Rainey v. Com.

• Decision Date: 18 May 2006
• Docket Number: No. 2005-SC-000185-DG.,2005-SC-000185-DG.
• Citation: 197 S.W.3d 89
• Parties: William RAINEY, Appellant, v. COMMONWEALTH of Kentucky, Appellee.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court — District of Kentucky

197 S.W.3d 89

William RAINEY, Appellant, v. COMMONWEALTH of Kentucky, Appellee.

No. 2005-SC-000185-DG.

Supreme Court of Kentucky.

May 18, 2006.

Rehearing Denied August 24, 2006.

Keith E. Kamenish, Kevin C. Burke, Louisville, for Appellant.

Gregory D. Stumbo, Attorney General, Teresa Young, Special Assistant Attorney General, Louisville, for Appellee.

Opinion of the Court by Justice SCOTT.

This case comes to us on discretionary review of the Court of Appeals' opinion, reversing the Jefferson Circuit Court's order suppressing the introduction of a handgun found in Appellant William Rainey's vehicle following his arrest. Appellant, William Rainey, had sought to suppress the evidence obtained by the police from his vehicle without a warrant and argued that no valid exception to the search warrant requirement was proven. The Jefferson Circuit Court agreed and suppressed the evidence. The Court of Appeals initially affirmed, and the Commonwealth sought review in this Court. However, at that time, the United States Supreme Court had just issued its opinion in Thornton v. United States, 541 U.S. 615, 124 S.Ct. 2127, 158 L.Ed.2d 905 (2004). Thus, we vacated and remanded the case back to the Court of Appeals to consider the issue in light of Thornton, supra. Accordingly, the Court of Appeals then reversed the trial court's order suppressing the evidence, finding Appellant to have been a "recent occupant" of the vehicle and that the search was lawful as being incident to arrest. We granted Appellant's subsequent request for discretionary review, and for the reasons set forth below, we affirm the Court of Appeals.

I. Facts

On January 29, 2002, Louisville Metro Police Officers Steven Glauber and Kenneth Wilkins were on foot patrol in the Beecher Terrace Housing Project in Louisville, Kentucky, when they observed Appellant Rainey's vehicle traveling at a high rate of speed over several speed bumps in the vicinity. From a distance, the officers watched Appellant park his vehicle and then exit, shouting loudly at nearby residents.

By the time the officers initiated contact with Appellant, he had crossed the street and was approximately fifty feet away from his vehicle. Upon approaching Appellant, the officers noticed the smell of alcohol and observed that Appellant was unsteady on his feet and was slurring his speech. Appellant told the officers he had been drinking and had just been thrown out of a local bar. The officers attempted to conduct a field sobriety test, but Appellant refused. He was subsequently arrested and charged with operating a motor vehicle under the influence of intoxicants (DUI) pursuant to KRS 189A.010 and with reckless driving pursuant to KRS 189.290.

After handcuffing Appellant, the officers walked him back to his vehicle and proceeded to unlock the vehicle and search the passenger compartment. A .38 caliber handgun was found under the driver's seat. Appellant was then charged with illegal possession of a handgun by a convicted felon (KRS 527.040) and with being a persistent felony offender in the first degree (KRS 532.080).

Appellant Rainey then filed a motion to suppress the handgun seized from his vehicle, the history of which has been previously recounted.

II. Analysis

Our analysis in the context of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution must begin with the understanding that "section 10 of the Kentucky Constitution provides no greater protection than does the Federal Fourth Amendment." LaFollette v. Commonwealth, 915 S.W.2d 747, 748 (Ky.1996). That being said, the analysis for this particular case involves case law as it has developed in both our state courts and federal courts concerning Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.

[T]he most basic constitutional rule in this area is that "searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment — subject only to a few specifically established and well delineated exceptions." The exceptions are "jealously and carefully drawn," and there must be "a showing by those who seek exemption ... that the exigencies of the situation made that course imperative.'" "[T]he burden is on those seeking the exemption to show the need for it.". . . [T]he values [inherent in the Fourth Amendment] were those of the authors of our fundamental constitutional concepts. In times not altogether unlike our own they won — by legal and constitutional means in England, and by revolution on this continent — a right of personal security against arbitrary intrusions by official power. If times have changed, reducing everyman's scope to do as he pleases in an urban and industrial world, the changes have made the values served by the Fourth Amendment more, not less, important.

Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 454-55, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 2032, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971) (citations omitted). Most relevant to our review of the issue at bar is the search incident to arrest exception.¹

A search incident to an arrest is an exception to the general rule requiring a warrant prior to searches and seizures pursuant to the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and applicable to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 655, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 1691, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961).

This general exception has historically been formulated into two distinct propositions. The first is that a search may be made of the person of the arrestee by virtue of the lawful arrest. The second is that a search may be made of the area within the control of the arrestee.

United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 224, 94 S.Ct. 467, 471, 38 L.Ed.2d 427 (1973).

In analyzing the rationale behind this exception, the United States Supreme Court has stated:

When an arrest is made, it is reasonable for the arresting officer to search the person arrested in order to remove any weapons that the latter might seek to use in order to resist arrest or effect his escape. . . . In addition, it is entirely reasonable for the arresting officer to search for and seize any evidence on the arrestee's person in order to prevent its concealment or destruction. And the area into which an arrestee might reach in order to grab a weapon or evidentiary items must, of course, be governed by a like rule. . . . There is ample justification, therefore, for a search of the arrestee's person and the area `within his immediate control'-construing that phrase to mean the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.

Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 763, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 2040, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969) (emphasis added). Although Chimel involved the search of the defendant's home incident to his arrest, the United States Supreme Court has extended its holding to the warrantless search of an automobile.

In New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981), the defendant was pulled over pursuant to a lawful traffic stop and was then arrested for possession of marijuana. After placing Belton (and three others with him) under arrest, the lone officer, with the arrested men standing next to the car, searched the vehicle and found other contraband inside the defendant's jacket pocket, which had been left in the back seat of the vehicle. The pocket had been zipped, and thus the evidence was only discovered after the officer unzipped the pocket. It was only after the search that Belton and the others were placed in the patrol car and transported to the police station. The United States Supreme Court held that the reasoning behind the search incident to arrest exception announced in Chimel could be applied to allow the warrantless search of an automobile made contemporaneously to the lawful arrest of its occupant.

The authority to search the person incident to a lawful custodial arrest, while based upon the need to disarm and to discover evidence, does not depend on what a court may later decide was the probability in a particular arrest situation that weapons or evidence would in fact be found upon the person of the suspect. A custodial arrest of a suspect based on probable cause is a reasonable intrusion under the Fourth Amendment; that intrusion being lawful, a search incident to the arrest requires no additional justification.

Robinson, 414 U.S. at 235, 94 S.Ct. at 476, quoted in Belton, 453 U.S. at 461, 101 S.Ct. at 2864 (emphasis added).

Finally, in Thornton, supra, the rule of Belton was applied to a defendant who was not in the vehicle at the time of his arrest (i.e. he was not an "occupant"). In Thornton, the defendant had avoided pulling along side a police cruiser as the two traveled down the road. The officer became suspicious after running the license plate on the car and discovering that the vehicle did not match the vehicle to which the license plate was registered. The officer saw the defendant then pull into a parking lot and exit the vehicle before the officer initiated contact. Upon approaching the defendant, the officer noticed his nervousness and asked to pat down the defendant. The defendant agreed, and the search yielded narcotics. The officer then arrested Thornton and placed him in the back of the patrol car. The search of the vehicle after his arrest revealed a handgun under the driver's seat.

In its decision, the United States Supreme Court once again extended the rationale of Belton, holding that once an officer lawfully arrests an automobile's "recent occupant," the officer may search the automobile's passenger compartment as a search incident to arrest. Thornton, 541 U.S. at 621-23, 124 S.Ct. at 2131-32. In so ruling, the Supreme Court noted that

while an arrestee's status as a `recent occupant' may turn on his temporal or spatial relationship to the car at the time of the arrest and search, it certainly does not turn on whether he was inside or outside the car at the moment that the...