University of South Florida Chimel v California Criminal Case Worksheet Please CAREFULLY read the criminal case and answer the worksheet (files are attache
University of South Florida Chimel v California Criminal Case Worksheet Please CAREFULLY read the criminal case and answer the worksheet (files are attached) Criminal Rights and Procedures
Fridell – Fall 2019
NAME: ________________________
Chimel v. California
Background: The general rule is that police need a warrant to conduct a search. There are,
however, some key exceptions to this general rule. One exception that had been adopted by
the Court prior to this case was a warrantless search incident to arrest. That is, when law
enforcement made a lawful arrest of someone, they were justified in conducting a warrantless
search on the heels of that arrest. As you will see in this case, however, there was a great deal
of confusion emanating from prior case law as to what exactly the police could search incident
to an arrest. Could they just search the person (e.g., pockets), the area within arms reach of
the person, the room the person was in, and/or the house s/he was in? This case answered
that question.
1.
In what year was the case decided? (752)
2.
What is the issue before the Court? (753)
Facts of the Case
3.
Police had a warrant for the arrest of Mr. Chimel for allegedly burglarizing a coin shop.
They waited in Mr. Chimels house (upon invitation of Mrs. Chimel) until he returned.
When Mr. Chimel got home, the police handed him the warrant and requested to
___________________________________________. (753). Mr. Chimel said no but the
police claimed they could search the house anyway. On what basis did the police think
they could search? (754)
4.
Did the officers have a search warrant? (754)
5.
Did the officers find incriminating evidence? (754)
6.
Is the precedent in this legal area clear? (755)
On pages 755-760, Justice Stewart describes the great deal of inconsistency in prior case law
regarding the scope of the search incident to a lawful arrest.
7.
In U.S. v. Rabinowitz, the Court held that a search incident to a lawful arrest could
general extend to ________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
________________. (760) For Rabinowitz, this included a search of his entire
__________________________. (760)
1
8.
Does the Court now stand by the decision in Rabinowitz? (760)
9.
What historically led to the Fourth Amendment? That is, what upset the Colonists?
(761)
10.
What is the purpose of requiring warrants for searches? (Use your own words.) (761)
11.
The Court refers to its decision in __________________________________ where it
was emphasized that [t]he scope of [a] search must be strictly tied to and justified by
the circumstances which rendered its initiation permissible. (762) This principle, says
the Court, should provide the basis for the decision in the current case, as well. The
Court determines the scope incident to a lawful arrest by determining what is necessary
and justified by the situation.
With your answers below, you are describing the scope of a search incident to an arrest
that the Court finds reasonable and the justifications for that scope.
12.
a. It is reasonable
. to search the __________________________________ in
order to remove ______________________ that the latter might use in order to
_____________________________________________________________.
(763)
b. What are the consequences if the search above is not allowed?
c.
It is also reasonable for the arresting officer to search for and seize
______________________________________________ in order to prevent its
_______________________________________________. (763)
d. And what search area beyond the person him/herself is similarly justified? (763)
13.
How does the Court define the area within a persons immediate control? (763)
2
14.
Is the officer searching for evidence, weapons or both? (763)
15.
Under what circumstances can the police search beyond the areas delineated in 12
above? (763)
Advance to page 769.
Concurring Opinion
16.
Is Justice Harlan sympathetic or unsympathetic to the ramifications of Fourth
Amendment decisions on local law enforcement practices? (769)
Dissenting Opinion
17.
The dissenting Justices, White and Black, express concern over the instability over the
years in the Courts decisions regarding searches incident to lawful arrests. In
discussing this instability, they quote Justice Frankfurter who said: Especially ought the
Court not reinforce needlessly the instabilities of our day by giving fair ground for the
belief that Law is the expression of chancefor instance, of unexpected changes in the
Courts composition and the contingencies in the choice of successors. (772) What
legal doctrine are they espousing? (from class lecture, Unit I)
18.
Do the dissenting Justices equate warrantless searches with unreasonable ones? (7723)
19.
Do these Justices believe it is justified to search the whole house incident to an arrest?
(773-5)
3
752
OCTOBER TERM, 1968.
Syllabus.
395 U. S.
CHIMEL v. CALIFORNIA.
CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF CALIFORNIA.
No. 770. Argued March 27, 1969.Decided June 23, 1969.
