Horton v. State
| Decision Date | 27 January 1982 |
| Docket Number | No. 52998,52998 |
| Citation | 408 So.2d 1197 |
| Parties | Wesley Howard HORTON v. STATE of Mississippi. |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
R. Charles Robb, Vicksburg, for appellant.
Bill Allain, Atty. Gen. by Carolyn B. Mills, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for appellee.
Before SUGG, WALKER and HAWKINS, JJ.
Appellant, was indicted by a grand jury in Monroe County on two counts. Count one charged appellant with possession of more than one ounce but less than one kilogram of marihuana and count two with possession of phencyclidine. Appellant was convicted on both counts and sentenced to five years imprisonment on each count to be served concurrently. We affirm the conviction on both counts but reverse and remand for imposition of a proper sentence.
On December 6, 1979, Robert Sanderson and Sammy Neal, policemen for the City of Amory, were working the 9:30 p. m. to 4:30 a. m. shift. At approximately 3:20 a. m. Sanderson observed an automobile with no license plate leaving a convenience store. He advised Neal that he was going to stop the automobile and requested assistance. After stopping the automobile Sanderson asked the appellant, who was the driver, for his driver's license and the registration papers on the automobile. As a part of the investigatory stop Sanderson checked the ownership of the vehicle by radio. After satisfying himself that the driver's license and the registration of the vehicle were in order, Sanderson was about to instruct the driver to proceed but directed his flashlight into the backseat of the automobile a second time because he had observed the occupants of the car moving about inside the car while he was running the radio check. When Sanderson looked on the backseat of the car for a second time, he observed three bottles of beer lying on the seat which were not there when he looked into the backseat of the automobile immediately after the stop. Sanderson then advised the appellant that possession of beer was illegal in Amory, asked the driver to step outside the automobile, and placed him under arrest for the possession of beer. He then noticed that appellant was wearing a belt with the design of a marihuana leaf on the buckle with a small pipe attached to the back of the buckle. He retrieved the pipe and detected the odor of burned marihuana in the pipe. He then requested the passenger of the automobile to produce some identification. The passenger was wearing a T-shirt and stated he would have to get his license out of another shirt which was lying on the backseat. When the passenger picked up the shirt from the backseat, a syringe fell out of one of the pockets and the passenger made an attempt to hide the syringe. Sanderson then requested Officer Neal, who had arrived, to arrest the passenger for the possession of paraphernalia. After placing both appellant and the passenger in separate patrol cars, a search was conducted of the passenger compartment of the automobile.
When Sanderson opened the console located between the driver and the passenger seats, he found two bags of a green substance which he believed to be marihuana and a white powdery substance wrapped in aluminum foil which he believed to be cocaine, but upon analysis was found to contain phencyclidine. Appellant contends that the warrantless search of his automobile was invalid and the evidence seized during the search should be suppressed.
Appellant had been lawfully arrested, so the question is whether the search of the passenger compartment without first securing a search warrant violated appellant's Fourth Amendment rights. This question was answered in New York v. Belton, --- U.S. ----, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981). The Belton court noted that a single familiar standard is essential to guide police officers in the circumstances they are confronted with and that no straightforward rule had emerged from the litigated cases involving the proper scope of a search of the interior of an automobile incident to a lawful custodial arrest of its occupants.
The Court then established a simple rule which police officers may apply.
In order to establish the workable rule this category of cases requires, we read Chimel's definition of the limits of the area that may be searched in light of that generalization. Accordingly, we hold that when a policeman has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile, he may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of that automobile.
It follows from this conclusion that the police may also examine the contents of any containers found within the passenger compartment, for if the passenger compartment is within reach of the arrestee, so also will containers in it be within his reach. United States v. Robinson, supra; Draper v. United States, 358 U.S 307, 3 L.Ed.2d 327, 79 S.Ct. 329. Such a container may, of course, be searched whether it is open or closed, since the justification for the search is not that the arrestee has no privacy interest in the container, but that the lawful custodial arrest justifies the infringement of any privacy interest the arrestee may have. (--- U.S. ----, 101 S.Ct. 2864, 69 L.Ed.2d at 775)
The United States Supreme Court is to be commended for establishing a "bright line" rule so that police officers may know with certainty the scope of their authority to search a vehicle following a custodial arrest. 1 We therefore hold that the...
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