{"id":4143,"date":"2010-09-06T19:45:07","date_gmt":"2010-05-07T07:10:05","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-05-07T07:10:05","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=4143","title":{"rendered":"NJ: If officer can order occupant from vehicle, he can open the door, too"},"content":{"rendered":"

If an officer has the authority to order the occupant of a vehicle to exit a vehicle, the officer can open the door, too. A gun was seen. State v. Mai<\/a>, 202 N.J. 12, 993 A.2d 1216 (2010):<\/p>\n

We see no reason to depart from the elegant reasoning that undergirds this settled principle in making the parallel determination of whether a police officer has the authority to open a vehicle door as part of issuing an order to exit the vehicle. In the realm of defining reasonable searches and seizures, no meaningful or relevant difference exists between the grant of authority to order an occupant of a vehicle to exit the vehicle and the authority to open the door as part of issuing that lawful order. Plain logic demands that the principles that govern whether a passenger of a vehicle lawfully can be ordered out of the vehicle must apply with equal force to whether a police officer is entitled, as a corollary and reasonable safety measure, to open the door as part of issuing a proper order to exit. See State v. Matthews, 330 N.J. Super. 1, 6 (App. Div. 2000) (holding that “[s]ince the officer was entitled to order defendant out of the car, he was equally entitled to open the door to accomplish that object”); State v. Conquest, 243 N.J. Super. 528, 533 (App. Div. 1990) (combining authority to order passenger from vehicle with authority to open door, holding that “both the order to exit and the method of effectuating it [opening door] were proper”). We therefore turn to the application of that rule to this case.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The officer had probable cause to search defendant\u2019s vehicle for a police radio after he heard radio traffic from under the car seat. Gant was inapplicable. Merchant v. State<\/a>, 926 N.E.2d 1058 (Ind. App. 2010).*<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/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-4143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4143","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=4143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}