PART 2 of 5: Vehicular Searches Without a Warrant. Search Incident to a Lawful Arrest. SILA.

Search conducted incident to a lawful custodial arrest “is not only an exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment, but is also a ‘reasonable’ search under that Amendment.” United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 235 (1973).

Rationales for the search incident to arrest exception: (1) the need to disarm the suspect in order to take him into custody, and (2) the need to preserve evidence for later use at trial.
SCOPE:

Under Chimel v. California, the officers may search the arrestee and areas within the immediate control of the arrestee. 395 U.S. 752 (1969)

REQUIREMENTS:

First, there must have been a lawful custodial arrest, meaning (1) probable cause exist to believe that the arrestee has committed a crime and (2) an arrest is actually made.

For example, the Supreme Court struck down an Iowa statute that permitted an officer to conduct a “search incident to citation” in those cases where a law enforcement officer had probable cause to arrest a suspect for a traffic violation, but chose, instead, simply to issue a traffic citation. Knowles v. Iowa, 525 U.S. 113 (1998).

The second requirement for a lawful search incident to arrest is that the
search must be “substantially contemporaneous” with the arrest. New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 460 (1981).


Anton Vialtsin, Esq.
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