Police officers, armed with an arrest warrant but not a search warrant, were admitted to petitioner’s home by his wife, where they
awaited petitioner’s arrival. When he entered he was served with
the warrant. Although he e.enied the officers’ request to “look
around,” they conducted a search of the entire house “on the
basis of the lawful arrest.” At petitioner’s trial on burglary
charges, items taken from his home were admitted over objection
that they had been unconstitutionally seized. His conviction was
affirmed by the Califoria appellate courts, which held, despite
their acceptance of petitioner’s contention that the arrest warrant
was invalid, that since the arresting officers had procured the
warrant “in good faith,” and since in any event they had had
sufficient information to constitute probable cause for the arrest,
the arrest was lawful. The courts also held that the search was
justified as incident to a valid arrest. Held: Assuming the arrest
was valid, the warrantless search of petitioner’s house cannot be
constitutionally justified as incident to that arrest. Pp. 755768.
(a) An arresting officer may search the arrestee’s person to
discover and remove weapons and to seize evidence to prevent
~s
concealment or destruction, and may search the area “within
the immediate control” of the person arrested, meaning the area
from which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible
evidence. Pp. 762-763.
(b) For the routine search of rooms other than that in which
an arrest occurs, or for searching desk drawers or other closed or
concealed areas in that room itself, absent well-recognized exceptions, a search warrant is required. P. 763.
(c) While the reasonableness of a search incident to arrest
depends upon “the facts and circumstances-the total atmosphere
of the case,” those facts and circumstances must be viewed in the
light of established Fourth Amendment principles, and the only
reasoned distinction is one between (1) a search of the person
arrested and the area within his reach, and (2) more extensive
searches. Pp. 765-766.
CHIMEL v. CALIFORNIA.
752
Opinion of the Court.
(d) United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U. S. 56, and Harris v.
United States, 331 U. S. 145, on their facts, and insofar as the
principles they stand for are inconsistent with this decision, are
no longer to be followed. P. 768.
(e) The scope of the search here was unreasonable under the
Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, as it went beyond petitioner’s person and the area from within which he might have
obtained a weapon or something that could have been used as
evidence against him, and there was no constitutional justification,
in the absence of a search warrant, for extending the search
beyond that area. P. 768.
68 Cal. 2d 436, 439 P. 2d 333, reversed.
Keith C. Monroe, by appointment of the Court, 394
U. S. 940, argued the cause and filed briefs for petitioner.
Ronald M. George, Deputy Attorney General of California, argued the cause for respondent. With him on
the brief were Thomas C. Lynch, Attorney General, and
William E. James, Assistant Attorney General.
MR. JUSTICE STEWART delivered the opinion of the
Court.
This case raises basic questions concerning the permissible scope under the Fourth Amendment of a search
incident to a lawful arrest.
The relevant facts are essentially undisputed. Late
in the afternoon of September 13, 1965, three police
officers arrived at the Santa Ana, California, home of the
petitioner with a warrant authorizing his arrest for the
burglary of a coin shop. The officers knocked on the
door, identified themselves to the petitioner’s wife, and
asked if they might come inside. She ushered them
into the house, where they waited 10 or 15 minutes until
the petitioner returned home from work. When the
petitioner entered the house, one of the officers handed
him the arrest warrant and asked for permission to “look
around.” The petitioner objected, but was advised that
OCTOBER TERM, 1968.
Opinion of the Court.
395 U. S.
“on the basis of the lawful arrest,” the officers would
nonetheless conduct a search. No search warrant had
been issued.
Accompanied by the petitioner’s wife, the officers
then looked through the entire three-bedroom house,
including the attic, the garage, and a small workshop.
In some rooms the search was relatively cursory. In the
master bedroom and sewing room, however, the officers
directed the petitioner’s wife to open drawers and “to
physically move contents of the drawers from side to
side so that [they] might view any items that would
have come from [the] burglary.” After completing the
search, they seized numerous items-primarily coins, but
also several medals, tokens, and a few other objects. The
entire search took between 45 minutes and an hour.
At the petitioner’s subsequent state trial on two charges
of burglary, the items taken from his house were admitted
into evidence against’ him, over his objection that they
had been unconstitutionally seized. He was convicted,
and the judgments of conviction were affirmed by
both the California Court of Appeal, 61 Cal. Rptr.
