Probable Cause Against Occupants

Probable Cause Against Occupants

The preceding sections asked how far officers may search a car once they have probable cause to believe it holds contraband. A neighboring question arises when the contraband turns up and the officers must decide whether anyone riding in the car can be arrested for it. The vehicle exception does not answer that question, because it authorizes a search of the vehicle and does not authorize a search of the drivers or passengers inside it.¹ The Court reached that conclusion in United States v. Di Re, reasoning that the need to search a car's occupants is no greater than the need to search the guests of a house for which a search warrant has issued, a search the government conceded would be unlawful.² Arrest is therefore a separate inquiry with its own trigger, which is probable cause to believe that the particular person committed an offense.³

Maryland v. Pringle supplies the leading illustration of that inquiry applied to the people in a car.⁴ At 3:16 a.m. an officer stopped a Nissan Maxima for speeding. Donte Partlow was driving and owned the car, Pringle sat in the front passenger seat, and Otis Smith sat in the back. When Partlow opened the glove compartment for the registration, the officer saw rolled-up cash, and Partlow later consented to a search of the car. The search turned up $763 in the glove compartment and five baggies of cocaine behind the back-seat armrest, and when all three men denied ownership of both, the officer arrested each of them.⁵ Because Partlow had consented, the search of the car was not in dispute, and the only question was whether the officer had probable cause to believe that Pringle committed the crime of possession.⁶

The Court held that the officer had probable cause to arrest Pringle, reasoning that cocaine and a large amount of cash found in a car, with no occupant claiming either, can supply probable cause to believe that any or all of the occupants, a front-seat passenger included, jointly possessed the drugs.⁷ The method was the ordinary one for measuring probable cause. The Court examined the events leading up to the arrest and asked whether those facts, viewed from the standpoint of an objectively reasonable officer, amounted to probable cause.⁸ The cash lay in the glove compartment directly in front of Pringle, the cocaine was within reach of all three men, and none of them offered any information about either. From those facts the Court found it reasonable to infer that any or all of the three knew about the cocaine and exercised dominion and control over it.⁹

The result follows from what probable cause measures. The standard deals in probabilities, and the finely tuned measures used at trial, such as proof beyond a reasonable doubt or a preponderance of the evidence, have no place in the decision.¹⁰ Unclaimed drugs in a small shared space that every occupant can reach make it likely that someone in the car knew about them and controlled them, and the officer at the roadside cannot tell which occupant it was. If the officer had to establish who owned the drugs before arresting anyone, the standard would demand a certainty it does not require. The demand would also give the occupants an easy defense, since they could defeat any arrest simply by staying silent together.

Pringle argued that arresting him punished guilt by association, relying on Ybarra v. Illinois and Di Re, and the Court called that reliance misplaced.¹¹ In Ybarra, officers holding a warrant to search a tavern and its bartender patted down the customers, and the Court held that a person's mere propinquity to others independently suspected of crime does not by itself supply probable cause to search that person, because probable cause must be particularized to the individual.¹² The difference between the cases lies in what connects each person to the contraband. A tavern patron's only link to the bartender's suspected offense was being present in the same place, while the three men in the Maxima shared a small space in which the drugs and cash were within reach of all of them and no one disowned either. The treatment is fact-sensitive for that reason, since a change in the facts that weakens the link between a person and the contraband can change the answer.

Houghton, covered in the previous section, is easy to confuse with Pringle because both involve passengers and drugs, but the two decisions answer different questions. Houghton concerns what officers may open: when probable cause covers the car, belongings in it, including a passenger's purse, fall within the search, while the Carroll rule does not automatically justify searching the persons of drivers and passengers.¹³ Pringle concerns whom officers may arrest, and that turns on whether the facts connect the individual to the contraband. The two can also meet in sequence. Probable cause to arrest an occupant opens the door to a search incident to arrest, but that route has its own limits: under Arizona v. Gant, officers may search the passenger compartment only when the arrestee is unsecured and within reaching distance of it, or when it is reasonable to believe that evidence of the crime of arrest is in the vehicle.¹⁴

The usual error here is treating a valid car search as authority over the people inside the car. The vehicle exception supports opening the car and the containers that could hold the object of the search. An arrest of an occupant needs probable cause linking that person to the contraband, and unclaimed drugs in a shared car, especially alongside a large amount of cash, can supply the link.