Colorado Supreme Court People v. Crum 13SA114

Decision here.

   Finally, an interesting decision!  And I apologize for those last two... apparently, when the courts focus on things other than law enforcement for a while my standards for what is and is not going to be included in this blog start to slip.  And we end up with boring posts about due process in jails and power of attorney law.  Ugh.

   But this one is about search incident to arrest, and Gant.

   So Grand Junction police were looking for some guy who had a warrant, when they instead found Crum acting suspicious.  He was standing around in an area known for drug activity, just outside of an open passenger door to a car that they knew he frequently used, manipulating something inside the car.  They stopped to talk to him, and he withdrew a hamburger wrapper from the car and then walked away from it to talk to them.  After talking for five minutes, they cleared him and found that he had a warrant for possession of Oxycontin.

   While they were arresting Crum for his warrant, he dropped the wrapper and tried to grind it up under his foot.  Dumbass.  One of the officers retrieved the now-suspicious wrapper, and found that it contained a baggy with two Oxycontin pills.  Since Crum had retrieved this contraband from the car, and since it was packaged in a manner which suggested that Crum was selling it, the cops suspected the vehicle would contain more drugs.  They searched the passenger compartment incident to arrest, and found meth, little baggies of weed, a scale, and more empty baggies.

   Crum moved to suppress the evidence, and the trial court ruled that although he had retreived contraband from the car it was entirely possible that this was the only contraband that he had, and therefore the search was invalid and the evidence suppressed.  The people filed an interlocutory appeal.

   The Colorado Supreme Court observed that under Gant, police may search the passenger compartment of a car incident to arrest if one of two conditions apply: 1- the arrestee is unrestrained and within reach of the car and might have access to a weapon; or 2- the is reason to believe that evidence of the crime for which the suspect is being arrested will be found in the car.  The court clarified that "reason to believe" means reasonable suspicion, not necessarily probable cause.

   Applying that to this case, it's true that it was entirely possible that Crum didn't have any more drugs.  But there was plenty of reason to suspect that there was more contraband to be found.  That brought this particular search under one of the Gant exceptions, and the order suppressing the evidence was reversed.