2d 325 (1974)", "Texas v. White, 423 US 67, 96 S. Ct. 304, 46 L. Ed.

Today marks the 93 rd anniversary of the landmark decision in Carroll v. United States where the Supreme Court created what came to be known as the Automobile Exception to the warrant requirement of the 4 th amendment. This exception allows police officers to search a vehicle without a warrant in cases where there is . Placing the Stockholm Syndrome in perspective. 295 City of Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U.S. 32 (2000) (vehicle checkpoint set up for the “primary purpose [of] detect[ing] evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing” (here interdicting illegal narcotics) does not fall within the highway safety or border patrol exception to the individualized suspicion requirement, and hence violates the Fourth Amendment). Co. 391 US 216, 88 S. Ct. 1472, 20 L. Ed. Smart conversation from the National Constitution Center.

The Supreme Court also ruled in the 2017 case Byrd v. United States that the motor vehicle exception also includes to those driving rental vehicles even if the driver is not listed on the rental agreement. The existence of probable cause to believe that a traffic violation has occurred establishes the constitutional reasonableness of traffic stops regardless of the actual motivation of the officers involved, and regardless of whether it is customary police practice to stop motorists for the violation observed. 11–817, slip op. Annotations.

Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132 (1925), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court that upheld the warrantless searches of an automobile, which is known as the automobile exception. United States v. Johns, 469 U.S. 478 (1985) (three-day time lapse). Carroll is a prohibition era case in which police stopped and searched the car of a known bootlegger and found 68 bottles of gin and whiskey (del Carmen and Walker, 2015, p. 116). 307 Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128 (1978). Similarly, because there is no reasonable privacy interest in the vehicle identification number, required by law to be placed on the dashboard so as to be visible through the windshield, police may reach into the passenger compartment to remove items obscuring the number and may seize items in plain view while doing so. 1987) 21 Id. "[3], The US Supreme Court in California v. Carney[7] found the motor vehicle exception to apply to a motor home. 1. In United States v. Hill, it was applied to house boats. It travels public thoroughfares where both its occupants and its contents are in plain view.’ ”286 Although motor homes serve as residences and as repositories for personal effects, and their contents are often shielded from public view, the Court extended the automobile exception to them as well, holding that there is a diminished expectation of privacy in a mobile home parked in a parking lot and licensed for vehicular travel, hence “readily mobile.”287, The reduced expectancy concept has broadened police powers to conduct automobile searches without warrants, but they still must have probable cause to search a vehicle288 and they may not make random stops of vehicles on the roads, but instead must base stops of individual vehicles on probable cause or some “articulable and reasonable suspicion”289 of traffic or safety violation or some other criminal activity.290 If police stop a vehicle, then the vehicle’s passengers as well as its driver are deemed to have been seized from the moment the car comes to a halt, and the passengers as well as the driver may challenge the constitutionality of the stop.291 Likewise, a police officer may frisk (patdown for weapons) both the driver and any passengers whom he reasonably concludes “might be armed and presently dangerous.”292, By contrast, fixed-checkpoint stops in the absence of any individualized suspicion have been upheld for purposes of promoting highway safety293 or policing the international border,294 but not for more generalized law enforcement purposes.295 Once police have validly stopped a vehicle, they may also, based on articulable facts warranting a reasonable belief that weapons may be present, conduct a Terry-type protective search of those portions of the passenger compartment in which a weapon could be placed or hidden.296 And, in the absence of such reasonable suspicion as to weapons, police may seize contraband and suspicious items “in plain view” inside the passenger compartment.297, Although officers who have stopped a car to issue a routine traffic citation may conduct a Terry-type search, even including a pat-down of driver and passengers if there is reasonable suspicion that they are armed and dangerous, they may not conduct a full-blown search of the car298 unless they exercise their discretion to arrest the driver instead of issuing a citation.299 And once police have probable cause to believe there is contraband in a vehicle, they may remove the vehicle from the scene to the station house in order to conduct a search, without thereby being required to obtain a warrant.300 “[T]he justification to conduct such a warrantless search does not vanish once the car has been immobilized; nor does it depend upon a reviewing court’s assessment of the likelihood in each particular case that the car would have been driven away, or that its contents would have been tampered with, during the period required for the police to obtain a warrant.”301 Because of the lessened expectation of privacy, inventory searches of impounded automobiles are justifiable in order to protect public safety and the owner’s property, and any evidence of criminal activity discovered in the course of the inventories is admissible in court.302 The Justices were evenly divided, however, on the propriety of warrantless seizure of an arrestee’s automobile from a public parking lot several hours after his arrest, its transportation to a police impoundment lot, and the taking of tire casts and exterior paint scrapings.303, Police in undertaking a warrantless search of an automobile may not extend the search to the persons of the passengers therein304 unless there is a reasonable suspicion that the passengers are armed and dangerous, in which case a Terry patdown is permissible,305 or unless there is individualized suspicion of criminal activity by the passengers.306 But because passengers in an automobile have no reasonable expectation of privacy in the interior area of the car, a warrantless search of the glove compartment and the spaces under the seats, which turned up evidence implicating the passengers, invaded no Fourth Amendment interest of the passengers.307 Luggage and other closed containers found in automobiles may also be subjected to warrantless searches based on probable cause, regardless of whether the luggage or containers belong to the driver or to a passenger, and regardless of whether it is the driver or a passenger who is under suspicion.308 The same rule now applies whether the police have probable cause to search only the containers309 or whether they have probable cause to search the automobile for something capable of being held in the container.310.

297 Texas v. Brown, 460 U.S. 730 (1983). Cf.

284 Preston v. United States, 376 U.S. 364 (1964); Dyke v. Taylor Implement Mfg.

An automobile’s “ready mobility [is] an exigency sufficient to excuse failure to obtain a search warrant once probable cause is clear”; there is no need to find the presence of “unforeseen circumstances” or other additional exigency.

Today marks the 93 rd anniversary of the landmark decision in Carroll v. United States where the Supreme Court created what came to be known as the Automobile Exception to the warrant requirement of the 4 th amendment. In the only dissent, Justice Samuel Alito said the Court’s majority opinion itself was unreasonable. [9] In United States v. Nigro[10] and United States v. Montgomery,[11] the motor vehicle exception was found to apply to airplanes.