The “Automobile Exception” - An Expanded History of Transportation

"From the Classroom"  - Ray Hill, Professor Emeritus, Santa Rosa Junior College

Ray Hill is a retired Police Lieutenant and Professor Emeritus at Santa Rosa Junior College. He has taught in the POST Basic Academy and Advanced Officer Training for 45 years.

The “Automobile Exception” - An Expanded History of Transportation

   My first car was a 1957 Chevy, V8, 4-barrel, stick shift. Wish I had the foresight back then to have stored it and saved it for today! I never thought back then when a police officer or deputy could search my car. But searching cars has a century of case law roots.

   In 1921, George Carroll was driving his Oldsmobile Roadster on a highway outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan. He was stopped by Federal Prohibition Agents based upon surveillance and information that Carroll was involved in “illegal bootlegging” A warrantless search of his vehicle was conducted. Behind the upholstery of the seats (the filling had been removed to facilitate concealment) were “68 quarts of bonded whiskey and gin” in violation of federal law.

   Carroll’s argument in support of suppressing this evidence - “Where was the Search Warrant”? Earlier federal statutes permitted a tax collector or naval officer to board a vessel to inspect for goods subject to tax (1789) and an agent or military post commander to search a boat, wagon, buggy, or sled to limit the import of liquor onto an Indian reservation (1834), but what about these new fangled contraptions called cars?

Note: America’s first gasoline car, the Duryea Motor Wagon, was manufactured by the Duryea Bros. of Springfield, Mass in 1893.

   Being that there was no established Fourth Amendment precedent for cars, this case finally made its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court (Carroll v. U.S., (1925) 267 U.S. 132). The court ruled “the exception to the warrant requirement for moving vehicles recognizes a ....

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