LawyersUSA

If probable cause supports an arrest, evidence seized incident to that arrest is admissible even though state law provided that only a citation should have been issued, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.

The arresting officers were already familiar with the defendant when they heard a radio dispatch indicating he was driving with a suspended license. They stopped and arrested him for that misdemeanor. A search incident to the arrest uncovered crack cocaine.

Under state law, however, the defendant should not have been arrested – only a citation and summons to appear in court should have been issued.

The defendant argued that the improper arrest under state law meant the search violated the Fourth Amendment.

The Virginia Supreme Court held that the evidence should have been suppressed because the Fourth Amendment does not permit search "incident to citation."

But the U.S. Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia, disagreed.

"[W]e have said that when an officer has probable cause to believe a person committed even a minor crime in his presence, the balancing of private and public interests is not in doubt. The arrest is constitutionally reasonable," the Court said.

Here, "the arrest rules that the officers violated were those of state law alone, and … it is not the province of the Fourth Amendment to enforce state law. That amendment does not require the exclusion of evidence obtained from a constitutionally permissible arrest."

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote an opinion concurring in the judgment.

U.S. Supreme Court. Virginia v. Moore, No. 06-1082. April 23, 2008. Lawyers USA No. 9939750. Click here for the full text of this opinion.