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In the Arizona v. Gant case, the police officers cuffed and secured Gant in the back of a cop car, with the officers proceeding to search his car where they found a gun and drugs. Gant consequently moved to suppress the evidence alleging that it was an improper search. While the Arizona court convicted him, the Supreme Court upon reviewing the case held that the police could only search the vehicle if the arrested individual is within reaching a reach of the passenger compartment at the search (Find law, n.d). The Supreme Court further argued that the search could be executed is there was reasonable belief evidence relating to a crime was present in the vehicle.

In the New York v. Belton case, the police officer arrested for people who were in a speeding car and upon examining the passenger compartment found a jacket that had incriminating evidence. The main issue, in this case, was on whether a law enforcement officer who has made a legitimate custodial arrest of the occupants of a vehicle can, as a contemporaneous incident of the arrest search and examines contents of the passenger compartment of the vehicle (Shaw, 2009). The trial court dismissed his motion to suppress the evidence, with the court appeal reversing the decision arguing that Belton could not access the cocaine at the time of the search. The Supreme Court, however, dismissed the case by case position relied on assessing whether it was reasonable and instead deciding to favor the bright line rule.

The Supreme Court in Gant’s case did not reverse its holding in Belton as in the case of Gant, there clear evidence that there was a violation of the fourth amendment. In the case of Belton, there was a single officer who had already arrested Belton for marijuana that the officer had smelled in the vehicle before searching it and finding more drugs (Shaw, 2009). Gant has been arrested for a driving offense whereby the police did not expect finding more evidence in the passenger compartment of his vehicle.

References

Find law (n.d). United States Supreme Court NEW YORK v. BELTON, (1981) No. 80-328 Argued: April 27, 1981    Decided: July 1, 1981.

Shaw, R (2009). Texas district & county attorneys association. Vehicle searches, post-Gant 2009 Assistant Criminal District Attorney in Tarrant County.

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in legitimate custom writing services Texas. If you need a similar paper you can place your order from research paper writing service Florida services.