Scope of the Vehicle Search

Scope of the Vehicle Search

Probable cause entitles officers to search a vehicle without a warrant, but it does not say how far into the vehicle they may go. The answer is a single principle that each application in this section repeats. As California v. Acevedo restated the rule from United States v. Ross, the scope of a warrantless automobile search "is not defined by the nature of the container in which the contraband is secreted," but by "the object of the search and the places in which there is probable cause to believe that it may be found."¹ Two questions therefore fix the boundary. The first is what the officers have probable cause to find, which is the object of the search, and the second is which parts of the vehicle could hold that object. A closed bag, a zippered pouch, and an open seat pocket all count as places to look if the object could fit inside, and the character of the container does no other work.

The boundary sits where it does because it matches the boundary of a warrant. A magistrate who authorizes a search of a place for a particular object permits officers to look anywhere that object might be, and nowhere else. The automobile exception substitutes the officers' own probable cause for the magistrate's finding without enlarging what that finding permits, and Acevedo said as much when it explained that its holding neither extends the Carroll doctrine nor broadens the scope of the permissible automobile search.² Error in either direction shows why the line falls here. If the search were narrower, officers with probable cause that drugs were in the trunk would have to leave the trunk closed or stop at every container, and the exception would fail at the moment it was needed. If the search were broader, probable cause about one object would turn into a license to look for anything, and a tip about a single stolen item would justify rummaging through everything the driver owned.

Acevedo itself shows both sides of the line. The officers there had probable cause to believe that a paper bag in the trunk held marijuana, and that cause allowed a warrantless search of the bag. They had no cause to believe contraband was hidden in any other part of the car, so a search of the entire vehicle would have been unreasonable.³ The Court added, using a taxi as its example, that probable cause to believe a container in the trunk holds contraband or evidence does not justify a search of the entire cab.⁴

On an exam stem, the temptation is to sort the facts by container, asking whether the item was a bag, a box, or a briefcase, and whether it was open or closed. The principle sets those details aside. The question is what the officers had probable cause to find and whether the object could be inside the place searched. The three applications that follow take the principle in turn. Ross addresses the whole vehicle and its contents, Acevedo addresses probable cause aimed at one container, and Wyoming v. Houghton addresses belongings that a passenger brings into the car.

Whole Vehicle Under Ross

In United States v. Ross the object-of-search principle took the form it still has, and the facts show what it does in practice. An informant reported having seen Ross complete a drug transaction using drugs stored in the trunk of his car.⁶ Officers stopped the car, saw a bullet on the front seat, found a pistol in the glove compartment, and drove the car to the station, where a thorough search turned up a paper bag holding glassine bags of heroin and a zippered leather pouch holding cash.⁷ The move to the station does not complicate the analysis, because officers who have probable cause at the stop may search later under the delayed-search rule taught in the previous section.⁸ The court of appeals accepted that the officers had probable cause to search the car but held that they should have obtained a warrant before opening the bag and the pouch.⁹ The question left for the Supreme Court was therefore whether probable cause to search the car reaches closed containers inside it, or whether each container needs its own warrant.

The Court held that no separate warrant was needed, and it stated the rule in the sentence that has governed vehicle searches since: "If probable cause justifies the search of a lawfully stopped vehicle, it justifies the search of every part of the vehicle and its contents that may conceal the object of the search."¹⁰ Each phrase carries part of the rule. The words "lawfully stopped" and "probable cause" restate the trigger taught earlier in this chapter, so nothing about containers changes what officers must know before they begin. The words "every part of the vehicle and its contents" erase the line between the passenger compartment and the trunk, and between open space and a closed bag, which is why the bag and pouch in Ross's trunk were open to search. The final phrase, "that may conceal the object of the search," is the limit, and this subsection returns to it below.

Ross reaches into closed containers because the exception borrows its scope from the warrant it replaces. The Court described the scope of a warrantless search based on probable cause as no narrower and no broader than the scope of a search a magistrate could authorize on the same probable cause.¹¹ A search of a house for an object may extend to the basement if the object may be there, and the Court drew the same inference for a car, so the search may extend to every part of the vehicle in which the object might be found.¹² The rule the court of appeals applied would have let officers look in the trunk but stop at a bag lying in it, a line no magistrate would draw, since a closed bag in a trunk is an obvious place to keep drugs. That line would also add to the intrusion it was meant to limit. The Court observed that forbidding police to open at once the container where the object is most likely to be, and forcing them first to comb the entire vehicle, would worsen the intrusion on privacy interests.¹³

History supports the same result. Ross relied on early customs legislation that allowed warrantless searches of ships and other vessels for imported goods, and the Court found it inconceivable that Congress meant customs officers to get a warrant for every package discovered during such a search or to examine only the outside of boxes that might hide smuggled goods.¹⁴ Wyoming v. Houghton later repeated the point, observing that whether contraband traveled in a horse-drawn carriage or a modern automobile, it has been assumed that a lawful search of the vehicle includes any container that might conceal the object of the search.¹⁵ That history answers the objection that a bag is more private than the trunk around it, because the early practice treated packages found on a conveyance as part of what the officers could search.

