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Even Though Probable Cause for a DWI Arrest Existed, the Arresting Officer Testified He Was Not Going to Arrest the Defendant Until He Found a Switchblade Knife During a Pat-Down Search—Therefore the Search Could Not Be Justified As a Search Incident to Arrest and the Switchblade Should Have Been Suppressed

The Court of Appeals, in a full-fledged opinion by Judge Smith, over a dissent, determined that a switch-blade found in a pat-down search of the defendant after a vehicle stop should have been suppressed. The way the defendant was driving and the officer’s observations of defendant after the stop provided probable cause for a DWI arrest.  However, at the suppression hearing, the arresting officer (Merino) testified that he was not going to arrest the defendant prior to the pat-down search and only arrested him because the knife was found.  The Court of Appeals held that the search, therefore, could not be a “search incident to arrest” and could not be otherwise justified:

It is not disputed that, before conducting the search, Merino could lawfully have arrested defendant for driving while intoxicated. And it is clear that the search was not unlawful solely because it preceded the arrest, since the two events were substantially contemporaneous (see Rawlings v Kentucky, 448 US 98, 111 [1980] [“Where the formal arrest followed quickly on the heels of the challenged search . . ., we do not believe it particularly important that the search preceded the arrest rather than vice versa”]; People Evans, 43 NY2d 160, 166 [1977] [“The fact that the search precedes the formal arrest is irrelevant as long as the search and arrest are nearly simultaneous so as to constitute one event”]). Nor is it decisive that the police chose to predicate the arrest on the possession of a weapon, rather than on driving while intoxicated (see Devenpeck v Alford, 543 US 146 [2004]). The problem is that, as Merino testified, but for the search there would have been no arrest at all.

Where that is true, to say that the search was incident to the arrest does not make sense. It is irrelevant that, because probable cause existed, there could have been an arrest without a search. A search must be incident to an actual arrest, not just to probable cause that might have led to an arrest, but did not … . People v Reid, 2014 NY Slip Op 08759, CtApp 12-16-14

 

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