Mobley and King v. State

⁹⁰ Levine, J., dissenting: I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that “exigent circumstances” prevailed when the search of the automobile was undertaken at the police station. Hence, notwithstanding the apparent similarity of the facts at bar to those in Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U. S. 42 , 90 S. Ct. 1975 , 26 L.Ed.2d 419 (1970), I respectfully dissent. As the majority itself acknowledges, the “automobile exception,” from the time of its initial pronouncement in Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132 , 45 S. Ct. 280 , 69 L. Ed. 543 (1925), 39 A.L.R. 790 , has been consistently “justified on the basis that an automobile is so readily movable as to make impracticable the obtaining of a search warrant.” Manifestly, this rationale for the rule did apply when the car was initially halted and searched. Nevertheless, I can not share the view that the exigency continued once the occupants were safely in custody, and were prevented from gaining access to the car.

It is interesting to note this quotation from Chambers, supra, in the majority opinion: “Neither Carroll, supra, nor other cases in this Court require or suggest that in every conceivable circumstance the search of an auto even with probable cause may be made without the extra protection for privacy that a warrant affords. But the circumstances that furnish probable cause to search a particular auto for particular articles are most often unforeseeable; moreover, the opportunity to search is fleeting since a car is readily movable. Where this is true, as in Carroll and the case before us now, if an effective search is to be made at any time, either the search must be made immediately without a warrant or the car itself must be seized and held without a warrant for whatever period is necessary to obtain a warrant for the search.” 399 U. S. at 50-51 (emphasis added). As applied to this case, that statement cannot be read to ⁹¹ permit any other result but that, given the probable cause for the search coupled with the “exigent circumstances,” the police were confronted with the alternatives of searching the car near the bridge or seizing it, as they actually did, and then “obtain [ing] a warrant for the search. ”399 U. S. at 51.

As the Court then proceeded to observe in Chambers : “ ... As a general rule, it has also required the judgment of a magistrate on the probable-cause issue and the issuance of a warrant before a search is made. Only in exigent circumstances will the judgment of the police as to probable cause serve as a sufficient authorization for a search. Carroll, supra, holds a search warrant unnecessary where there is probable cause to search an automobile stopped on the highway; the car is movable, the occupants are alerted, and the car’s contents may never be found again if a warrant must be obtained.

Hence an immediate search is constitutionally permissible.” 399 U. S. at 51 (emphasis added). However movable the car may have been when initially halted, it could not have been more immobilized than it was at the police station, where it was securely in the possession of the police while its occupants were in custody. Thus, the very raison d’etre for the “automobile exception” was lacking. As Justice Harlan, dissenting in Chambers , so aptly stated: “In sustaining the search of the automobile I believe the Court ignores the framework of our past decisions circumscribing the scope of permissible search without a warrant.

The Court has long read the Fourth Amendment’s proscription of ‘unreasonable’ searches as imposing a general principle that a search without a warrant is not justified by the mere knowledge by the searching officers of facts showing