“Reasonable Belief” to Support Gant-Based Search Incident to Lawful Arrest Is Lower Standard than Probable Cause

US v. Turner: Turner was the suspect in the theft of a firearm from his brother and a state warrant for his arrest was issued. The next night, a person alleged that Turner carjacked them using a gun that matched the description of the one stolen from Turner’s brother. Before an additional arrest warrant could be obtained, police responded to a shots fired call at a local convenience store. The officer who had obtained the arrest warrant approached Turner, who was sitting in his car, and arrested him. When that officer went back to the car after securing Turner in his cruiser, another officer was searching the car and found the stolen firearm.

Charged with possession of the firearm (as a felon and because it was stolen), Turner moved to suppress it as the product of an unlawful search of the car. The district court denied the motion, concluding that under Arizona v. Gant the search was proper incident to a lawful arrest because it was reasonable to believe that the car contained evidence of the crime of arrest – namely, the theft of the firearm. Turner entered a conditional guilty plea and was sentenced to 57 months in prison.

On appeal, the Fourth Circuit affirmed Turner’s conviction, although it did vacate his sentence. The court rejected Turner’s argument that the district court erred in concluding that the search-incident-to-a-lawful-arrest doctrine applied. Evaluating Gant, the court concluded that the “reasonable belief” the Supreme Court said is required to search a vehicle after an arrest is a lower standard than probable cause. To hold otherwise would essentially gut Gant (since probable cause allows a search pursuant to the automobile exception anyway). The court did not specify whether “reasonable belief” is the same as “reasonable suspicion” because here the difference did not matter as there was a clear link between the offense of arrest (theft of the firearm) and evidence that might be found in the car where Turner was when he was arrested. As to the sentence, the court agreed with the parties that a prior conviction had been improperly included in the criminal history category and required vacation of the sentence, even applying plain error review.