Court Opinion

ID: 9735076
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 17:59:57.626472+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:43:09.206979
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion
Givan, J.
I dissent from the majority opinion in this case. The majority recognizes the general rule in Chimel v. Calif. (1969), 395 U. S. 752, 23 L. Ed. 2d 685, 89 S. Ct. 2034, which holds that at the time of an arrest the arresting officer may lawfully conduct a search of the person of the one arrested and of the immediate surroundings in order to secure the safety of the arresting officer. The majority opinion also points out that in conjunction with the arrest the officer searched under the front seat of the appellants’ car where he *277found an overcoat containing approximately $38.00 in change. The Supreme Court of the United States at page 763 in the Chimel case stated:
“* * * And the area into which an arrestee might reach in order to grab a weapon or evidentiary items must, of course, be governed by a like rule. A gun on a table or in a drawer in front of one who is arrested can be as dangerous to the arresting officer as one concealed in the clothing of the person arrested. There is ample justification, therefore, for a search of the arrestee’s person and the area ‘within his immediate control’—construing that phrase to mean the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.”
I think the above language is very applicable to the case at bar. Conceding as the majority opinion does that the arrest was a lawful arrest, I interpret the language from Chimel and cases of like import to mean that the arresting officer may search the person being arrested and the area immediately within his reach at the time the arrest is effected. In this case at the time Paxton was arrested he was seated behind the steering wheel in the driver’s seat of the automobile. From the officer’s testimony the overcoat in which the change was found was within easy reach of Paxton as he sat behind the wheel. To say that when the officer required Paxton to step out of the car he could not then search the area in the car within Paxton’s reach at the time of the arrest is to make a strained and distorted application of the rule. What we are concerned with at the time an officer is making an arrest is that officer’s safety before he can secure the area. To say that the officer in order to search those places which Paxton could have easily reached while he was seated behind the wheel would have to conduct his search before he required Paxton to alight from the automobile would certainly be placing the officer in a most hazardous position. Yet to say that once he removed Paxton from the automobile he immediately lost his power to search those areas would place him in a position where he could not afford to allow the *278arrested person to return to the seat of his automobile and proceed, for if no search could be conducted the arrested person could return to the seat, obtain an unfound weapon and at that time injure the officer. Following the majority’s reasoning in this case, it would be just as logical to say that a police officer would have to search the pockets of a suspect before he made him lean against a wall with outstretched hands or before he placed handcuffs upon his wrists, arguing that once the suspect was helpless leaning against a wall in an outstretched position or was wearing handcuffs he could no longer reach his pockets, therefore the officer was no longer in danger and therefore could not search the pockets.
I am unwilling to place arresting officers in the hazardous position which I believe the application of the majority opinion in the case would require.
I think the search in this case was lawfully conducted following a lawful arrest in order to secure the area within the immediate reach of the Appellant Paxton at the time the arrest was effected as authorized under Chimel v. Calif., supra.
At the time the overcoat was recovered and the $38.00 worth of change found in the pockets the arresting officer, because of prior information of the existence of a burglary in the neighborhood in which a vending machine had been opened, had probable cause to then conduct a search of the entire automobile for the possible discovery of the fruits of the burlgary for which he then had probable cause to believe the appellants had committed.
I would, therefore, affirm the conviction in this case.