Searching after Handcuffing

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How extensive can a search incident to arrest conducted for officer safety be after a suspect is in handcuffs?
 Example, marshals enter the defendants bedroom and place him under arrest and in handcuffs.  The marshals have properly obtained an arrest warrant based upon probable cause and this is the defendant's dwelling.  During a search of the bedroom incident to arrest the officer finds a handgun between the mattress and box spring of the bed.  The officer was about to let the defendant sit on the bed.  Defendant moves to suppress the gun at trial, what result?



Answer:

 Thus, the questions that we are instructed to focus on are (1) whether the search was "properly limited", and (2) whether it was reasonable for the deputy marshal to conclude that defendant posed a danger to those on the arrest scene.

Terry, 392 U.S. at 21, 88 S.Ct. at 1880. In determining that the search was proper, the Court applied a reasonableness test:

[T]he issue is whether a reasonably prudent man in the circumstances would be warranted in the belief that his safety or that of others was in danger. And in determining whether the officer acted reasonably in such circumstances, due weight must be given, not to his inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or 'hunch,' but to the specific reasonable inferences which he is entitled to draw from the facts in light of his experience.

Thus, even though Barrow had been handcuffed, it was proper for the deputy marshal to search the area around her for weapons. To begin with, the search lasted "no longer than [was] necessary to dispel the reasonable suspicion of danger". Buie, 110 S.Ct. at 1099

In a similar situation, the 2nd Circuit denied motion to suppress.

In another case, the police found a handgun when the searched the interior of a defendant's mattress after he was placed under arrest and allowed to sit on the floor.  The court allowed the motion to suppress in that case because the search was not properly limited.


Submitted by Wyla Posey
Emory Law School