EveryBody's Guide to the Law

the right to go inside your garage without your consent or a warrant, the objects on the car seat
are not in plain view.
The plain view doctrine also applies to searches conducted pursuant to a warrant. For
example, if the police have a warrant to search a house for weapons and in the process find
some drugs on the living room coffee table, those drugs are in plain sight and can be used in
court to convict the defendant of possession of illegal drugs.
When You Are Arrested
When you are arrested lawfully, you can be searched without your consent. If you are
arrested but not taken into custody, the police can search you for weapons and to prevent you
from destroying any evidence. Should you be taken into custody, the police can conduct a full
search of you, as well as the immediate area around you in case you hid something when the
police arrived. At the police station or the jail, you may be strip-searched if there is a possibility
that you may be concealing drugs, contraband, or evidence on your body. Absent extenuating
circumstances, a police officer of your own sex must do the search.
When You Are in a Car, Truck, or Motor Home
If the police have probable cause to believe that contraband or evidence of a crime is in
your car, truck, SUV, motor home, or other vehicle, a search warrant usually is not required.
Why not? Because you could easily flee the scene before the police could get back with a warrant.
Of course, a police officer can’t single your car out for no reason and search it. There
must be sufficient justification to conduct the search in the first place, or it is illegal.
Texas law makes it a misdemeanor—punishable only by a fine—either for a front-seat passenger
in a car equipped with safety belts not to wear one or for the driver to fail to secure any
small child riding in front. A woman was driving her truck with her small children in the front
seat. None of them was wearing a seat belt. A police officer pulled the woman over, verbally
berated her, handcuffed her, placed her in his squad car, and drove her back to the police station,
where she was made to remove her shoes, jewelry, and eyeglasses, and empty her pockets.
Officers took her mug shot and placed her alone in a jail cell for about an hour, when she was
taken before a magistrate and released on bond. She pleaded no contest to the seat-belt misdemeanors
and paid a $50 fine. The U.S. Supreme Court held that the fourth amendment
guarantees against unreasonable search and seizure, and does not forbid a warrantless arrest for
a criminal offense, such as a misdemeanor seat-belt violation punishable only by a fine.
Suppose that plainclothes policemen are patrolling a high drug area in an unmarked vehicle
and observe a truck waiting at a stop sign for an unusually long time. When the police car
makes a U-turn in order to head back toward the truck, the truck suddenly turns to its right
without signaling, and speeds off at an “unreasonable” speed. The police officers follow it, and
shortly catch up to the truck when it stops behind other traffic at a red light. The policemen
pull alongside; one officer gets out and approaches the truck driver’s door, identifies himself as
Crimes and Criminal Justice 561