the law dramatically changes a day or a week before your final?
That’s what happened to many Crim Pro students this past Tuesday. In Gant v. Arizona, the Court modified NY v. Belton and held that “Belton does not authorize a vehicle search incident to a recent occupant’s arrest after the arrestee has been secured and cannot access the interior of the vehicle.” After Belton police academies began teaching that officers may search the passenger compartment of a car once any occupant has been arrested. To me, the Gant rule makes more sense. What is the justification for allowing officers to search a car without a warrant when their safety is not at risk and the destruction of evidence is not possible? Generally, these suspects are handcuffed and far from their car when these searches take place.
The majority was made up of a bunch of odd bedfellows–Justice Stevens wrote for Scalia (who also wrote a concurring opinoin), Ginsberg, Souter, and Thomas. The dissent (Breyer, Kennedy, Alito and Roberts) argued that this rule is going to be harder to apply than the bright line rule espoused in Belton and it will disturb a doctrine that police have been relying on for 28 years. I agree with the dissent that the police will have to adjust, but that seems like a small price to pay for a rule that protects privacy more and squares better with the court’s stated justiciations for exceptions to the warrant requirement.
Reading about this decision just days before my Crim Pro final made me (and my fellow Crim Pro takers) wonder for just a minute–do we not need to know NY v Belton now? Do we need to know the new rule? I think the obvious answer is no. We need to know what our classes taught us, not the state of the law at the moment our final is given. Now when we take the Bar, that’s another story.
You might not need to know the new rule, but I bet that if you mentioned it you’d score some serious bonus points. Professors tend to like students who, you know, actually follow what is happening in the Supreme Court.
post about law school & legal questions = 1 comment.
posts about arbitrary rankings = 150 comments.
This decision was literally handed down while I was taking my Crim Pro exam. Will the prof retroactively apply the case to our essay questions? Let’s hope not. 😛
i could see some professors giving you extra points for following the supreme court and knowing how to use the info, and i can see some professors being annoyed with you for talking about things that weren’t covered in class. for my particular exam, it’s 2/3 multiple choice, so there’s a chance I wouldn’t have an opportunity to put it in anyway. Of course, there’s part of me that wants to write in next to a question about Belton – “Thank goodness THIS isn’t the rule anymore.” But I guess that would be inappropriate.
in my opinion the school should respond to the Gant decision by cutting the PT program.
lol niiiice
you’re just jealous cause we don’t have to take out loans. bad legal job market? no problem I’ll just keep my current job until it picks up. We’re #2! We’re #2!
Wait – I thought our Crim Pro exam was optional!
Doh!
I agree that it probably wouldn’t hurt to throw it in there for a bonus point or two.
Saltzburg (whose Crim Pro exam was multiple choice) made a point of mentioning Gant during the review session and telling everyone that the exam would test the law as it stood the day of the review session (4/15). So although there was no chance to mention Gant in an essay, at least he made clear what we needed to know.
wow intense
I think that holding is even broader
“we reject this reading of Belton and hold that the Chimel rationale authorizes police to search a vehicle incident to a recent occupant’s arrest only when the arrestee is unsecured and within reaching distance of the passenger compartment at the time of the search….Because officers have many means of ensuring the safe arrest of vehicle occupants, it will be the rare case in which an officer is unable to fully effectuate an arrest so that a real possibility of access to the arrestee’s vehicle remains.”
The Court also recognized an exception opining that search of the passenger compartment incident to arrest is permissible without a warrant when “it is reasonable to believe that evidence of the offense of arrest might be found in the vehicle.”
There seems to be little left of Belton after this case unless there is a reasonable suspicion to believe that there exists evidence of the offense of arrest in the car.
I remember something similar happening when taking my Evidence exam; the new Rules took effect. I saved money by always reading them online rather than buying a book, and it was REALLY crazy when they were just different one day (until I realized why).
Off-topic, it’ll be interesting as more of our content is digital (textbooks on Amazon Kindles?) and thus changes like these could theoretically be rapidly incorporated. It did occur to me yesterday that a good chunk of my Crim Pro book is worthless now. Though discussing the value of an item held together with duct and packing tape is pretty worthless itself.
hey guys, I just got an email from the dean saying that rankings don’t matter, so we’re good.
If i was a prof i would take points off if someone brought this up – its not a research class or research exam. Perhaps I wouldn’t take points off but i certainly would not give credit.
Although I would make that explicit at the start of the year and before the test