CA3: Automobile exception permits a vehicle search back at the police station

Since the police acted on a tip from an informant who had proved uniformly reliable on several prior occasions, and the police corroborated that information through their own surveillance, their decision to stop the vehicle was supported by probable cause. The police did not need a warrant to search the vehicle once it was moved to the police station since the search was valid under the automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment. For the same reasons the police had probable cause to stop the vehicle, they had probable cause to search it. The automobile exception permitted the police the same latitude to conduct the search without a warrant back at the station as it did at the place of the stop. United States v. Thompson, 545 Fed. Appx. 167 (3d Cir. 2013):

The automobile exception permits police to search and seize a vehicle so long as they have probable cause to believe that the vehicle contains contraband or evidence of a crime. Pennsylvania v. Labron, 518 U.S. 938, 940, 116 S. Ct. 2485, 135 L. Ed. 2d 1031 (1996). Since Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 52, 90 S. Ct. 1975, 26 L. Ed. 2d 419 (1970), the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the automobile exception does not evaporate once the vehicle has been taken away from the place of the initial stop to the police station. “[P]olice officers with probable cause to search an automobile at the scene where it was stopped [can] constitutionally do so later at the station house without first obtaining a warrant . … [T]he probable-cause factor that developed at the scene still obtain[s] at the station house.” Texas v. White, 423 U.S. 67, 68, 96 S. Ct. 304, 46 L. Ed. 2d 209 (1975) (per curium) (citation to Chambers, 399 U.S. at 52 omitted); see also California v. Acevedo, 500 U.S. 565, 570, 111 S. Ct. 1982, 114 L. Ed. 2d 619 (1991) (“Following Chambers, if the police have probable cause to justify a warrantless seizure of an automobile on a public roadway, they may conduct either an immediate or a delayed search of the vehicle.”).

For the same reasons the DBPD had probable cause to stop the vehicle, they had probable cause to search it. T.W.’s tip validly led the police to believe that there was a “fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime” was to be found in the van’s side panel. Burton, 288 F.3d at 103 (quotation marks omitted). Lieutenant Gibney made the decision that rather than search the van in the middle of the street while a crowd grew, it was more prudent to conduct the search at the police station. The automobile exception permitted the police the same latitude to conduct the search without a warrant back at the station as it did at the place of the stop.