Carroll v. United States

Appellants
George Carroll, John Kiro
Appellee
United States
Appellants' Claim
That since there was no basis for the search of their car, the evidence resulting from the search should have been excluded from trial, their arrest and seizure were unlawful, and the use of the liquor as evidence violated their constitutional rights.
Chief Lawyer for Appellants
Thomas E. Atkinson
Chief Lawyers for Appellee
John G. Sargent, Attorney General; James M. Beck
Justices for the Court
William Howard Taft (writing for the Court), Joseph McKenna, Willis Van Devanter, Louis D. Brandeis, Pierce Butler, Edward Terry Sanford
Justices Dissenting
James Clark McReynolds, George Sutherland
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
2 March 1925
Decision
Upheld the warrantless search of a car, noting that probable cause existed and the mobility of the automobile made it impracticable to get a search warrant.
Significance
The ruling in this case created the automobile exception to the general rulethat searches require warrants. Evidence from warrantless automobile searchesis admissible in court as long as the officer had probable cause to search.
In January of 1920 the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect, prohibiting themanufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors. Congress passed the Volstead Act to implement the Eighteenth Amendment. The act forbade anyperson to manufacture, sell, barter, transport, import, export, deliver, furnish, or possess liquor. The commissioner of internal revenue enforced the act with fewer than 2,000 agents to police the entire country. Because Congressnever granted enough money for more than token enforcement of the act, gangstook control of the illegal liquor trade, bootlegging, smuggling, and running speakeasies.
On 15 December 1921, Fred Cronenwett, chief prohibition officer, and other officers, saw George Carroll and John Kiro driving towards Grand Rapids, Michigan. Cronenwett recognized the occupants and the automobile and decided to follow them. After stopping the car, Cronenwett asked the occupants to get out.He searched the car and discovered 69 quarts of whisky hidden in the upholstery. He did not have a search warrant.
Warrantless Automobile Searches Valid
Chief Justice Taft, formerly president of the United States, wrote the opinion for the majority in this case. He noted that the Stanley Amendment called for the punishment of any officer who searches a private dwelling without a warrant or who searches any other building or property where the search withouta warrant is done maliciously and without probable cause. "In other words, it left the way open for searching an automobile or vehicle of transportationwithout a warrant, if the search was not malicious or without probable cause." Taft stated that Congress intended to make a distinction between the necessity for a search warrant for private dwellings and for automobiles, in the enforcement of the Prohibition Act. Taft believed that this distinction was consistent with the Fourth Amendment because the amendment does not denounce allsearches or seizures, but only unreasonable ones. " . . . If the search andseizure without a warrant are made upon probable cause, that is, upon a belief, reasonably arising out of circumstances known to the seizing officer, thatan automobile or other vehicle contains that which by law is subject to seizure and destruction, the search and seizure are valid." Taft stated that theFourth Amendment should be understood in light of what was considered an unreasonable search and seizure when the amendment was adopted. It should be construed in a manner which conserves public interests as well as the interests and rights of individuals. Almost since the beginning of our government, the Fourth Amendment guarantee of freedom from unreasonable search and seizure hasrecognized a necessary difference between the search of a building and the search of a method of transportation, where it is not practical to get a warrant because the vehicle can be moved quickly.
Taft noted that people have the right to freely use the highways unless an official has probable cause to believe that a vehicle is carrying illegal goods. The apellants argued that common law states that a police officer may arrest without a warrant a person that the officer believes upon reasonable causeto have committed a felony. The officer may only arrest without a warrant ifthe person is guilty of a misdemeanor committed in the officer's presence. The apellants argued that since a misdemeanor must be committed in the officer's presence to justify arrest without a warrant, unless the officer can detectwith his senses that the liquor was being transported, the offense was not committed in his presence. Taft felt this distinction was unsatisfactory sincethe main object is to forfeit and suppress the liquor. The arrest of the individual is only incidental.
The appellants based one argument on Weeks v. United States (1914), asserting that when someone is legally arrested for an offense, whatever is found upon his person or in his control that it is unlawful for him to have andwhich may be used to prove the offense may be seized and held as evidence inthe prosecution. The appellants argued that the seizure in this case can onlybe justified if it were based on a valid arrest, without a seizure. Taft countered that "the right to search and the validity of the seizure are not dependent on the right to arrest. They are dependent on the reasonable cause theseizing officer has for belief that the contents of the automobile offend against the law." The nature of the offense for which, after the liquor is foundand seized, the driver can be prosecuted does not affect the validity of theseizure. Taft felt that this conclusion satisfied the Fourth Amendment.
