MD: Search incident of locked compartment lawful

Search incident includes a locked glove compartment, even though everybody is out of the vehicle at the time, following the weight of authority. Hamel v. State, 179 Md. App. 1, 943 A.2d 686 (2008).

The fact that the police had probable cause 24 hours before the actual search of defendant’s car did not mean there were no exigent circumstances. There was no way of predicting that there actually would be drugs in defendant’s car at the time it was seen. Commonwealth v. Eggleston, 71 Mass. App. Ct. 363, 881 N.E.2d 1174 (2008):

As a practical matter, the inherent mobility of an automobile creates a level of fluidity or unpredictability that militates against assessing through too fine a lens the opportunity of police to obtain a warrant for the vehicle prior to a search. In the present case, for example, though police had ample cause to believe that the defendant routinely stored contraband in his vehicle and on his person, they had no way to know how events would unfold based on the information they held. Though the police were informed that the defendant had received a significant shipment of drugs the preceding day, and that he planned to complete a sale to a particular individual on the day of the search, the precise time and location of the sale were uncertain. Imposing a requirement on police that they obtain a warrant to search a vehicle based on a particular set of facts is impractical when the inherent mobility of the vehicle creates the very real possibility that the officers will be presented with different facts when they proceed to execute the search. See Commonwealth v. Cast, supra at 906, quoting from Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U.S. 583, 595-596 (1974) (“exigency may arise at any time and in a number of situations and the fact that police had probable cause and might have obtained a warrant earlier ‘does not negate the possibility of a current situation’s necessitating prompt police action,’ since no principle would foreclose the right of officers to search a motor vehicle on probable cause and exigent circumstances ‘if a warrant was not obtained at the first practicable moment'”).