Pennsylvania Supreme Court rules police don't need warrants to search cars

Pennsylvania drivers once had a choice when faced with a police request to search their cars: Consent or make officers get a warrant.

But the state Supreme Court has ruled police in Pennsylvania no longer need warrants to search private vehicles if they suspect evidence of a crime inside.

The decision broadens the power of police to search cars without a judge first deciding whether they have a valid reason to do so. The practice was previously allowed only when officers could show the evidence might be destroyed or moved if they waited.

It also brings Pennsylvania into line with a majority of states that have adopted a federal exception to the Fourth Amendment's protection against warrantless searches when it comes to vehicles a legal doctrine that grew out of the Prohibition-era war on bootleggers.

Justice Seamus P. McCaffery, who wrote Tuesday's 4-2 majority opinion, said the change is needed to remedy decades of "fractured jurisprudence" that have left police and prosecutors with little guidance.

Pennsylvania courts had largely followed federal courts, allowing warrantless vehicle searches until 1995. That year the state Supreme Court reversed itself in a series of decisions that warrantless searches of cars were illegal if the officers had time to get a judge's approval.

"Accordingly, it remains difficult, if not impossible, for police officers in the field to determine how [the state Supreme Court] would rule in motor vehicle search-and-seizure cases, the circumstances of which are almost endlessly variable," wrote McCaffery, a former Philadelphia police officer.

Chief Justice Ronald D. Castile and Justice J. Michael Eakin joined McCaffery's opinion. Justice Thomas G. Saylor filed his own opinion, saying that although he had reservations, he joined McCaffery "for the sake of certainty and consistency."

In a strongly worded dissent joined by Justice Max Baer, Justice Debra McCloskey Todd said the majority "eviscerated the strong privacy protections" the state Constitution provides motorists and "heedlessly contravenes over 225 years of unyielding protection against unreasonable search and seizure which our people have enjoyed as their birthright."

The decision stems from a Philadelphia drug case in which Sheim Gary was stopped Jan. 15, 2010, by police who believed the tint of his sport utility vehicle's windows was too dark. The officers smelled marijuana coming from the vehicle and when the police asked, Gary admitted he had some weed.

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Pennsylvania Supreme Court rules police don't need warrants to search cars