Chimel Vs. California Case Study

Chimel v California (1969) was a landmark case that involved Officers armed with only an arrest warrant, enter Ted Chimel’s home and arrest him for burglary. The Officers decided to search his entire house in search of the stolen coins from the burglarized coin shop. They justified their search maintaining that it was to uncover evidence but that it was incident to arrest. Chimel was convicted and his appeal reached the U.S. Supreme Court; where they overturned the ruling stating that “the search of Chimel’s residence, although incident to arrest, became invalid when it went beyond the person arrested and the area subject to that person’s “immediate control” (Schmalleger, 2014). This case gave officers the authority to conduct a protective