile on probable cause.7 The “exception” recognized in Carroll and Chambers, however, applies merely to the requirement that police seek a warrant from a magistrate before conducting a search of places or things protected by the Fourth Amendment. The scope of *449any search that is within the exception should be just as broad as a magistrate could authorize by warrant if he were on the scene; the automobile exception to the warrant requirement therefore justifies neither more nor less than could a magistrate’s warrant. If a magistrate issued a search warrant for an automobile, and officers in conducting the search authorized by the warrant discovered a suitcase in the car, they surely would not need to return to the magistrate for another warrant before searching the suitcase.8 The fact that the marihuana found in petitioner’s car was wrapped in opaque green plastic does not take the search out of the automobile exception.9 Accordingly, the search conducted here was proper, and the judgment of the California Court of Appeal should be affirmed.
II
In Belton, post, p. 454, instead of relying on the automobile exception to uphold the search of respondent’s jacket pocket, the Court takes an extraordinarily dangerous detour to reach the same result by adopting an admittedly new rationale ap*450plicable to every “lawful custodial arrest” of the occupant of an automobile. ■
The Court’s careful and repeated use of the term “lawful custodial arrest” 10 seems to imply that a significant distinction between custodial arrests and ordinary arrests exists. I am familiar with the distinction between a “stop,” see, e. g., Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, and an “arrest,” but I am not familiar with any difference between custodial arrests and any other kind of arrest. It is, of course, true that persons apprehended for traffic violations are frequently not required to accompany the arresting officer to the police station before they are permitted to leave on their own recognizance or by using their driver’s licenses as a form of bond. It is also possible that state law or local regulations may in some cases prohibit police officers from taking persons into custody for violation of minor traffic laws. As a matter of constitutional law, however, any person lawfully arrested for the pettiest misdemeanor may be temporarily placed in custody.11 In*451deed, as the Court has repeatedly held, every arrest is a seizure of the person within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The rule of constitutional law the Court fashions today therefore potentially applies to every arrest of every occupant of an automobile.12
After the vehicle in which respondent was riding was stopped, the officer smelled marihuana and thereby acquired probable cause to believe that the vehicle contained contraband.13 A thorough search of the car was therefore reasonable. But if there were no reason to believe that anything more than a traffic violation had occurred, I should think it palpably unreasonable to require the driver of a car to open *452his briefcase or his luggage for inspection by the officer.14 The driver so compelled, however, could make no constitutional objection to a decision by the officer to take the driver into custody and thereby obtain justification for a search of the entire interior of the vehicle. Indeed, under the Court’s new rule, the arresting officer may find reason to follow that procedure whenever he sees an interesting looking briefcase or package in a vehicle that has been stopped for a traffic violation. That decision by a police officer will therefore provide the constitutional predicate for broader vehicle searches than any neutral magistrate could authorize by issuing a warrant.
The Court’s reasoning, which will lead to a massive broadening of the automobile exception, is particularly unfortunate because that reasoning is not necessary to the decision. By taking the giant step of permitting searches in the absence of probable cause, the Court misses the shorter step of relying on the automobile exception to uphold the search.15 By taking this shorter step the Court could have adhered to the fundamental distinction between a search that a magistrate *453could authorize because it is based on probable cause and one that is not so justified under that standard. Although I am persuaded that the Court has reached the right result, its opinion misconstrues the Fourth Amendment.
Because I do not regard the dictum in Sanders as a correct statement of the law, because the holding of that case is not applicable in either Robbins or Belton, and because the search in both cases was supported by probable cause and falls within the automobile exception, I respectfully dissent in Robbins and concur in the judgment in Belton.

 Justice BlackmuN, Justice Rehnquist, and I would uphold the searches in both cases; Justice Brennan, Justice White, and Justice Marshall would invalidate both searches. Only The Chief Justice, Justice Stewart, and Justice Powell reach the curious conclusion that a citizen has a greater privacy interest in a package of marihuana enclosed in a plastic wrapper than in the pocket of a leather jacket.

