holding trunk search was for general exploration, not for detaining prisoner or preventing escape
How later courts described this case
- holding trunk search was for general exploration, not for detaining prisoner or preventing escape
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
CATES, Judge
(concurring).
By way of dictum I should like to add the following observation:
Again we must deprive society of the fruit- of a search because of the mode of picking. Yet a reading of Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25 , 69 S.Ct. 1359 , 93 L.Ed. 1782 , shows that the States were amply forewarned of the probability of Mapp v. Ohio,. 367 U.S. 643 , 81 S.Ct. 1684 , 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 .
I-Iad the defendant persisted at the trunk ■of the car, there would have been an exposure such as we found in Thompson v. State, 41 Ala.App. 353 , 132 So.2d 386 , to obviate the need of a search warrant.
It occurs to me that on the issue of probable cause under the Carroll rule, if a jury is withdrawn or if a pretrial motion to suppress is heard by the judge alone, it would be relevant for the State to show recent convictions for violating the liquor laws. Such evidence alone would not suffice but with some other relevant evidence that the defendant was then and there hauling contraband — not merely speeding —then the State could, prima facie, justify an emergency opening of an automobile trunk.
Thus viewed it strikes me that Mapp v. Ohio, supra, while it has not made the policeman’s life a happier one, still affords many avenues to get incriminating evidence without breaching the Constitution.