The Fourth Amendment proscribes unreasonable searches and seizures, but it permits a warrantless search to which the suspect consents. “When conducting a warrantless search of a vehicle based on consent, officers have no more authority to search than it appears was given by the consent.” Thus, it is “important to take account of any express or implied limitations or qualifications attending that consent which establish the permissible scope of the search in terms of such matters as time, duration, area, or intensity.” The Supreme Court's standard, under Florida v. Jimeno, is “that of ‘objective’ reasonableness—what would the typical reasonable person have understood by the exchange between the officer and the suspect?”

The government's argument rests on faulty understandings of both law and fact. True, if Cotton properly limited his consent to a search of his luggage, that consent would permit Viator to enter the car and search those items. It is also true that if, during such a limited entry into the vehicle, Viator were to discover evidence of a hidden compartment, that discovery might provide probable cause to search the suspected compartment. The video evidence and Viator's own testimony, however, reveal that he discovered the loose screws and tool markings on the driver's-side rear door panel not as he was trying to locate Cotton's luggage and not as he was examining the contents of such luggage. Rather, after locating and searching the luggage in the backseat area of the car, Viator expanded his search for evidence of contraband to the vehicle itself by proceeding to examine, inter alia, the driver's-side rear door. Authority to enter and search the car for Cotton's luggage was not authority to search discrete locations within the car where luggage could not reasonably be expected to be found. Neither was it justification for lingering in and around the vehicle for 40 minutes—much longer than a search for and of Cotton's luggage should or could conceivably last.

Read full case here: United States v. Cotton, 722 F.3d 271  (5th Cir. 2013), https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-cotton-13/

Anton Vialtsin, Esq.
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