Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court which held that the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures is not violated when a police officer stops a suspect on the street and searches him without probable cause to arrest, if the police officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime. Terry held that for their own protection, police may perform a quick surface search of the person’s outer clothing for weapons if they have reasonable suspicion that the person stopped is armed.
The justification for the warrantless searches authorized by Terry was that the officer had the right to search for weapons to protect himself while talking with the defendant. This exception has been stretched beyond recognition in subsequent rulings which allow the plain touch exception and plain smell exceptions which have been used to search and seize contraband on the suspect.
For the last 28 years, under the Belton decision which was based on Terry, police officers have been able to search the vehicle of any suspect they take into custody. Now the rules have changed after a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court this week and that has local police departments on notice.
The Supreme Court in this weeks U.S. v. Gant case stems from an incident that happened in Arizona. Police arrested a man for driving with a suspended license. When they later searched his car, they found cocaine. The man was eventually convicted on drug charges. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court because the search had nothing to do with officer safety or the reason the man was arrested. The high court says those are the two guidelines police need to search a vehicle after an arrest.
The ruling held that once the police have the person in custody, in handcuffs, and in the squad car there really isn’t any threat to the officer if there are weapons in the vehicle.
That means once a person is arrested, officers are unable to search someone’s car unless there is probable cause.
Under the old rule, an arrest was all it took to give police the right to search a car for anything unrelated to that arrest. For example, someone is pulled over for drunk driving, police then search the car and find drugs or a weapon. The Supreme Court ruling now prohibits police from making that kind of search unless there’s clear evidence of drugs or weapons in the car. Essentially, the new law restricts an officer’s hunch.