What impact did Gant have on law enforcement?

5 The decision in Gant placed limits on the ability of the police to conduct searches of a vehicle's passenger compartment after making a warrantless arrest. The Belton bright-line rule had been extensively used by police, and its demise was of great concern to the law enforcement community.

What did the Supreme Court decide defines a seizure under the 4th Amendment?

A seizure of a person, within the context of the Fourth Amendment, occurs when the police's conduct would communicate to a reasonable person, taking into account the circumstances surrounding the encounter, that the person is not free to ignore the police presence and leave at their will.

Arizona v. Gant (Arizona v Gant)

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2009 United States Supreme Court case

Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332 (2009), was a United States Supreme Court decision holding that the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution requires law-enforcement officers to demonstrate an actual and continuing threat to their safety posed by an arrestee, or a need to preserve evidence related to the crime of arrest from tampering by the arrestee, in order to justify a warrantless vehicular search incident to arrest conducted after the vehicle's recent occupants have been arrested and secured.

Background

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The case involved Rodney J. Gant, who was arrested by Tucson, Arizona police on an outstanding warrant for driving with a suspended driver’s license . Police arrested Gant in a friend's yard after he had parked his vehicle and was walking away. Gant and all other suspects on the scene were then secured in police patrol cars . After the officers searched Gant's vehicle and found a weapon and a bag of cocaine , they also charged him with possession of a narcotic drug for sale and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Arguments before the court

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Gant's counsel argued that an unreasonable expansion of a limited authority to search vehicles incident to arrest provided by the Supreme Court's 1981 decision in _New York v. Belton _ had been occurring. Lower courts had been permitting searches that occurred after the initial justification for setting aside the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement had ceased to exist, relying on a so-called bright-line rule of "if arrest, then search." Gant argued, and the court ultimately agreed, that such application of the Belton rule caused the exception to "swallow the rule," allowing unconstitutional searches.

Amici curiae

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A group of legal scholars, including University of Iowa law professor James Tomkovicz , wrote an _amicus curiae _ brief asking the court to overturn the 1981 case of _New York v. Belton _ that granted police the authority to search a person's vehicle even if the person is not in the vehicle. According to Tomkovicz, Belton failed to meet the constitutional standard of probable cause .

Opinion of the court

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In an opinion delivered by Justice Stevens , the Supreme Court held that police may search the passenger compartment of a vehicle incident to a recent occupant's arrest (and therefore without a warrant) only if it is reasonable to believe that the arrestee might access the vehicle at the time of the search, or that the vehicle contains evidence of the offense of arrest.

Justice Scalia wrote a concurring opinion, stating that "we should simply abandon the _Belton-Thornton _ charade of officer safety and overrule those cases. I would hold that a vehicle search incident to arrest is ipso facto 'reasonable' only when the object of the search is evidence of the crime for which the arrest was made, or of another crime that the officer has probable cause to believe occurred."

Justice Alito wrote a dissent joined by Chief Justice Roberts , Justice Kennedy and Justice Breyer in part, arguing that the court could not overrule New York v. Belton and _Thornton v. United States _, 541 U. S. 615 (2004).

Justice Breyer wrote a separate dissent agreeing with Justice Alito that New York v. Belton established a bright-line rule allowing a warrantless search of a vehicle's passenger compartment incident to the lawful arrest, but Breyer acknowledged that this rule can lead to outcomes that diverge from the underlying rationale of the Fourth Amendment.