 Prior to the Court's decision in United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1, courts routinely relied on the automobile exception to uphold the search of a container found in a car. The court in United States v. Soriano, 497 F. 2d 147, 149 (CA5 1974), cited Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U. S. 42, and stated:
“And though it is true that the Court spoke of an automobile while we treat of containers in or just removed from one, the principle is not different. The officer who arrested Soriano and his companions indisputably had probable cause to believe that the vehicle contained contraband, a circumstance justifying the initial incursion into the trunk. Under *445established law in this circuit and elsewhere, this justification encompassed the search of containers in the vehicle which could reasonably be employed in the illicit carriage of the contraband.”
See also United States v. Anderson, 500 F. 2d 1311, 1315 (CA5 1974) ; United States v. Evans, 481 F. 2d 990, 993-994 (CA9 1973). Indeed, in many cases it apparently never occurred to defendants challenging the validity of automobile searches or the courts considering such challenges that a search of a suitcase or other container located in an automobile presented a different question than the search of the car itself. See, e. g., United States v. Bowman, 487 F. 2d 1229 (CA10 1973); United States v. Garner, 451 F. 2d 167 (CA6 1971); United States v. Chapman, 474 F. 2d 300 (CA5 1973), cert. denied, 414 U. S. 835; State v. Hearn, 340 So. 2d 1365 (La. 1976); State v. Lee, 113 N. H. 313, 307 A. 2d 827 (1973); Cf. State v. Warren, 283 So. 2d 740 (La. 1973). Even after Chadwick was decided, courts continued to apply the automobile exception to uphold searches of containers found in cars and rejected the argument that Chadwick constituted a limitation on the automobile exception. See United States v. Milhollan, 599 F. 2d 518, 525-527 (CA3 1979), cert. denied, 444 U. S. 909; United States v. Finnegan, 568 F. 2d 637, 641 (CA9 1977); United States v. Ochs, 595 F. 2d 1247 (CA2 1979), cert. denied, 444 U. S. 955. But see United States v. Johnson, 588 F. 2d 147, 150-152, and n. 6 (CA5 1979) (repudiating United States v. Soriano, supra).

 As The Chief Justice pointed out in his opinion concurring in the judgment in Sanders:
“The breadth of the Court’s opinion and its repeated references to the 'automobile’ from which respondent’s suitcase was seized at the time of his arrest, however, might lead the reader to believe — as the dissenters apparently do — that this case involves the 'automobile’ exception to the warrant requirement. See ante, at 762-765, and n. 14. It does not. Here, as in Chadwick, it was the luggage being transported by respondent at the time of the arrest, not the automobile in which it was being carried, that was the suspected locus of the contraband. The relationship between the *446automobile and the contraband was purely coincidental, as in Chadwick. The fact that the suitcase was resting in the trunk of the automobile at the time of respondent’s arrest does not turn this into an 'automobile’ exception case. The Court need say no more.
“This case simply does not present the question of whether a warrant is required before opening luggage when the police have probable cause to believe contraband is located somewhere in the vehicle, but when they do not know whether, for example, it is inside a piece of luggage in the trunk, in the glove compartment, or concealed in some part of the car’s structure.’’ 442 U. S., at 767.

 Again, as pointed out by The Chief Justice:
“Because the police officers had probable cause to believe that respondent’s green suitcase contained marihuana before it was placed in the trunk of the taxicab, their duty to obtain a search warrant before opening it is clear under United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1 (1977). The essence of our holding in Chadwick is that there is a legitimate expectation of privacy in the contents of a trunk or suitcase accompanying or being carried by a person; that expectation of privacy is not diminished simply because the owner’s arrest occurs in a public place. Whether arrested in a hotel lobby, an airport, a railroad terminal, or on a public street, as here, the owner has the right to expect that the contents of his luggage will not, without his consent, be exposed on demand of the police.” Id., at 766-767.

 See Powell, J., concurring in the judgment, ante, p. 429. If containers can be classified on the basis of the owner’s expectations of privacy, see ibid., it would seem rather clear to me that a brick of marihuana wrapped in green plastic would fall in the nonprivate category. I doubt if many dealers in this substance would be very comfortable carrying around such packages in plain view.

 Compare McDaniel v. Sanchez, 452 U. S. 130, with East Carroll Parish School Board v. Marshall, 424 U. S. 636, see especially Stewart, J., dissenting in McDaniel, supra, at 154; see also Donovan v. Dewey, 452 U. S. 594, 609 (Stewart, J., dissenting); id., at 606 (Stevens, J., concurring).

 The Chambers Court indicated that the automobile exception is a recognition of the fact that searches of automobiles generally involve exigent circumstances:
“In enforcing the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, the Court has insisted upon probable cause as a minimum requirement for a reasonable search permitted by the Constitution. As a general rule, it has also required the judgment of a magistrate on the probable-cause issue and the issuance of a warrant before a search is made. Only in exigent circumstances will the judgment of the police as to probable cause serve as a sufficient authorization for a search. Carroll, supra, holds a search warrant unnecessary where there is probable cause to search an automobile stopped on the highway; the car is movable, the occupants are alerted, and the car’s contents may never be found again if a warrant must be obtained. Hence an immediate search is constitutionally permissible.” 399 U. S., at 51.
The Chambers Court held that if a car could be searched on the scene of an arrest, it could also be searched after being taken to the station house.

 Similarly, if a magistrate issues a warrant for the search of a house, police executing that warrant clearly need not obtain a separate warrant for the search of a suitcase found in the house, so long as the things to be seized could reasonably be found in such a suitcase.

