Arizona v. Gant Case Brief Summary | Law Case Explained

Published: 02 October 2020
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Arizona v. Gant | 129 S.Ct. 1710 (2009)

Imagine a police officer validly arrests a car’s driver and secures the driver in the backseat of a patrol car. What can the officer do then? Can the officer proceed to search the driver’s entire car, without any reason to believe there’s evidence of a crime inside? In Arizona versus Gant, the United States Supreme Court clarified what the Fourth Amendment does and doesn’t permit in this situation.

Police officers in Tuscan, Arizona, learned that Rodney Gant had an outstanding arrest warrant for driving with a suspended license. Once they tracked him down, the officers arrested Gant as he was leaving his parked car. They handcuffed Gant and locked him inside a police car. The officers then searched Gant’s car, soon discovering a bag of cocaine inside a jacket left in the backseat.

A state prosecutor charged Gant with possession of cocaine. In a pretrial motion to suppress the cocaine, Gant contended that the officers violated the Fourth Amendment by searching his car without probable cause to believe that any illegal items were inside the car. The prosecutor countered that the search was constitutional as a search incident to Gant’s lawful arrest. A search incident to arrest is an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, which allows officers to search a suspect’s person or the surrounding area during a lawful arrest. The trial court agreed with the prosecutor and denied Gant’s motion. A jury then convicted Gant, who was sentenced to three years in prison. A series of appeals and remands eventually culminated with the Arizona Supreme Court’s reversal of Gant’s conviction.

The State of Arizona filed a cert petition with the United States Supreme Court.

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