Can Police Search My Vehicle?

all right Michael wants to know if the police have to have probable cause to search your vehicle and the question is a little more complicated than that but when defense lawyers when we look at whether or not the police had permission or had the right to search your vehicle the first thing we ask is whether or not the stop was okay because sometimes the police stop people and they really don't have a reason to stop them they have to have what's called a reasonable articulable suspicion under the law to stop a car so they're looking for things like if you're speeding or if you fail to signal a turn or you're weaving all over the road or something like that maybe you don't have a valid license plate on your car anything like that will give them a reason to stop the car but once in a while the police will stop a car just because it looks suspicious or something and that's not enough reason under the law to stop a car and if they don't have enough reason under the law to stop the car then they don't even have the right to search your car and anything they find in the car it will be thrown out of evidence in your case will be dismissed so that's the first thing that our criminal defense lawyers look at if the police had reason to stop the car the next thing that we look at is whether or not they had what's called a reason to expand the scope of the stop what that means is any time a cop stops you let's say they stopped you for speeding all they have a right to do at that point in time is get your driver's license and your insurance information go back to their squad write your ticket for speeding and then they have to let you go unless they find additional evidence while there while they're just inquiring about why you were speeding and so forth to give them a reason to keep you around longer and continue to detain you any longer than is reasonable in order to just write a traffic ticket out so they have to have things that they can point to an additional reasonable articulable suspicion things like they're looking for the odor of marijuana or the odor of any other drugs maybe they're looking for parent paraphernalia that they can see in plain view from outside of your car maybe they can see a pipe laying on your seat or something like that if they see any of those sorts of things then they've got more of a reason to keep you around sometimes when people are traveling across states on heavy drug routes what they'll do is they'll separate the driver and passenger ask them about where they're going see if their stories match because then they'll interview person and then the other they want to see if their stories match how long they've been on the road if anything else looks suspicious like maybe it's an out-of-state vehicle sometimes that's something they use as suspicion I don't think that's good enough but that's something they'll point to rental cars they're looking for a lot large amounts of cash on people and things like that if they don't have a reasonable articulable suspicion to expand the scope of the stop then again they don't have a right to even try to keep you around to search your car and a lot of cases have been thrown out where officers try to keep someone around longer than they really can under the law so that's the next thing we look at is criminal defense lawyers after that if they have enough reasonable articulable suspicion because they're seeing other things like maybe they've got that odor of drugs or something in plain view or something then they have to have probable cause to search your vehicle or they have to have consent for you so rule number one is never consent to a vehicle search it can only hurt you it can't help you whatsoever if officers don't have probable cause but you consent anyway then the odds of the evidence remaining in against you and hurting you in your case is a lot higher so don't consent to a search of your vehicle they'll pressure you and if they unlawfully coerce your consent you can get it thrown out but the easiest way to go about it is not even to have to get to that point in an argument so do not consent to a search for your vehicle unless you absolutely have nothing to hide if they've got your consent and under some state laws you can still get your consent thrown out there's for example in Minnesota there's a case called state versus fort fo RT that says that an officer if they want to ask a passenger to search the passenger or the passengers belongings have to have permission from the passenger themselves and they have to have reason to believe that the passenger was engaged in some sort of criminal conduct why is that important well if the driver was speeding the driver is engaged in some sort of criminal conduct but what does that have to do with the passenger if they want to search the passenger the passenger is belonging under some state laws like in Minnesota they have to believe that the passenger actually committed a crime or they can't even ask that passenger for consent and whether that whether or not the passenger gives consent doesn't matter because the officer can't even go there so that's a defense in some states that will work but if it's a federal case those that defenses are not available but here in Minnesota for example if it's a state case that's another thing to look at recently what they're looking for sometimes it was like nervousness on the part of the driver or passenger anything that would indicate that those people are maybe under the influence of drugs narcotics things like that obviously anything else they see in plain view things they see like maybe scales again from plain view or anything mismatched stories as I talked about before the more and more they can put together like that or maybe they've got an informant tip the closer they're gonna get to having probable cause to keep you around a search but again don't consent because you'll give your lawyer more of a chance to beat your case if you do not consent recently we had a case here in Minnesota where I was able to get 429 grams of cocaine thrown out in a case in which my client was looking at a first-degree drug distribution charge and was going to do a significant amount of time in prison we did argue that state versus Ford applied the judge agreed and agreed and agreed that number one our client even if he consented should not have even had been asked that question because the police didn't have a reasonable articulable suspicion to believe that he was engaged in any criminal activity and therefore also they didn't have probable cause to search the vehicle and ultimately his duffel bag where they found all of that cocaine so those are the lessons for that every state's going to have some different laws but don't assume just because the officers come up to your window that they actually have probable cause or can search your vehicle you have a right not to consent to the search and you should not consent to the search if you have more questions my website as arrested at Minnesota calm that's arrested MN dot-com my name is Ryan pasilla and my phone number is six one two three three nine five eight four four

Channel: Ryan Pacyga Attorney

Views: 197,834

Keywords: Criminal, law;, vehicle;, search;, car;, truck;, probable, cause;, drugs;, consent;, warrant;, Ryan, Pacyga

Id: OdB6YawfGU8

Length: 6min 20sec (380 seconds)

Published: Thu May 27 2010