 Of course, a proper application of the automobile exception will uphold a search of a container located in a car only if the police have probable cause to search the entire car. If, as in Sanders, the police have probable cause only as to a suitcase, and not as to the entire ear, then the automobile exception is inapplicable and a warrant is required unless some other exigency exists. Thus police would not be able to avoid a warrant requirement simply by waiting for the suspect to place an object in a car and then invoking the automobile exception. If, however, the occupants of a car have an opportunity to take contraband out of a suitcase and secrete it somewhere else in a car, see Sanders, 442 U. S., at 768, 770, n. 3 (Blackmun, J., dissenting), then I would conclude that police have probable cause to search the entire car, including the suitcase, without a warrant.

 See post, at 455, 458, 459, 460, 461, 462, 463, and the quotation from United States v. Robinson, 414 U. S. 218, post, at 461.

 Justice Stewabt apparently believes that the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments might provide some impediment to police taking a defendant into custody for violation of a “minor traffic offense.” See Gustafson v. Florida, 414 U. S. 260, 266 (Stewart, J. concurring). Although I agree that a police officer’s authority to restrain an individual’s liberty should be limited in the context of stops for routine traffic violations, see Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U. S. 106, 115 (Stevens, J., dissenting), the Court has not directly considered the question whether “there are some constitutional limits upon the use of ‘custodial arrests’ as the means for invoking the criminal process when relatively minor offenses are involved.” See 2 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 52, p. 290 (1978); see also id., § 5.1, pp. 256-260, § 5.2, pp. 281-291. To the extent that the Court has considered the scope of an officer’s authority in making routine traffic stops, the Court has not imposed constitutional restrictions on that authority. See Pennsylvania v. Mimms, supra; United States v. Robinson, supra; Gustafson v. Florida, supra. Thus the Court may be assuming that its new rule will be limited by a constitutional restriction that does not exist.

 After today, the driver of a vehicle stopped for a minor traffic -violation must look to state law for protection from unreasonable searches. Such protection may come from two sources. Statutory law may provide some protection. Legislatures in some States permit officers to take traffic violators into custody only for certain violations. See, e. g., Mich. Comp. Laws §§257.727-257.728 (1979). In some States, however, the police officer has the discretion to make a “custodial arrest” for violation of any motor vehicle law. See, e. g., Iowa Code §§ 321.482, 321.485 (1980); Kan. Stat. Ann. § 8-2105 (1975). See also Tex. Rev. Civ. Stat. Ann., Art. 6701d, §§ 147-153 (Vernon 1977); Wallace v. State, 467 S. W. 2d 608, 609-610 (Tex. Crim. App. 1971); Tores v. State, 518 S. W. 2d 378 (Tex. Crim. App. 1975) (officer may take driver into custody for any traffic offense except speeding). Additionally, the failure to produce a satisfactory bond will often justify “detention and custodial arrest.” People v. Mathis, 55 Ill. App. 3d 680, 684, 371 N. E. 2d 245, 249 (1977). See also Y. Kamisar, W. LaFave, & J. Israel, Modern Criminal Procedure 402, n. a (Supp. 4th ed. 1980). Given the incomplete protection afforded by statutory law, drivers in many States will have to persuade state supreme courts to interpret their state constitution’s equivalent to the Fourth Amendment to prohibit the unreasonable searches permitted by the Court here.

 The conclusion that the officers had probable cause to search the car is supported by Robbins, in which the plurality seems to assume the existence of probable cause on the basis of siimlar facts. Cf. United States v. Bowman, 487 F. 2d 1229, 1231 (CA10 1973); United States v. Campos, 471 F. 2d 296 (CA9 1972).

 It would seem equally unreasonable to require a driver to open the trunk of his car, which the Court would not permit, and to require a driver to open luggage located in the back of a station wagon, which would be permissible under the Court’s rule. The Court attempts to justify the search in Belton on the basis of the officer’s safety, but Justice Brennan, dissenting, post, at 466-469, has forcefully demonstrated the inadequacy of that rationale.

 It is true that the State in Belton did not argue that the automobile exception justified the search of respondent’s jacket pocket. Nevertheless, just as the admission of a piece of evidence will be affirmed if any valid reason for admission existed — even if the one relied upon by the trial judge was not valid — I would uphold the admission of this evidence if any theory justifying the search is valid. This is particularly appropriate given the State’s understandable reluctance to argue an issue that many courts have considered to be foreclosed by Sanders. See, e. g., United States v. Rigales, 630 F. 2d 364 (CA5 1980); United States v. MacKay, 606 F. 2d 264 (CA9 1979); State v. Jenkins, 619 P. 2d 108 (Haw. 1980).