Court Opinion

ID: 9691124
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 20:12:02.651148+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:11.140643
License: Public Domain

NEUMAN, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. Although the majority cites persuasive authority for the steady erosion of the traveling public’s Fourth Amendment protections, I remain unwilling to believe section 805.1(4) permits a search incident to issuance of a routine traffic citation without some consideration of reasonableness.
It is beyond argument that a search incident to a custodial arrest constitutes an ex*624ception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement; the very circumstances surrounding an arrest make it a “reasonable” search under that amendment. United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 235, 94 S.Ct. 467, 477, 38 L.Ed.2d 427, 440-41 (1973). What is less clear is whether courts are free to abandon the venerable case-by-case determination of reasonableness when the circumstance involves other than a custodial arrest. See id. at 236 n. 6, 94 S.Ct. at 488 n. 6, 38 L.Ed.2d at 441 n. 6 (declining to address law governing search incident to citation where, officer made full-custody arrest of traffic violator). The majority jumps into the breach, invalidating any Fourth Amendment challenge to a search incident to a citation on the ground the officer could have subjected the detainee to full custodial arrest. In doing so, I believe the court mistakes expedience for principle.
Robinson, the seminal opinion permitting search of an arrestee when only a traffic offense has been violated, grounded its holding in the officer’s “need to disarm the suspect in order to take him into custody and to preserve evidence on his person for later use at trial.” Id. at 234, 94 S.Ct. at 476, 38 L.Ed.2d at 440; see State v. Farrell, 242 N.W.2d 327, 329-30 (Iowa 1976) (paraphrasing Robinson rationale). One could hardly quarrel with this reasoning in the context of a custodial arrest. But I believe the rationale loses its grounding when an officer does no more than issue a traffic ticket. In that context the officer’s contact with the traffic violator may be minimal. Rarely will there be evidence to preserve. Admittedly, the officer’s initial stop may generate safety concerns justifying a Terry-type investigative frisk. A full search is quite another matter.
The majority justifies its blanket search-incident-to-citation rule by pointing to a concurring opinion in Sibron v. New York which reasoned that the facts supporting probable cause to arrest — not the arrest itself — furnish the reasonableness finding in every case. At issue in Sibron was the constitutionality of a state statute purporting to authorize certain types of searches and seizures without warrants. Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 60, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 1901, 20 L.Ed.2d 917, 933 (1968). Even the concurrence in Sibron, however, recognized that the constitutional reasonableness of the statute could not be decided in the abstract. Id. at 71, 88 S.Ct. at 1906, 20 L.Ed.2d at 939 (Harlan, J., concurring). Indeed, the majonty in Sibron stated: “The constitutional validity of a warrantless search is preeminently the sort of question which can only be decided in the concrete factual context of the individual case.” Id. at 59, 88 S.Ct. at 1901, 20 L.Ed.2d at 932.
In my view, the reasonableness of a search incident to citation can no more be gathered from the text of section 805.1(4) than could the reasonableness of a Terry-type search from the statute discussed in Sibron. Section 805.1(4) grants officers the authority to conduct “an otherwise lawful search.” (Emphasis added.) Because the search-incident-to-arrest exception articulated in Chimel was grounded on reasonableness, I believe the “lawful” search permitted by section 805.1(4) must likewise be defined by that standard. Certain traffic stops — perhaps even the one at issue here — may reasonably justify a protective patdown search. But subjecting every traffic violator to a full search on the ground the officer could subject the individual to full arrest is not, in my view, reasonable under Robinson or Chimel.
It is, indeed, expedient in an era of crime consciousness to enhance the power of police officers. We want them on the lookout for gun-toting drug dealers and would-be terrorists. But the sweep of today’s opinion will also sacrifice the personal privacy of “soccer moms” driving a little too fast to the ball field, senior citizens motoring along without a taillight, and otherwise “good kids” who fail to dim their high beams swiftly enough. All will be subject to search at the whim of the officer, not because they will be taken into custody, but because they could have been. That is not reasonable, and in my view, it violates the spirit, as well as the letter, of the Fourth Amendment and article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution.
LAYORATO, SNELL and TERNUS, JJ., join this dissent.