714, and the California Supreme Court, 68 Cal. 2d 436,
439 P. 2d 333. Both courts accepted the petitioner’s
contention that the arrest warrant was invalid because
the supporting affidavit was set out in conclusory terms,1
but held that since the arresting officers had procured
the warrant “in good faith,” and since in any event
they had had sufficient information to constitute probable cause for the petitioner’s arrest, that arrest had
been lawful. From this concusion the appellate courts
went on to hold that the search of the petitioner’s home
I
The affidavit supporting the warrant is set out in the opinion
of the Court of Appeal, 61 Cal. Rptr., at 715-716, n. 1, and
the State does not challenge its insufficiency under the principles
of Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U. S. 108, and Spineli v. United States,
393 U. S. 410.
CHIMEL v. CALIFORNIA.
752
Opinion of the Court.
had been justified, despite the absence of a search warrant, on the ground that it had been incident to a valid
arrest. We granted certiorari in order to consider the
petitioner’s substantial constitutional claims. 393 U. S.
958.
Without deciding the question, we proceed on the
hypothesis that the California courts were correct in
holding that the arrest of the petitioner was valid under
the Constitution. This brings us directly to the question
whether the warrantless search of the petitioner’s entire
house can be constitutionally justified as incident to that
arrest. The decisions of this Court bearing upon that
question have been far from consistent, as even the most
cursory review makes evident.
.Approval of a warrantless search incident to a lawful
arrest seems first to have been articulated by the Court
in 1914 as dictum in Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S.
383, in’which the Court stated:
“What then is the present case? Before answering that inquiry specifically, it may be well by a
process of exclusion to state what it is not. It is
not an assertion of the right on the part of the
Government, always recognized under English and
American law, to search the person of the accused
when legally arrested to discover and seize the fruits
or evidences of crime.” Id., at 392.
That statement made no reference to any right to search
the place where an arrest occurs, but was limited to a
right to search the “person.” Eleven years later the
case of Carroll v. United States, 267″U. S. 132, brought
the following embellishment of the Weeks statement:
“When a man is legally arrested for an offense, whatever is found upon his person or in his control which
it is unlawful for him to have and which may be
used to prove the offense may be seized and held
OCTOBER TERM, 1968.
Opinion of the Court.
as evidence-in the prosecution.”
phasis added.)
395 U. S.
Id., at 158.
(Em-
Still, that assertion too was far from a claim that the
“place” where one is arrested may be searched so long
as the arrest is valid. Without explanation, however,
the principle emerged in expanded form a few months
later in Agnello v. United States, 269 U. S. 20-although
still by way of dictum:
“The right without a search warrant contemporaneously to search persons lawfully arrested while
committing crime and to search the place where the
arrest is made in order to find and seize things connected with the crime as its fruits or as the means
by which it was committed, as well as weapons and
other things to effect an escape from custody, is not
to be doubted. See Carroll v. United States, 267
U. S. 132, 158; Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S.
383, 392.” 269 U. S., at 30.
And in Marron v. United States, 275 U. S. 192, two
years later, the dictum of Agnello appeared to be the
foundation of the Court’s decision. In that case federal
agents had secured a search warrant authorizing the
seizure of liquor and certain articles used in its manufacture. When they arrived at the premises to be
searched, they saw “that the place was used for retailing
and drinking intoxicating liquors.” Id., at 194. They
proceeded to arrest the person in charge and to execute
the warrant. In searching a closet for the items listed
in the warrant they came across an incriminating ledger,
concededly not covered by the warrant, which they also
seized. The Court upheld the seizure of the ledger by
holding that since the agents had made a lawful arrest,
“[t]hey had a right without a warrant contemporaneously
to search the place in order to find and seize the things
used to carry on the criminal enterprise.” Id., at 199.
CHIMEL v. CALIFORNIA.
752
Opinion of the Court.
That the Marron opinion did not mean all that it
seemed to say became evident, however, a few years later
in Go-Bart Importing Co. v. United States, 282 U. S.
