[420 Girl]

In the early morning hours of Jan. 23, a Scott County Sheriff's Department deputy stopped a car after he noticed it didn't have a license plate in the front and that the license plate in the back had a dark plastic cover over it.

The driver acted nervous - a shaking hand handing over a driver's license, a quivering voice, a window rolled down just six inches, an inability to answer questions such as where he was coming from and where he was going.

The deputy detained the driver. He searched the car, a so-called "protective sweep" to make sure there were no weapons inside. He ultimately found a large amount of what he believed to be marijuana.

The search was perfectly legal at the time. It is no longer.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April that warrantless searches - when the defendant is no longer in control of the vehicle and he is in the control of authorities - are improper, Judge Paul Macek wrote in a ruling that suppressed the evidence in the Scott County case of Broc Caliger of Muscatine, Iowa.

The charges against Caliger were dropped recently because of the suppressed evidence.

"The analysis of Gant would apply in this situation," Macek wrote. "This defendant could not have accessed his car to retrieve weapons or possibly destroy any evidence of crimes."

Caliger's attorney, Angela Fritz Reyes, wrote that Gant clearly applied in this case.

"Here, both Gant and Caliger had been put in the police squad car so officer safety had been secured," she wrote.

Scott County Attorney Mike Walton said that the ruling has resulted in a change in how police do their jobs. A memo sent to all law enforcement agencies noted the ruling held that "police may not search a vehicle 'incident to a recent occupant's arrest after the arrestee has been secured and cannot access the interior of the vehicle.'"

The police can search a vehicle, Walton wrote, if evidence of the offense of arrest might be found.

An example, he said, is if an officer stops a vehicle for a traffic violation, sees "furtive movements" and smells marijuana.

Asking the driver for consent to search is effective 90 percent of the time, Walton wrote. "Because of the previous law, officers have not needed to ask permission until now."

The cases, he said, "are going to develop over time, but for now, unless officer safety, or the potential for destruction of evidence is shown, a search of the vehicle incident to an arrest after the arrestee is secured is not permitted without probable cause, unless you have obtained consent to search."

http://www.420magazine.com/forums/in...rt-ruling.html