Commonwealth v. Alexander, K., Aplt. – No. 30 EAP 2019
Commonwealth v. Alexander marks a significant change in the law regarding the automobile exception to the general warrant requirement.
The case is an interesting read through the history of the vehicle exception and the difference between the 4th Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article 1 Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution. For a history lesson, you should read the case as it is an interesting read, but for purposes of today’s podcast, I am going to cut to the chase. This case stands for the proposition that Article 1 Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution carries with it greater protections that the 4th Amendment and specifically overturns the prior plurality opinion of Commonwealth v. Gary and returns to the limited automobile exception, pursuant to which warrantless vehicle searches require both probable cause and exigent circumstances; one without the other is insufficient. The dual requirement of probable cause and exigency is an established part of the State Constitutional jurisprudence.
The court states that police officers are eminently capable as trained professionals of making the basic assessment of whether it is reasonably practicable for them to seek a warrant, under all of the circumstances existing at the time they wish to search an automobile. The basic formulation of exigencies recognizes that in some circumstances the exigencies of the situation make the needs of law enforcement so compelling that the warrantless search is objectively reasonable. That inquiry however is not amenable to a per se rule and requires a consideration of the totality of the circumstances.
Going forward, obtaining a warrant is the default rule. If an officer proceeds to conduct a warrantless search, a reviewing court will be required to determine whether exigent circumstances existed to justify the officers’ judgment that obtaining a warrant was not reasonably practicable. That the universe of qualifying exigent circumstances is impossible to define with precision does not justify adopting the federal automobile exception any more than the inability to supply an objective definition of whether an expectation of privacy is reasonable justifies jettisoning the fourth amendment. Courts will have to decide whether exigent circumstances justified warrantless searches in discrete scenarios, with a focus on the particular facts. The bottom line of the case is this: The court does not care if this makes the job of police more difficult. They trust officers are trained sufficiently to determine whether their circumstances justify a warrantless search. The court declines to delineate a bright line rule of what constitutes “exigent circumstances” and finds that it will be the burden of the courts to establish this on a case-by-case basis.
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