344, and United States v. Lefkowitz, 285 U. S. 452. In
each of those cases the opinion of the Court was written
by Mr. Justice Butler, the author of the opinion in
Marron. In Go-Bart, agents had searched the office
of persons whom they had lawfully arrested, and had
taken several papers from a desk, a safe, and other
parts of the office. The Court noted that no crime had
been committed in the agents’ presence, and that although
the agent in charge “had an abundance of information
and time to swear out a valid [search] warrant, he failed
to do so.” 282 U. S., at 358. In holding the search and
seizure unlawful, the Court stated:
“Plainly the case before us is essentially different
from Marron v. United States, 275 U. S. 192. There,
officers executing a valid search warrant for intoxicating liquors found and arrested one Birdsall who
in pursuance of a conspiracy was actually engaged
in running a saloon. As an incident to the arrest
they seized a ledger in a closet where the liquor or
some of it was kept and some bills beside the cash
register. These things were visible and accessible
and in the offender’s immediate custody. There was
no threat of force or general search or rummaging of
the place.” 282 U. S., at 358.
This limited characterization of Marron was reiterated in
Lefkowitz, a case in which the Court held unlawful a
search of desk drawers and a cabinet despite the fact that
the search had accompariied a lawful arrest. 285 U. S.,
at 465.
The limiting views expressed in Go-Bart and Lefkowitz
were thrown to the winds, however, in Harris v. United
2The Court assumed that the arrests were lawful.
at 38.
-282 U. S.
OCTOBER TERM, 1968.
Opinion of the Court.
395 U. S.
States, 331 U. S. 145, decided in 1947. In that case,
officers had obtained a warrant for Harris’ arrest on the
basis of his alleged involvement with the cashing and
interstate transportation of a forged check. He was
arrested in the living room of his four-room apartment,
and in an attempt to recover two canceled checks thought
to have been used in effecting the forgery, the officers
undertook a thorough search of the entire apartment.
Inside a desk drawer they found a sealed envelope
marked “George Harris, personal papers.” The envelope,
which was then torn open, was found to contain altered
Selective Service documents, and those documents were
used to secure Harris’ conviction for violating the
Selective Training and Service Act of 1940. The Court
rejected Harris’ Fourth Amendment claim, sustaining
the search as “incident to arrest.” Id., at 151.
Only a year after Harris, however, the pendulum
swung again. In Trupiano v. United States, 334 U. S.
699, agents raided the site of an illicit distillery, saw
one of several conspirators operating the still, and arrested him, contemporaneously “seiz[ing] the illicit
distillery.” Id., at 702. The Court held that the arrest
and others made subsequently had been valid, but that
the unexplained failure of the agents to procure a search
warrant-in spite of the fact that they had had more
than enough time before the raid to do so-rendered
the search unlawful. The opinion stated:
“It is a cardinal rule that, in seizing goods and
articles, law enforcement agents must secure and
use search warrants wherever reasonably practicable. . . . This rule rests upon the desirability of
having magistrates rather than police officers determine when searches and seizures are permissible and
what limitations should be placed upon such activities. . . . To provide the necessary security against
unreasonable intrusions upon the private lives of
CHIMEL v. CALIFORNIA.
752
Opinion of the Court.
individuals, the framers of the Fourth Amendment
required adherence to judicial processes wherever
possible. And subsequent history has confirmed
the wisdom of that requirement.
“A search or seizure without a warrant as an
incident to a lawful arrest has always been considered
to be a strictly limited right. It grows out of the
inherent necessities of the situation at the time of
the arrest. But there must be something more in
the way of necessity than merely a lawful arrest.”
Id., at 705, 708.
In 1950, two years after Trupiano,”9came United States
v. Rabinowitz, 339 U. S. 56, the decision upon which
California primarily relies in the case now before us. In
Rabinowitz, federal authorities had been informed that
the defendant was dealing in stamps bearing forged
overprints. On the basis of that information they
secured a warrant for his arrest, which they executed at
his one-room business office. At the time of the arrest,
the officers “searched the desk, safe, and file cabinets in
the office for about an hour and a half,” id., at 59, and
seized 573 stamps with forged overprints. The stamps
were admitted into evidence at the defendant’s trial, and
this Court affirmed his conviction, rejecting the contention that the warrantless search had been unlawful. The
Court held that the search in its entirety fell within the
principle giving law enforcement authorities “[tfhe right
‘to search the place where the arrest is made in order to
find and seize things connected with the crime . .
..
Id., at 61. Har…
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