CA9: Search incident of closed containers in a car was invalid where defendant was handcuffed in a police car

Search incident of closed containers in a car without probable cause was invalid as a search incident. The defendant was handcuffed and in a police car at the time, and there was no exigency. United States v. Maddox, 614 F.3d 1046 (9th Cir. 2010):

Contrary to the dissent’s opening description, this was not a search of Maddox’s person incident to arrest. Maddox’s person was handcuffed in the back of the squad car, incapable of either destroying evidence or presenting any threat to the arresting officer. While the key chain was within Maddox’s immediate control while he was arrested, subsequent events—namely Officer Bonney’s handcuffing of Maddox and placing Maddox in the back of the patrol car—rendered the search unreasonable. In Turner, we found valid the search of baggies found after the defendant was handcuffed and taken into the next room because of a legitimate concern for the officers’ safety: “they had already discovered a concealed weapon beneath the bedding.” Id. at 888; accord United States v. Hudson, 100 F.3d 1409, 1420 (9th Cir. 1996) (search of bedroom valid search incident to arrest even after defendant had been arrested and removed from the room, where “[w]hen Hudson was called out of his bedroom and arrested, one of the arresting officers noticed a rifle case near his feet”). No such weapon or threat was found here, and Maddox’s demeanor, as the dissent argues, see Dissenting Op., at 11445 n.1, did not provide such legitimate concern for Officer Bonney’s safety, as after initially yelling, Maddox subsequently cooperated with the officer and the arrest. Mere temporal or spatial proximity of the search to the arrest does not justify a search; some threat or exigency must be present to justify the delay. See United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 15 (1977), overruled on other grounds by California v. Acevedo, 500 U.S. 565, 571 (1991) (“warrantless searches of luggage or other property seized at the time of an arrest cannot be justified as incident to that arrest either if the search is remote in time or place from the arrest, or no exigency exists. Once law enforcement officers have reduced luggage or other personal property not immediately associated with the person of the arrestee to their exclusive control, and there is no longer any danger that the arrestee might gain access to the property to seize a weapon or destroy evidence, a search of that property is no longer an incident of the arrest.”) (internal quotations and citations omitted). With Maddox handcuffed in the backseat of the patrol car, no possibility of Maddox concealing or destroying the key chain and the items contained therein, and no sighting of weapons or other such threats, Officer Bonney’s search of Maddox’s key chain was not a valid search incident to arrest.