TX: Suitcase with def in airport arrest was subject to search incident

Defendant was arrested in the San Antonio airport, and his luggage came with him to airport jail. The suitcase as a “receptacle must inevitably accompany him into custody, a warrantless search of that receptacle at or near the time of the arrest is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment as a search incident to the arrestee’s person.” Price v. State, 2020 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 709 (Sept. 23, 2020) (5-4):

We hold that, at least where—as in the instant case—an arrestee is in actual possession of a receptacle at the time of, or reasonably contemporaneously to, his custodial arrest, and that receptacle must inevitably accompany him into custody, a warrantless search of that receptacle at or near the time of the arrest is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment as a search incident to the arrestee’s person. Such a search requires no greater justification than the fact of the lawful arrest itself. Application of this principle does not turn on the specific nature or character of the receptacle, as the court of appeals believed, but merely on whether it was in the arrestee’s possession at the time of arrest, and whether it would inevitably accompany him into custody. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the court of appeals.

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