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Commonwealth v. Wood6/4/1999
TO BE PUBLISHED
Commonwealth Of Kentucky Court Of Appeals
OPINION REVERSING AND REMANDING
The Commonwealth appeals from an order of the Warren Circuit Court suppressing evidence seized during a warrantless search of appellee's automobile. The focus of our review is whether the Commonwealth met its burden of establishing that the search falls within one of the exceptions to the warrant requirement. Because we are convinced that it fits squarely within the "incident to arrest" analysis set out in New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981), and adopted by the Kentucky Supreme Court in Commonwealth v. Ramsey, Ky., 744 S.W.2d 418 (1987), we conclude that the Commonwealth met its burden and thus the circuit court erred in suppressing the evidence seized.
The facts are neither complex nor in dispute. On November 24, 1995, Officer William Bowles of the Bowling Green Police Department stopped a vehicle driven by appellee Wood for having an expired vehicle registration plate. When Wood was unable to produce a driver's license, Officer Bowles ran a check which revealed that Wood's operator's license had been suspended for driving under the influence . After arresting Wood, handcuffing him and placing him in the police cruiser, Officer Bowles conducted a search of the vehicle and discovered in the glove compartment a pipe which he suspected of containing marijuana residue. Officer Bowles then charged Wood with possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia.
Wood subsequently moved the Warren District Court for suppression of the evidence garnered in the search of his vehicle. Upon denial of his motion, Wood entered a conditional plea of guilty to the marijuana charge, subject to an appeal of the suppression issue. In an opinion entered on July 12, 1997, the Warren Circuit Court reversed the decision of the District Court on the basis that the "facts in the instant case cannot be distinguished from those in Clark v. Commonwealth, Ky. App., 868 S.W.2d 101 (1994). . . ." This court thereafter granted the Commonwealth's motion for discretionary review in which it alleged that this case is distinguishable from the Clark rationale and falls more appropriately within the Ramsey analysis. We agree.
Both the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Section 10 of the Kentucky Constitution guarantee the fundamental right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, a right protected by the general rule proscribing searches not authorized by a valid search warrant. However, in order to accommodate the exigencies of police work, a number of exceptions to the warrant requirement have evolved, including an "incident to arrest" exception which directs itself at concerns for the safety of the arresting officer as well as at the prompt discovery and preservation of evidence. Clark, supra, and United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 94 S.Ct. 467, 38 L.Ed.2d 427 (1973).
Practically speaking, the "incident to arrest" exception allows for the warrantless search of an arrestee's person and of the area within his immediate control. The United States Supreme Court defined area of "immediate control" as "the area from within which [the arrestee] might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence." Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969). The parameters of the exception were the subject of further Supreme Court scrutiny in New York v. Belton, supra, which concluded that "when a policeman has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile, he may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of that automobile." 453 U.S. at
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