Fourth down

I've thought over and over about this and it still makes no sense to me at all. None at all. From the Christian Science Monitor for May 25:

Washington - The US Supreme Court has handed an important victory to law-enforcement officials, ruling that police don't need a warrant to search a car when the person they've arrested was recently in the car.

The 7-to-2 decision, announced Monday, is a setback to civil libertarians who see it as further erosion of Fourth Amendment privacy rights whenever Americans take to the nation's roads and highways.

I mentioned this case about two months ago. It involves one Marcus Thornton, who was approached by a suspicious police officer after Thornton had parked at a shopping center and gotten out of his car. He was discovered to have cocaine and was arrested. The officer then searched his car, found a gun under the seat, and added a weapons charge. The latter, based on the warrantless search, was what was at issue in the case.

The opinion expands a bright-line constitutional rule governing when police are allowed to conduct a warrantless search of a motor vehicle after arresting the driver. The high court said that such warrantless searches are justified whenever the arrestee was a recent occupant and still in the vicinity of the car.

"Once an officer determines that there is probable cause to make an arrest, it is reasonable to allow officers to ensure their safety and to preserve evidence by searching the entire passenger compartment," writes Chief Justice William Rehnquist for the majority.

Dammit, just how in hell is their safety threatened by something in, just how is it possible for evidence to be lost from, a car over there when the suspect is under arrest over here? This is beyond absurd and does not stand up to the most basic logical examination. These aren't reasons, they are excuses, justifications, and vapid ones at that, for allowing police increasingly to make our streets, our highways, our cars, a "No Fourth Amendment Zone."

If you want to know just how inane this is, consider that the issue at hand was a so-called "bright line rule" as to when such a search was constitutional. Previous decisions have held that if "contact was initiated" while the driver is still in the car, it becomes the "immediate vicinity" of an arrest, which can be searched. Now we have a supposedly "bright line" rule that uses terms like "recently," "vicinity," and "reasonable."

That sort of line only looks bright to some real dim bulbs.