By The Vanguard
SACRAMENTO, CA – The California 3rd District Court of Appeal has on July 25 reversed the San Joaquin County Superior Court conviction of a man, finding the lower court should have granted the accused’s motion to suppress because the arresting officer didn’t have the right to search the trunk of the accused’s vehicle.
“We accordingly reverse the judgment with directions to set aside the order denying defendant’s motion to suppress, enter an order granting the motion, and allow defendant to move to withdraw his plea,” said the court, calling the search “unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.”
Paul R. Kleven, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, appealed for accused Hilario Leal, Jr.
“The Fourth Amendment’s guarantee of the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures is fundamental to our sense of liberty and justice…The general rule is that warrantless searches are unreasonable,” said the appeals court.
The court noted, “Certain circumstances, however, create exceptions to the general ban on warrantless searches. One such exception—the automobile exception—is the focus of this appeal,” quoting cases where “[t]he automobile exception provides ‘police who have probable cause to believe a lawfully stopped vehicle contains evidence of criminal activity or contraband may conduct a warrantless search of any area of the vehicle in which the evidence might be found.”
According to the ruling, an officer received information on their radio from another officer that a “juvenile on probation with a firearm restriction likely placed a firearm under the front passenger seat in defendant Hilario Leal, Jr.’s car before defendant got into his car and drove away.”
The court recounted that the accused’s “car was under constant surveillance from the time of the alleged firearm placement until the searching officer conducted the search. When a search of the passenger compartment of defendant’s car yielded no firearm, the searching officer decided to search the trunk, where he discovered a firearm.”
Leal was charged with several offenses and filed a motion to suppress the firearm; the trial court denied the motion. Defendant ultimately pleaded no contest to being a felon in possession of a firearm.
The court, in the appeal, ruled the search was not justified, and held “when an officer has probable cause to believe contraband or evidence of a crime will be found specifically in the passenger compartment of a vehicle (as compared to having probable cause to believe it will be found somewhere in the vehicle), and no other subsequent discovery or information provides further probable cause to believe the evidence will be found in the trunk, an officer’s search of the trunk exceeds the permissible scope of a warrantless search under the automobile exception.”
The court added, “To allow police officers to search outside the scope of the particular location or compartment within which there is probable cause to believe contraband or evidence of a crime will be located would permit the very exploratory searches the framers intended to prevent when they enacted the Fourth Amendment.
“When officers have probable cause to search a particular compartment of a vehicle for evidence of a crime, and no such evidence is found, the search must stop absent facts generating probable cause to search another compartment of the vehicle.”