Ross also overruled Robbins v. California to the extent that decision is inconsistent with its rule.¹⁶ The container-by-container warrant requirement that the court of appeals applied to the bag and pouch therefore no longer governs when probable cause covers the vehicle. That qualifier matters. In Ross the officers had probable cause to search the entire vehicle for drugs, while the earlier container cases, Chadwick and Sanders, involved police whose cause pointed at a particular container rather than at the vehicle generally.¹⁷ Probable cause aimed at a single container is the situation taken up next under California v. Acevedo.

The phrase that opens the bag also closes smaller doors. Because scope is measured by the object, a container is searchable only if the object could be inside it, so the size and shape of the container matter even though its being closed does not.¹⁸ In Ross the object was drugs, which can be carried in a paper bag or a zippered pouch, so opening both stayed within the object of the search.¹⁹

On an exam stem, Ross is easy to over-remember as permission to search anything in the car. The rule carries its own filter: officers may open a place or container only if it may conceal the object of the search. The first fact to pin down is what the officers had probable cause to find, and the second is whether that object could physically fit in the place opened. A container's being closed, zipped, or sitting in the trunk adds nothing in either direction. The next subsections test what happens when probable cause points at one container and when the container belongs to a passenger.

Containers Under Acevedo

Ross answered what officers may open when probable cause points at the whole vehicle, but officers often know something narrower: that contraband is in one particular bag or box that happens to be in a car. For years that narrower situation was governed by a different line of cases. In Chadwick the Court refused to treat a double-locked footlocker, which agents had just seen loaded into the open trunk of a car, as the object of an automobile search. In Arkansas v. Sanders it required a warrant for an unlocked suitcase found in the trunk of a cab, reasoning that the suitcase's place in the vehicle changed neither its owner's privacy interest nor the real urgency of the situation.²¹ Sanders was later confined to cases where probable cause pointed at a container but not at the vehicle generally, and it has since been overruled.²² The result was two rules that depended on what officers happened to learn first, and California v. Acevedo replaced them with one.

The facts of Acevedo show how container-only probable cause arises. A federal agent in Hawaii had seized a package of marijuana addressed to an apartment in Santa Ana, California, and arranged a controlled delivery. A man who identified himself as Jamie Daza claimed the package and drove it to the apartment, and Daza later left and threw the box and wrapping into a trash bin.²³ Officers stopped Richard St. George as he drove away from the apartment carrying a knapsack with about one and one-half pounds of marijuana. Later, Charles Acevedo arrived, stayed about ten minutes, and came out with a brown paper bag the size of one of the wrapped marijuana packages.²⁴ He put the bag in the trunk of his Honda and began to drive away. Officers stopped the car, opened the trunk, opened the bag, and found marijuana, and the trial court denied his motion to suppress. The California Court of Appeal then reversed his conviction, which brought the case to the Supreme Court.²⁵ The officers' suspicion attached to the bag. Nothing in the record tied the rest of the car to the crime.

The Court held that probable cause aimed at the bag was enough. The police had probable cause to believe that the paper bag in the trunk held marijuana, and that probable cause allowed a warrantless search of the bag.²⁶ Reaching the bag meant opening the trunk, and the same probable cause covered that step because the trunk was simply where the bag sat. The Court then drew the limit that matters most on an exam. The record showed no probable cause to believe contraband was hidden in any other part of the automobile, so a search of the entire vehicle would have been unreasonable.²⁷ Had the same officers also wanted to look in the glove box or under the seats, nothing beyond the bag's probable cause would have supported it. The limit comes from the same principle that opened the bag: because scope follows the object of the search and the places it may be found, probable cause about one container reaches that container and the route to it, and it stops there.

The reason for collapsing the old split is that protection had come to turn on coincidence. Under the earlier cases, officers whose probable cause covered the car could open a bag found inside it, while officers whose probable cause covered the bag needed a warrant to open the same bag in the same trunk. The Court described the line as one between "the search of an automobile that coincidentally turns up a container and the search of a container that coincidentally turns up in an automobile," and it concluded that Fourth Amendment protections must not turn on such coincidences.²⁸ The privacy invaded by opening a paper bag is the same in both cases, and so is the urgency of a car that can drive off. Only the order in which the officers acquired their suspicion differs, and a rule keyed to that order also invites after-the-fact disputes about what the officers knew first, which have nothing to do with whether the search was reasonable. The Court therefore read Carroll as providing one rule for all automobile searches: police may search an automobile and the containers within it where they have probable cause to believe contraband or evidence is contained.²⁹

This is a refinement of Ross and not a conflict with it. The Court said its holding neither extends the Carroll doctrine nor broadens the scope of the permissible automobile search set out in Carroll, Chambers, and Ross.³⁰ What changed is the trigger for container searches, since probable cause aimed at a container now supports opening it, which Sanders had denied. What did not change is the measuring stick, which is the object of the search and the places where it may be found. Under Ross, probable cause that covers the vehicle reaches every part of it and every container that may conceal the object.³¹ Under Acevedo, probable cause that covers only a container reaches that container.

