Warrantless Searches: Searches Incident to a Lawful Arrest

In a case styled State v. Richards, the Tennessee Supreme Court recently dealt with the issue of warrantless searches. After receiving an anonymous tip that three individuals at a particular location were involved in drug trafficking, the officers traveled to that location, found four individuals gathered around a table and saw them engage in suspicious behavior. The fourth individual, who was apparently not named in the anonymous tip, was arrested only after a search of his person revealed narcotics in his possession. As a general rule, warrantless searches are presumed invalid unless the search meets one of several exceptions recognized by law. One such exception provides that a warrantless search is constitutionally permissible if the search is incident to a lawful arrest. For a search to be considered justifiable as incident to a lawful arrest, four criteria must be met:

The arresting officer must have probable cause to believe that the defendant had engaged or was [engaging in illegal activity]

The probable cause must attach to an offense for which a full custodial arrest is permitted

The arrest must be consummated either prior to or contemporaneously with the search

The search must be incident to, not the cause of, the arrest. State v. Richards, 286 S.W.3d 873, 878(Tenn. 2009).

Failure to meet any of these four conditions will mean that the search does not qualify for the exception and may be presumptively unlawful.

The offense in State v. Richards was a drug offense, so the second criteria was easily satisfied. The arrest was also made at the same time as the search was conducted, so the third prong was also satisfied. The first and fourth prongs were thus the only two at issue.

The Tennessee Supreme Court found that under the facts of Richards, neither the first nor fourth prong was met. The first prong was left unsatisfied because the police officers did not have probable cause to search the fourth individual, who they had not seen engage in any illegal activity and was not named by the informant as a suspected criminal. In formulating this holding, the Court reiterated that probable cause cannot attach to groups of people as such, but rather must attach to particular individuals. Thus, the fourth individual could not be searched just because the other three were suspected of a crime. The fourth prong was also unsatisfied because the defendant had been arrested only after a search of his person yielded narcotics, a clear violation of the requirement that the search cannot be the cause of the arrest.

State v. Richards demonstrates how the Constitution’s search and seizure requirements operate to protect the rights of defendants. A criminal defense attorney can potentially affect the suppression of important evidence if he or she can prove that law enforcement officials did not have probable cause to search their client or that the arrest of their client occurred only after the search, bringing the search outside the aforementioned exception.