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police can now search your car if you are arrested near it


Guest Dusty Lipschitz

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Guest Dusty Lipschitz

http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/05/25/scotus.c...s.ap/index.html

 

Police can search parked cars

With 7-2 decision, Supreme Court applies previous ruling's concerns

Tuesday, May 25, 2004 Posted: 8:27 AM EDT (1227 GMT)

 

 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Police can search a parked car for drugs, guns or other evidence of a crime while arresting a driver or passengers nearby, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.

 

The high court has already ruled that officers can search a car when arresting someone inside, and the same rule now applies if a motorist or passenger gets out of the car.

 

The 7-2 ruling addressed a common situation, in which police pull over a suspicious car or come upon it while it is parked. Sometimes motorists get out of the car before an officer approaches, and it was not clear until now whether police had leeway to search the car.

 

"In all relevant aspects, the arrest of a suspect who is next to a vehicle presents identical concerns regarding officer safety and the destruction of evidence as the arrest of one who is inside the vehicle," Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote.

 

Once told he is under arrest, a suspect outside a car could still lunge inside for a weapon, Rehnquist wrote.

 

"It would make little sense to apply two different rules to what is, at bottom, the same situation," Rehnquist wrote for himself and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer. Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed with the outcome.

 

The ruling would apply only when a suspect was arrested close to a car, and would not apply to an abandoned car with no driver or recent occupant in sight.

 

Justices John Paul Stevens and David Souter dissented.

 

The new rule invites too many problems, Stevens wrote. "We are not told how recent is recent, or how close is close," he wrote.

 

The case involved the 2001 search of a Virginia man's gold Lincoln Town Car. He had been driving in Norfolk, Virginia, when an officer noticed his flashy car and ordered a computer check that found the tag was issued for a 1982 Chevrolet. Before the officer could stop Marcus Thornton to give him a ticket, Thornton pulled into a shopping center parking lot and got out.

 

The officer arrested Thornton after he found marijuana and crack cocaine in Thornton's pocket. After handcuffing Thornton, the officer searched the car and found a gun.

 

The case is Thornton v. United States, 03-5165.

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you have no rights/liberties anymore. don't even bother. constitution is looooooooooooooooooooooong gone. never coming back.

 

doesn't exist anymore

 

nothing to see here.

 

 

i don't even understand why education still keeps teaching it in schools?

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I am not totally for this but what about the crack dealer selling dope in front of your kids? He has nothing on him but hides the dope in the recessed gas tank area of his early 90s model minivan?

 

guns drugs or whatever it may be.

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when i got arrested the cops asked what the key in my pocket was for. i told them it was a house key and they just said ok. it clearly says toyota on it and my car was no more than 100 feet awayin plain view from where they were. i just walked around the block once, got in the car, put the paint in the back then left...

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The ruling would apply only when a suspect was arrested close to a car, and would not apply to an abandoned car with no driver or recent occupant in sight.

 

The new rule invites too many problems, Stevens wrote. "We are not told how recent is recent, or how close is close," he wrote.
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