within his immediate control

David Riley was stopped by a police officer for driving with expired registration tags. During the stop, the officer learned that Riley's license had been suspended. The officer impounded Riley's car pursuant to department policy and conducted an inventory search that located two handguns under the hood. Riley was arrested for possession of concealed and loaded firearms. An officer searched Riley incident to the arrest and found items associated with the Bloods street gang. He also seized a cell phone from Riley's pants pocket. The officer accessed information on the phone and noticed that some words were preceded by the letters CK. At the police station about two hours after the arrest, a detective specializing in gangs further examined the contents of the phone. The detective found videos of young men sparring while someone yelled encouragement using the moniker Blood. The police also found photographs of Riley standing in front of a car they suspected had been involved in a shooting a few weeks earlier. Riley was charged with firing at an occupied vehicle, assault with a semiautomatic firearm, and attempted murder. The State alleged that Riley had committed those crimes for the benefit of a criminal street gang. Prior to trial, Riley moved to suppress all evidence that the police had obtained from his cell phone. The trial court rejected that argument. At Riley's trial, police officers testified about the photographs and videos found on the phone, and some of the photographs were admitted into evidence. Riley was convicted on all three counts and received an enhanced sentence of 15 years to life in prison. The California Court of Appeal affirmed. In the second case, a police officer performing routine surveillance observed respondent Brima Wurie make an apparent drug sale from a car. Officers subsequently arrested Wurie and took him to the police station. At the station, the officers seized two cell phones from Wurie's person. The one at issue here was a flip phone. Five to ten minutes after arriving at the station, the officers noticed that the phone was repeatedly receiving calls from a source identified as my house on the phone's external screen. A few minutes later, they opened the phone and saw a photograph of a woman and a baby set as the phone's wallpaper. They pressed one button on the phone to access its call log, then another button to determine the phone number associated with the my house label. They next used an online phone directory to trace that phone number to an apartment building. When the officers went to the building, they saw Wurie's name on a mailbox and observed through a window a woman who resembled the woman in the photograph on Wurie's phone. They secured the apartment while obtaining a search warrant and, upon later executing the warrant, found and seized 215 grams of crack cocaine, marijuana, drug paraphernalia, a firearm and ammunition, and cash. Wurie was charged with distributing crack cocaine, possessing crack cocaine with intent to distribute, and being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition. He moved to suppress the evidence obtained from the search of the apartment, arguing that it was the fruit of an unconstitutional search of his cell phone. The District Court denied the motion. Wurie was convicted on all three counts and sentenced to 262 months in prison. A divided panel of the First Circuit reversed the denial of Wurie's motion to suppress and vacated Wurie's convictions for possession with intent to distribute and possession of a firearm as a felon. The California Court of Appeal affirmed Riley's conviction, rejecting his argument that the cell phone search violated the Fourth Amendment. The First Circuit reversed Wurie's conviction, concluding that the search of his cell phone was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in both cases.

