Petitioner and two companions, who had been seated for several
hours in a parked car, were arrested by the police for vagrancy,
searched for weapons, and taken to the police station. The officers
had the car towed to a garage, and soon thereafter they went
themselves to the garage and, for the first time, searched the car.
Various articles found in the car were later turned over to federal
authorities and used as evidence in a trial in federal court
resulting in petitioner's conviction of conspiracy to rob a
federally insured bank.
Held: the evidence obtained in the search of the car
without a warrant was inadmissible because, being too remote in
time or place to be treated as incidental to the arrest, it failed
to meet the test of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment. Pp.
376 U. S.
364-368.
305 F.2d 172 reversed and remanded.
MR. JUSTICE BLACK delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner and three others were convicted in the United States
District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky on a charge of
conspiracy to rob a federally insured bank in violation of 18
U.S.C. ยง 2113, the conviction having been based largely on evidence
obtained by the search of a motorcar. The Court of Appeals for the
Sixth Circuit affirmed, rejecting the contentions, timely made in
the trial and appellate courts, that
Page 376 U. S. 365
both the original arrest, on a charge of vagrancy, and the
subsequent search and seizure had violated the Fourth Amendment.
305 F.2d 172. We granted certiorari. 373 U.S. 931. In the view we
take of the case, we need not decide whether the arrest was valid,
since we hold that the search and seizure was not.
The police of Newport, Kentucky, received a telephone complaint
at 3 o'clock one morning that "three suspicious men acting
suspiciously" had been seated in a motorcar parked in a business
district since 10 o'clock the evening before. Four policemen
straightaway went to the place where the car was parked and found
petitioner and two companions. The officers asked the three men why
they were parked there, but the men gave answers which the officers
testified were unsatisfactory and evasive. All three men admitted
that they were unemployed; all of them together had only 25 cents.
One of the men said that he had bought the car the day before
(which later turned out to be true), but he could not produce any
title. They said that their reason for being there was to meet a
truck driver who would pass through Newport that night, but they
could not identify the company he worked for, could not say what
his truck looked like, and did not know what time he would arrive.
The officers arrested the three men for vagrancy, searched them for
weapons, and took them to police headquarters. The car, which had
not been searched at the time of the arrest, was driven by an
officer to the station, from which it was towed to a garage. Soon
after the men had been booked at the station, some of the police
officers went to the garage to search the car, and found two loaded
revolvers in the glove compartment. They were unable to open the
trunk, and returned to the station, where a detective told one of
the officers to go back and try to get into the trunk. The officer
did so, was able to enter the trunk through the back seat of the
car, and in
Page 376 U. S. 366
the trunk found caps, women's stockings (one with mouth and eye
holes), rope, pillow slips, an illegally manufactured license plate
equipped to be snapped over another plate, and other items. After
the search, one of petitioner's companions confessed that he and
two others -- he did not name petitioner -- intended to rob a bank
in Berry, Kentucky, a town about 51 miles from Newport. At this,
the police called the Federal Bureau of Investigation into the case
and turned over to the Bureau the articles found in the car. It was
the use of these articles, over timely objections, which raised the
Fourth Amendment question we here consider.
The Amendment provides:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses,
papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,
shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon
probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly
describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to
be seized."
The question whether evidence obtained by state officers and
used against a defendant in a federal trial was obtained by
unreasonable search and seizure is to be judged as if the search
and seizure had been made by federal officers.
Elkins v. United
States, 364 U. S. 206
(1960). Our cases make it clear that searches of motorcars must
meet the test of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment before
evidence obtained as a result of such searches is admissible.
E.g., Carroll v. United States, 267 U.
S. 132 (1925);
Brinegar v. United States,
338 U. S. 160
(1949). Common sense dictates, of course, that questions involving
searches of motorcars or other things readily moved cannot be
treated as identical to questions arising out of searches of fixed
structures like houses. For this reason, what may be an
unreasonable search of
Page 376 U. S. 367
a house may be reasonable in the case of a motorcar.
See
Carroll v. United States, supra, 267 U.S. at
267 U. S. 153.
But even in the case of motorcars, the test still is "was the
search unreasonable?" Therefore, we must inquire whether the facts
of this case are such as to fall within any of the exceptions to
the constitutional rule that a search warrant must be had before a
search may be made.
It is argued that the search and seizure was justified as
incidental to a lawful arrest. Unquestionably, when a person is
lawfully arrested, the police have the right, without a search
warrant, to make a contemporaneous search of the person of the
accused for weapons or for the fruits of or implements used to
commit the crime.
Weeks v. United States, 232 U.
S. 383,
232 U. S. 392
(1914);
Agnello v. United States, 269 U. S.
20,
269 U. S. 30
(1925). This right to search and seize without a search warrant
extends to things under the accused's immediate control,
Carroll v. United States, supra, 267 U.S. at
267 U. S. 158,
and, to an extent depending on the circumstances of the case, to
the place where he is arrested,
Agnello v. United States,
supra, 269 U.S. at
269 U. S. 30;
Marron v. United States, 275 U. S. 192,
275 U. S. 199
(1927);
United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U. S.
56,
339 U. S. 61-62
(1950). The rule allowing contemporaneous searches is justified,
for example, by the need to seize weapons and other things which
might be used to assault an officer or effect an escape, as well as
by the need to prevent the destruction of evidence of the crime --
things which might easily happen where the weapon or evidence is on
the accused's person or under his immediate control. But these
justifications are absent where a search is remote in time or place
from the arrest. Once an accused is under arrest and in custody,
then a search made at another place, without a warrant, is simply
not incident to the arrest.
Agnello v. United States,
supra, 269 U.S. at
269 U. S. 31.
Here, we may assume, as the Government urges, that, either because
the arrests were valid or because the police had
Page 376 U. S. 368
probable cause to think the car stolen, the police had the right
to search the car when they first came on the scene. But this does
not decide the question of the reasonableness of a search at a
later time and at another place.
See Stoner v. California,
376 U. S. 483. The
search of the car was not undertaken until petitioner and his
companions had been arrested and taken in custody to the police
station and the car had been towed to the garage. At this point,
there was no danger that any of the men arrested could have used
any weapons in the car or could have destroyed any evidence of a
crime -- assuming that there are articles which can be the "fruits"
or "implements" of the crime of vagrancy.
Cf. United States v.
Jeffers, 342 U. S. 48,
342 U. S. 51-52
(1951). Nor, since the men were under arrest at the police station
and the car was in police custody at a garage, was there any danger
that the car would be moved out of the locality or jurisdiction.
See Carroll v. United States, supra, 267 U.S. at
267 U. S. 153.
We think that the search was too remote in time or place to have
been made as incidental to the arrest and conclude, therefore, that
the search of the car without a warrant failed to meet the test of
reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment, rendering the evidence
obtained as a result of the search inadmissible.
Reversed and remanded.