Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Fourth Amendment

Criminal Law

: Fourth Amendment

There is no time limit for a search incident, valid here 20 minutes later after the car had been moved, as long as it was a part of a "continuous series of events"

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

No specific time delay between an arrest and search incident of a car makes it unreasonable. The question is whether the search incident was part of a continuous series of events. Here, the search was twenty minutes later and the car had been moved to another location for highway safety. [At this point, the search incident doctrine and automobile exception will blend together, and here the search was alternatively valid under the automobile exception.] United States v. Kila, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 38002 (D.Haw. May 8, 2008): 13. The court concludes that the search of the Toyota Celica was contemporaneous with Kila's arrest and thus incident to the arrest. This case presents circumstances similar to those in McLaughlin and Weaver. There was no intervening event or pause in the decisionmaking process leading to the search of the Toyota Celica...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on May 13, 2008 (boomark / email).