In a rural area of Michigan one evening shortly after midnight, Deputies Howell and Lewis observed a car traveling erratically and at excessive speed. The officers observed the car turning down a side road, where it swerved off into a shallow ditch. The officers stopped to investigate. Long, the only occupant of the automobile, met the deputies at the rear of the car, which was protruding from the ditch onto the road. The door on the driver's side of the vehicle was left open. Deputy Howell requested Long to produce his operator's license, but he did not respond. After the request was repeated, Long produced his license. Long again failed to respond when Howell requested him to produce the vehicle registration. After another repeated request, Long, who Howell thought appeared to be under the influence of something, turned from the officers and began walking toward the open door of the vehicle. The officers followed Long and both observed a large hunting knife on the floorboard of the driver's side of the car. The officers then stopped Long's progress and subjected him to a Terry protective patdown, which revealed no weapons. Long and Deputy Lewis then stood by the rear of the vehicle while Deputy Howell shined his flashlight into the interior of the vehicle, but did not actually enter it. The purpose of Howell's action was to search for other weapons. The officer noticed that something was protruding from under the armrest on the front seat. He knelt in the vehicle and lifted the armrest. He saw an open pouch on the front seat, and upon flashing his light on the pouch, determined that it contained what appeared to be marihuana. After Deputy Howell showed the pouch and its contents to Deputy Lewis, Long was arrested for possession of marihuana. A further search of the interior of the vehicle, including the glovebox, revealed neither more contraband nor the vehicle registration. The officers decided to impound the vehicle. Deputy Howell opened the trunk, which did not have a lock, and discovered inside it approximately 75 pounds of marihuana. The Barry County Circuit Court denied Long's motion to suppress the marihuana taken from both the interior of the car and its trunk. He was subsequently convicted of possession of marihuana. The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed Long's conviction, holding that the search of the passenger compartment was valid as a protective search under Terry. The Michigan Supreme Court reversed. The court held that the sole justification of the Terry search, protection of the police officers and others nearby, cannot justify the search in this case. The marihuana found in Long's trunk was considered by the court below to be the fruit of the illegal search of the interior, and was also suppressed. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider the authority of a police officer to protect himself by conducting a Terry-type search of the passenger compartment of a motor vehicle during the lawful investigatory stop of the occupant of the vehicle.

Petitioners were convicted of armed robbery in the Circuit Court of Kankakee County, Illinois, after a trial in which the prosecution introduced a sawed-off rifle and rifle shells seized by police from an automobile in which the petitioners had been passengers. Neither petitioner owned the automobile, and neither asserted ownership of the rifle or the shells. The Illinois Appellate Court affirmed the convictions after upholding the denial of a motion to suppress, and the Illinois Supreme Court denied leave to appeal. The events began when a police officer on routine patrol received a radio call reporting a robbery of a clothing store in Bourbonnais, Illinois, and describing the getaway car. The officer spotted a vehicle he believed matched the description, followed it until backup arrived, and then stopped the car. The occupants, consisting of the petitioners and two female companions with the owner driving, were ordered out of the vehicle. After the occupants exited, officers searched the interior of the car and discovered a box of rifle shells inside the locked glove compartment along with a sawed-off rifle beneath the front passenger seat. The officers then took the petitioners to the station and placed them under arrest. Before trial the petitioners moved to suppress the rifle and shells, conceding they did not own the automobile and were merely passengers while also declining to claim ownership of the seized items. The prosecutor challenged the petitioners' standing to object to the search on the ground that neither the car nor the evidence belonged to them. The trial court agreed and denied the motion to suppress without reaching the question of probable cause. The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari to address the standing issue because of its importance to the administration of criminal justice.

In January 1964, fourteen-year-old Pamela Mason disappeared from her home in Manchester, New Hampshire, during a heavy snowstorm after receiving a telephone call about a babysitting job. Her body was discovered eight days later beside a major highway, prompting a massive police investigation. On January 28, officers visited Edward Coolidge at his home after learning he had been absent on the night of the disappearance. Coolidge produced three guns for inspection and agreed to take a lie-detector test. On February 2, while Coolidge was at the police station undergoing the test, two plainclothes officers arrived at his house and spoke with his wife. Mrs. Coolidge provided four guns belonging to her husband and some clothing she believed he might have worn on the night in question. Coolidge was held overnight on an unrelated charge but released the next day. Over the following two and a half weeks, the State accumulated evidence implicating Coolidge. On February 19, the results of the investigation were presented at a meeting between the police officers working on the case and the State Attorney General, who had personally taken charge of all police activities relating to the murder, and was later to serve as chief prosecutor at the trial. Coolidge was arrested at his home that day. His 1951 Pontiac automobile parked in the driveway was seized and towed to the police station two and a half hours later. The Pontiac was searched and vacuumed on February 21, again in January 1965, and a third time in April 1965. At Coolidge's subsequent jury trial for murder, vacuum sweepings from the car were introduced into evidence. One of the guns taken from the home was also introduced. Vacuum sweepings from the clothing were introduced into evidence. The New Hampshire Supreme Court affirmed the conviction after upholding the admissibility of the evidence, and the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari.