{"id":3663,"date":"2010-12-29T07:21:38","date_gmt":"2009-12-23T01:29:14","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-22T08:30:34","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=3663","title":{"rendered":"FL5: Theft is an offense for which a SI under <em>Gant<\/em> can occur"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Defendant\u2019s arrest for theft justified a search incident because that was crime for which evidence could be found.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.5dca.org\/Opinions\/Opin2009\/121409\/5D08-3196.op.pdf\">Brown v. State<\/a>, 24 So. 3d 671 (5th DCA 2009):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Our conclusion on this issue finds ample support in the concurring opinion of Justice Scalia in Thornton. In discussing the &#8220;evidence gathering&#8221; justification for a search incident to arrest, he observed that a &#8220;motorist may be arrested for a wide variety of offenses; in many cases, there is no reasonable basis to believe relevant evidence might be found in the car.&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/caselaw.lp.findlaw.com\/scripts\/getcase.pl?court=us&amp;vol=000&amp;invol=03-5165\">Thornton<\/a>, 541 U.S. at 632 (Scalia, J., concurring). Justice Scalia cited <a href=\"http:\/\/caselaw.lp.findlaw.com\/scripts\/getcase.pl?court=us&amp;vol=000&amp;invol=99-1408\">Atwater v. City of Lago Vista<\/a>, 532 U.S. 318, 121 S. Ct. 1536, 149 L. Ed. 2d 549 (2001) (involving failure to wear seatbelt), and <a href=\"http:\/\/caselaw.lp.findlaw.com\/scripts\/getcase.pl?court=us&amp;vol=000&amp;invol=97-7597\">Knowles v. Iowa<\/a>, 525 U.S. 113, 119 S. Ct. 484, 142 L. Ed. 2d 492 (1998) (involving speeding), as examples of these types of cases. It is clear from this discussion that the &#8220;nature of the charge&#8221; is determinative of whether there exists a reasonable basis to search for evidence, not whether there is some independent evidence that gives rise to a belief that the particular vehicle contains evidence. Id. at 630. As Justice Scalia observed: &#8220;[I]t is not illogical to assume that evidence of a crime is most likely to be found where the suspect was apprehended.&#8221; Id. Where, as here, the offense of arrest is such that police could &#8220;expect to find&#8221; fruits and instruments of the crime, the search is justified as an incident to the arrest because it is reasonable to believe that evidence might be found.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>While there is a limited expectation of privacy in computer files, defendant took his computer to a repair place, and, in the normal course of repairs, the technician came upon a file labelled \u201cPedo\u201d and he could open it. Doing so, he was not a government actor under the federal or state constitutions.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.1stcoa.courts.state.tx.us\/opinions\/HTMLopinion.asp?OpinionID=87346\">Brackens v. State<\/a>, 312 S.W.3d 831 (Tex. App.\u2014Houston (1st Dist.) 2009).*<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>b2evALnk.b2WPAutP <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=3663\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3663\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}