CHIMEL vs.

CALIFORNIA (Stewart, 1969)

An arresting officer may search the arrestee's person to discover and remove
weapons and to seize evidence to prevent its concealment or destruction, and
may search the area "within the immediate control" of the person arrested,
meaning the area from which he might gain possession of a weapon or
destructible evidence. For the routine search of rooms other than that in
which an arrest occurs, or for searching desk drawers or other closed or
concealed areas in that room itself, absent well recognized exceptions, a
search warrant is required.
FACTS: Police officers, armed with an arrest warrant authorizing his arrest for
the burglary of a coin shop, were admitted to petitioner's home by his wife,
where they awaited petitioner's arrival. When he entered the house, he was
served with the warrant. Although he denied the officers' request to "look
around," they conducted a search of the entire house "on the basis of the
lawful arrest." No search warrant had been issued. In some rooms, the search
was relatively cursory. In the master bedroom and sewing room, however, the
officers directed the petitioner's wife to open drawers and to physically move
contents of the drawers from side to side so that they might view any items
that would have come from the burglary. At petitioner's trial on burglary
charges, items taken from his home were admitted over objection that they
had been unconstitutionally seized. His conviction was affirmed by both the
California Court of Appeal and the California Supreme Court, which held,
despite their acceptance of petitioner's contention that the arrest warrant was
invalid, that, since the arresting officers had procured the warrant "in good
faith," and since, in any event, they had had sufficient information to constitute
probable cause for the arrest, the arrest was lawful. From this conclusion, the
appellate courts went on to hold that the search of the petitioner's home had
been justified, despite the absence of a search warrant, on the ground that it
had been incident to a valid arrest.
ISSUE: WON the warrantless search of the petitioner's entire house can be
constitutionally justified as incident to that arrest?
HELD: No. The scope of the search here was unreasonable under the Fourth
and Fourteenth Amendments, as it went beyond petitioner's person and the

area from within which he might have obtained a weapon or something that
could have been used as evidence against him, and there was no
constitutional justification, in the absence of a search warrant, for extending
the search beyond that area.
DISPOSITIVE: Decision of the California appellate courts REVERSED.
CASE DIGEST BY Krispy Frias