Court Opinion

ID: 9564467
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:01:13.623611+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:26.960578
License: Public Domain

Justice ERICKSON
specially concurring:
I concur with the majority. I write separately, however, to provide the Chaffee County District Court with a framework for analyzing the validity of the search of Gilardo Aguilar’s (defendant) vehicle.
I
In its December 14, 1994, order the trial court made the following factual findings about the sequence of events that occurred from the time a police officer initiated contact with the defendant to the time he was arrested:
From [the November 23,1994, evidentia-ry hearing] the following facts were established. On March 12, 1994, Officer Pink-ston of the Chaffee County Sheriffs Department contacted the Defendant walking in a suspicious manner in the vicinity of another vehicle subject to a traffic stop. Officer Pinkston executed a patdown search of the Defendant. He then went to the Defendant’s vehicle with the Defendant where he observed a person pumping a rear tire. According to the unrefuted testimony of the Officer, the tire being pumped looked full and the person pumping the tire looked nervous.
The Defendant was then asked to produce identification. He went into the vehicle and apparently made unsuccessful efforts to do so. He was then placed in another officer’s vehicle. After the Defendant verbally identified himself, it was determined that his driver’s license was revoked and that he was wanted on a warrant from the “front range.” As a result he was placed under custodial arrest.
*87After the defendant had been taken into custody, Trooper Boccaccio, from the Colorado State Patrol, and a tow truck operator who had been called to the scene, searched the defendant’s vehicle and found cocaine. The defendant filed a motion to suppress the cocaine found in the vehicle.
II
Warrantless searches are, because of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, per se unreasonable and “subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.” Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 390, 98 S.Ct. 2408, 2412, 57 L.Ed.2d 290 (1978). An exception to the warrant requirement permits the police to search a lawfully arrested person and the area within the arrestee’s immediate control. Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 763, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 2040, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969). The exception is intended to provide police officers with the right to remove any weapons that the arrestee might use to harm the arresting officers and to prevent the destruction or concealment of evidence. Id.
The United States Supreme Court applied the search incident to arrest exception to automobile searches in New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981). The Court held “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 (footnotes omitted). The Court reasoned that the passenger compartment is “within the area into which an arrestee might reach in order to grab a weapon or evidentiary item.” Id. (quoting Chimel, 395 U.S. at 763, 89 S.Ct. at 2040); see United States v. Diaz-Lizaraza, 981 F.2d 1216, 1222 (11th Cir.1993) (stating that the purposes of the search incident to arrest exception are to define the permissible scope of an automobile search incident to arrest).
Belton applies only when there has been a “lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of the vehicle.” 3 Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 7.1(b) at 5 (2d ed. 1987). Chimel not Belton, applies when the arrestee was not the driver or a passenger in the vehicle immediately before the arrest. Id. at 5-6; see, e.g., United States v. Adams, 26 F.3d 702, 705 (7th Cir.1994) (reasoning that Chi-mel was applicable and Belton inapplicable because the defendant was not an occupant of the vehicle immediately prior to his arrest, he was not linked to the vehicle until after he was detained and handcuffed, and he was in no position at the time of the arrest to remove weapons or evidence from the area searched); United States v. Strahan, 984 F.2d 155, 159 (6th Cir.1993) (stating that Chimel analysis applies to search of vehicle unless the police initiate contact with the defendant while the defendant is still in the vehicle); United States v. Fafowora, 865 F.2d 360, 362 (D.C.Cir.) (concluding that, because the Belton rationale is inapplicable when police initiate contact with a suspect outside of an automobile, the Chimel framework applies), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 829, 110 S.Ct. 98, 107 L.Ed.2d 62 (1989).
In undertaking a Chimel analysis, several factors must be considered in determining the area within the arrestee’s immediate control: (1) whether the arrestee has been placed in some type of restraint; (2) the position of the defendant and the arresting officer in relation to the vehicle; (3) the ease or difficulty with which the arrestee may gain access to the vehicle; and (4) the number of officers present in relation to the number of arrestees. LaFave, § 7.1(b) at 6-8. The interior of a vehicle is not within the immediate control of an arrestee and the search incident to arrest doctrine does not apply when an arrestee is unable to gain access to the vehicle. See, e.g., Strahan, 984 F.2d at 159 (stating that interior of vehicle was not within the arrestee’s immediate control because he was standing approximately thirty feet away from the vehicle when arrested); United States v. Lugo, 978 F.2d 631, 635 (10th Cir.1992) (determining that the purpose of search incident to arrest had “evaporated” and that the interior of the vehicle was not within the arrestee’s immediate control because he was handcuffed and in the back seat of a patrol car being escorted away from the scene); United States v. Vasey, 834 F.2d 782, 787 (9th Cir.1987) (reason-*88tag that a search, which took place between thirty and forty-five minutes after the defendant had been arrested, handcuffed, and placed in a police vehicle, was not a search incident to arrest); State v. Brown, 588 N.E.2d 113, 115-16 (Ohio 1992) (noting that, because the arrestee had been placed in a police cruiser, the contents of the automobile were not within his immediate control).
The trial court concluded that Trooper Boccaccio and a tow truck operator searched the defendant’s vehicle. In evaluating the constitutionality of the search, the trial court determined that there was no probable cause to search the defendant’s vehicle and that the search was not an inventory search. The trial court failed, however, to analyze the constitutionality of the search of the defendant’s vehicle as a search incident to arrest.
Accordingly, I agree with the majority that the suppression order should be vacated and the case remanded to the trial court for reconsideration of the search.
SCOTT, J., joins in this special concurrence.