The trap here runs in both directions. A student who remembers Acevedo as permission to search containers in cars will stretch it to the glove compartment and the rest of the car, and a student who remembers the older Sanders rule will demand a warrant for a bag in a trunk. The question that sorts the cases is what the probable cause is aimed at, because a closed container's presence in the car answers it in neither direction. Two separate opinions accompanied the decision. Justice Scalia concurred in the judgment on his own reasoning, and Justice Stevens dissented in favor of keeping a warrant requirement for containers. Neither opinion changes the rule the majority announced.

Passengers' Belongings

Acevedo turned on what the officers' probable cause was aimed at. A different question arises when probable cause covers the whole car and the container being opened belongs to a passenger, someone the officers have no reason to suspect. In Wyoming v. Houghton a Wyoming Highway Patrol officer stopped a car for speeding and a faulty brake light and noticed a hypodermic syringe in the driver's shirt pocket.³³ The driver said he used it to take drugs, so the officer searched the passenger compartment for contraband and found a purse on the back seat that a passenger, Sandra Houghton, claimed as hers.³⁴ Inside the purse, a brown pouch and a black wallet-type container held drug paraphernalia and syringes of methamphetamine, and Houghton was arrested.³⁵ The court below held the search unlawful because the officer knew or should have known the purse belonged to a passenger and had no probable cause to search the passengers' personal effects.³⁶

The Supreme Court rejected that limit. Under the automobile exception, officers who have probable cause to search a vehicle for contraband may search containers belonging to passengers, such as a purse, because a passenger shares the reduced expectation of privacy that attaches to the vehicle.³⁷ The facts show how little more is required. It was uncontested that the officers had probable cause to believe illegal drugs were in the car, and the driver's syringe and admission supplied it.³⁸ Nothing tied Houghton or her purse to the drugs in particular, and the Court did not ask for anything of that kind. When there is probable cause to search for contraband in a car, it is reasonable for officers "to examine packages and containers without a showing of individualized probable cause for each one."³⁹

The Court reached that result through its usual two-step. It asks first whether the search would have been regarded as unlawful at common law when the Amendment was framed, and only when that inquiry yields no answer does it weigh the intrusion on the individual's privacy against the government's legitimate need.⁴⁰ The first step is the one that Florida v. White, taught below, borrows from Houghton when it asks how a seizure would have been viewed at the framing.⁴¹ In Houghton that step did most of the work. Carroll rested on legislation from 1789 through 1799 that allowed customs officers to search ships and vessels without a warrant when they had probable cause, and Ross read that history to include containers found during such a search.⁴² Nothing in those statutes, or in the practice under them, excepted packages belonging to passengers on the suspect ship, carriage, or automobile, so a passenger exception would have had to be invented rather than found.⁴³

History is only part of the case for the rule, and the other parts have separate logic. The privacy reason runs through the car itself: a container inside a vehicle shares the lesser expectation of privacy that the vehicle carries, and a passenger rides in the same space as the driver, so that diminished expectation reaches the passenger's effects too.⁴⁴ The practical reason is that an officer at a roadside stop usually cannot tell whose bag is likely to hold the drugs, and the Court was unwilling to require officers to sort that out case by case.⁴⁵ The incentive reason can be read off the structure of the rule. If ownership controlled the search, a driver could shield contraband from an otherwise lawful search simply by dropping it into a passenger's bag, and the exception would stop at the one place the object was most likely to be moved. A rule that follows the object closes that gap.

Underneath all three reasons lies the principle Ross stated: the scope of a warrantless car search is defined by the object of the search and the places in which there is probable cause to believe it may be found. Houghton pointed out that the same logic governs a warrant for premises belonging to someone not suspected of any crime, where the critical element is reasonable cause to believe the specific things sought are on the property, and not that the owner is suspected.⁴⁶ A passenger's belongings, like the driver's belongings or a glove compartment, are "in" the car, and the officer has probable cause to search for contraband in the car.⁴⁷ Houghton and Acevedo are easy to blur because both involve containers, but each changes a different variable. Acevedo changes what the probable cause is aimed at, a single bag rather than the whole car. Houghton holds the probable cause fixed on the car and changes who owns the container, and the answer is that ownership drops out.

The two versions differ in only one respect, and it is not the passenger's status. The purse belongs to the same person in both, and the search is lawful only in the version where the officers hold probable cause to search the car itself. An exam stem that stresses "the purse belonged to a passenger the officers had no reason to suspect" is therefore pointing at a fact that does not change the answer. The questions that do are whether probable cause covers the car and whether the object of the search could be in the purse.

The rule concerns belongings found in the vehicle. Houghton's purse was on the back seat, and the rule is described as reaching a passenger's personal belongings at least when they are not attached to the person.⁴⁸ A search of the passenger's body needs its own justification, and so does the arrest of a passenger. The next section takes up that separate question, which arises when officers find contraband in the car and must decide which occupant, if any, the evidence points to.