Taft next discussed the question of probable cause in this case. The prohibition agents were engaged in a regular patrol of the highways from Detroit to Grand Rapids, Detroit being one of the most active centers for smuggling liquor into the country. Their patrol involved stopping cars and seizing liquor carried in them. The officers "knew or had convincing evidence" that the "Carroll boys" were bootleggers in Grand Rapids. The officers recognized the car driven by the suspects because it was the same car they had been in when they tried to furnish whisky to the officers. The car was heading from Detroit, a major source of whisky, to Grand Rapids, where the men plied their trade. "That the officers, when they saw the defendants, believed that they were carrying liquor, we can have no doubt, and we think it is equally clear that they had reasonable cause for thinking so." The defendants had argued that the officers were not looking for the defendants when they spotted them. Taft felt this argument had no weight. When the defendants did appear, "the officers wereentitled to use their reasoning faculties upon all the facts of which they had previous knowledge in respect to the defendants." The officers in this casewere justified in their search and seizure because a man of reasonable caution and with their knowledge would have believed that liquor was being transported in the automobile.
What Becomes Of The Fourth And Fifth Amendments?
Justice McReynolds wrote the dissent. As McReynolds saw the case, George Carroll and John Kiro "while quietly driving an ordinary automobile along a muchfrequented public road . . . were arrested by federal officers without a warrant and upon mere suspicion--ill-founded, as I think."
Justice McReynolds noted that the Volstead Act indicates that probable causeis not always enough to justify a seizure and that suspicion that the law isbeing violated does not justify an arrest. Noting that the Fourth Amendment denounces only unreasonable seizures, McReynolds felt that unreasonableness often depends upon the means adopted. In this case, the seizure followed an unlawful arrest and therefore became unlawful. "The validity of the seizure under consideration depends on the legality of the arrest . . . If an officer, upon mere suspicion of a misdemeanor, may stop one on the public highway, takearticles away from him and thereafter use them as evidence to convict him ofcrime, what becomes of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments?" McReynolds summed uphis dissent by stating that the arrest of George Carroll and John Kiro was unauthorized, illegal, and violated the due process guarantee of the Fifth Amendment. The liquor taken as evidence was obtained in a search that followed the arrest and was therefore obtained in violation of the men's constitutionalrights.
Impact
The decision in Carroll v. United States was the first time that the Supreme Court recognized the car search exception to the warrant requirement.The Court continued to articulate the position it took with the Carroll case, that privacy interests in a car have constitutional protection, but acar's mobility justifies less broad protection and is thus exempt from traditional warrant requirements. In 1931, the Court upheld the search of a parkedcar because police could not know when the car might be moved. A 1948 decision appeared to limit the automobile exception to vehicles suspected of violating federal laws. But in 1949, the Court upheld warrantless searches of carsas long as the police had probable cause to believe the vehicle was involvedin illegal activity.
In the 1960s, the Supreme Court applied the same limits to state police as tofederal authorities regarding warrantless automobile searches. The Court upheld the warrantless search of a car as long as a week after the owner's arrest, since the car was subject to government forfeiture. The Court has permitted law enforcement officers to search cars after they have been towed to a police garage from an arrest site. Evidence obtained in a routine warrantless search of an impounded vehicle was deemed admissible in court. They have also ruled that a warrant is not necessary when taking paint samples from a car parked in a public lot.
In the 1977 United States v. Chadwick trial, the Court brought up theconcept of a person's expectations of privacy being less in an automobile than in other things, such as a locked piece of luggage. Since the Chadwick ruling, the Supreme Court has continued to enlarge the automobile exception begun with Carroll. In 1978, the Court decided that passengers couldnot object to a warrantless search of a car. This ruling linked the Fourth Amendment rights of passengers more closely to property concepts than to privacy interests. In the 1980s, the Court ruled that law enforcement officers, with probable cause to search a car, could also search closed containers in that car. In the 1990s, the Court found that the police could search an entire car when they had probable cause only to search a container in the car. Over the decades the Court has moved away from Taft's reasoning about the mobilityof cars making warrantless searches a necessity to a concept of the limited expectations of privacy that people have regarding their automobiles.
Related Cases

• Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616 (1886).
  
• Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383 (1914).
  
• United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1 (1977).