United States Vs. Majette Case Study

Police may search a vehicle incident to a recent occupant's arrest if it is reasonable to believe the vehicle contains evidence of the offense of arrest. Gant, 556 U.S. 332 at 351. Courts have held that when police arrest a person on a traffic violation it is not reasonable to believe that evidence of the violation is in the vehicle. In United States v. Majette, the court held that it was unreasonable for the officer to believe he would find evidence of the arrestee’s suspended license in the arrestee’s vehicle. 326 F. App'x 211, 213 (4th Cir. 2009). There, the officer arrested the defendant for driving with a suspended license. Id. at 212. After the arrest, the officer searched the defendant’s vehicle. Id. The court found that there was no reasonable basis that the officer would find evidence of a suspended license inside the defendant’s vehicle. Id. at 213. The court likely found this because the evidence of driving with a suspended license is not something that has physical evidence. There is a system that officers’ check when they run a person’s license number. Therefore, the officer did not need to search the vehicle to find evidence of the suspended license because before the search he had called his dispatcher to check if the arrestee had a
In Majette, the defendant was arrested for a traffic violation which the court decided there could be no reasonable belief there was evidence of in the vehicle. Id. at 212-213. Here, Rodgers was also arrested for a traffic violation (Sindell Test. 4:6-10). The court in Majette followed the rule in Gant which requires a reasonable belief, 556 U.S. 332 at 351. Thus, this Court should find that there was no reasonable belief that Sindell would have found evidence of Rodgers unpaid traffic tickets in the