Supreme Court Puts New Limits on Vehicle Searches

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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday put new limits on the circumstances under which police officers who lack a search warrant can search a vehicle immediately after the arrest of a suspect.

Officers may search the passenger compartment of a vehicle after an occupant is arrested only if it is reasonable to believe that the person arrested could still gain access to the vehicle, or if the vehicle contains evidence relevant to the arrest, the court said.

In a 5-to-4 ruling that cut across the liberal versus conservative stereotypes of the current lineup of justices, the court affirmed a ruling by the Arizona Supreme Court, which overturned the conviction and three-year prison sentence against Rodney J. Gant of Tucson on a drug charge.

On Aug. 25, 1999, Mr. Gant was arrested for driving while his license was suspended. After he was handcuffed and placed in a patrol car, officers searched Mr. Gant’s car and found cocaine in the pocket of a jacket. The trial court denied Mr. Gant’s motion to suppress the drug evidence, but the Arizona high court ruled in the defendant’s favor, reasoning that the search was not necessary for the officers’ safety or to preserve evidence.

Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority in the United States Supreme Court ruling in Arizona v. Gant, No. 07-542, agreed, and said that the State of Arizona, which had asked the high court to overrule the Arizona tribunal, “seriously undervalues the privacy interests at stake.”

“Although we have recognized that a motorist’s privacy interest in his vehicle is less substantial than in his home,” Justice Stevens wrote, “the former interest is nevertheless important and deserving of constitutional protection.”

Justices David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined Justice Stevens’s opinion, as might be expected, but so did Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, who often differ with their more liberal colleagues.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented, as might be expected, and he was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy — but also by Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who is typically placed in the court’s liberal wing.

Prosecutors relied on a 1981 Supreme Court ruling, in a case from New York State, that the police may search the passenger compartment of a car without a warrant provided they do so soon after the arrest of a recent occupant.

But the incident that gave rise to the 1981 ruling involved “a single officer confronted with four unsecured arrestees,” and thus the safety of the officer, as well as the need to preserve evidence, may have justified an immediate search without a warrant, the majority noted on Tuesday. In contrast, “five officers handcuffed and secured Gant and the two other suspects in separate patrol cars before the search began” in the Arizona case, Justice Stevens wrote.

In dissent, Justice Alito said the majority had needlessly overturned the Supreme Court’s own precedents in search-and-seizure cases, even though “Gant has not asked us to do so.”

“The court’s decision will cause the suppression of evidence gathered in many searches carried out in good-faith reliance on well-settled case law,” Justice Alito lamented.