AK: State didn’t prove car’s ashtray was associated with the person to store things

Defendant was stopped for blocking the road with the passenger door open and a man leaning, and officers suspected a drug transaction, further confirmed at least in part by the person leaning in running and jumping three fences to get away. He was suspected of driving under the influence of marijuana, and a search of the ashtray of the car finding cocaine was excessive. It was the state’s burden to show that the ashtray was immediately associated with the person. Pitka v. State, 2016 Alas. App. LEXIS 116 (June 17, 2016):

But as we recently explained in our unpublished opinion in Jarnig v. State, the fact that a container inside a vehicle is capable of holding personal items does not answer the question of whether that container is “immediately associated with the person” of the driver. The police are not allowed to simply assume that the container is “immediately associated with the person” of the arrestee on the basis that it could hold small personal items. Rather, before the police search the container without a warrant, the police must have some articulable basis for believing that the container is generally used, or is actually being used in that particular instance, to store items that would normally be kept in a pocket or a purse.

Any other rule would subject virtually every container in a vehicle to warrantless searches incident to the driver’s arrest, without the State having to prove that there were exigent circumstances to justify these warrantless searches. We do not think our supreme court intended this result when the court decided Crawford.

In Pitka’s case, the container at issue is a built-in ashtray. The intended function of an ashtray is to serve as the repository for cigarette ashes and butts. The State presented no evidence that vehicle ashtrays are generally used as containers for small personal items. Nor did the police have any case-specific indication (until they performed the warrantless search) that Pitka was using his vehicle ashtray for this alternative purpose.

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