Joshua Moskovitz, 2L

Executive Editor

Infrequently, a significant area of the law shifts dramatically under our feet as we round the bend for finals. The Supreme Court’s decision in Arizona v. Gant, announced last week in an opinion written by Justice Stevens, uproots the settled expectations of criminal procedure students, if not the police.

Gant addresses vehicle searches following the arrest of a recent occupant for traffic violations. Prior to Gant, the Supreme Court’s decision in New York v. Belton (1981) had been read broadly by many lower courts to allow a complete search of the passenger compartment of a vehicle and any container or object (in Belton’s case, a jacket) found in the car following the arrest of the vehicle’s occupants. In the opinion of the five justice majority in Gant, this reading of Belton went too far.

Simply put, Gant reaffirms the Court’s seminal case, Chimel v. California (1969), governing searches incident to arrest and its twin rationales: officer safety and preserving evidence. Gant holds that, incident to the arrest of a recent occupant of a vehicle, police may only search the vehicle if (1) the suspect is within reaching distance of the passenger compartment at the time of the search, or (2) if the police have a reasonable belief that the vehicle contains evidence of the offense of arrest. This second prong incorporates the reasoning in a concurring opinion of Justice Scalia in Thornton v. U.S. (2004).

In Gant’s case, because he and the other arrestees were handcuffed, held in police cars many feet from Gant’s vehicle, and surrounded by a cadre of police officers, the first justification for an incidental vehicle search was absent. Also, because Gant was arrested for traffic violations—driving with a suspended license—there was no reason to believe further evidence of the crime would be found in the vehicle.

Justice Scalia concurred, expressing his displeasure with both the majority and the dissents written by Breyer and Alito. Scalia would have preferred to overturn Belton and Thorton, but he did not want to leave the Court’s judgment irreconcilably fractured. The dissenters felt principles of stare decisis demanded upholding Belton and Thornton, which Justice Alito accused the majority of overruling although Gant had not sought that result.

For the most part, Justices Stevens and Alito quarreled over the proper balancing of privacy interests and effective law enforcement needs. Justice Stevens saw the scales favoring private interests where the twin rationales of Chimel are absent, while Justice Alito felt the need for a “bright line” rule, which he argued Belton provides, tipped the scale for law enforcement.

Many questions are left open by the Gant decision. An obvious concern, noted by Justice Scalia, is whether Gant will encourage police to wait to cuff suspects and to keep them close to their vehicles in order to justify a search. However, one implication is clear: students of criminal procedure have another case to study before finals.