UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 07-4149
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
ROBERT MEGGINSON,
Defendant - Appellant.
On Remand from the Supreme Court of the United States.
(S. Ct. No. 07-6309)
Submitted: July 29, 2009 Decided: August 12, 2009
Before TRAXLER, Chief Judge, and NIEMEYER and GREGORY, Circuit
Judges.
Vacated and remanded by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Aaron E. Michel, Charlotte, North Carolina, for Appellant.
Gretchen C.F. Shappert, United States Attorney, Charlotte, North
Carolina; Amy E. Ray, Assistant United States Attorney,
Asheville, North Carolina, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Robert Megginson entered a conditional plea of guilty
to possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, in violation of
18 U.S.C. § 922(g) (2006), reserving the right to challenge the
district court’s denial of his motion to suppress. Megginson
was sentenced to 110 months in prison. On appeal, we affirmed
the district court’s denial of Megginson’s motion to suppress
and his conviction, because the prevailing law permitted an
officer who had made a lawful custodial arrest of an occupant of
a vehicle to search the passenger compartment of that vehicle.
See New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454 (1981); Thornton v. United
States, 541 U.S. 615 (2004). On May 18, 2009, the Supreme Court
granted Megginson’s petition for a writ of certiorari, vacated
this court’s judgment, and remanded to this court for further
consideration in light of its recent decision in Arizona v.
Gant, 129 S. Ct. 1710 (2009), which addressed the search-
incident-to-arrest exception to the warrant requirement of the
Fourth Amendment. Finding that the vehicle search incident to
Megginson’s arrest was unreasonable under Gant, we vacate the
district court’s judgment and remand for further proceedings.
In Gant, the Supreme Court rejected the reading of
Belton that predominated in the courts of appeals, that the
Fourth Amendment “allow[s] a vehicle search incident to arrest
of a recent occupant even if there is no possibility the
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arrestee could gain access to the vehicle at the time of the
search.” Gant, 129 S. Ct. at 1718. The Court held instead that
“[p]olice may search a vehicle incident to a recent occupant’s
arrest only if the arrestee is within reaching distance of the
passenger compartment at the time of the search or it is
reasonable to believe the vehicle contains evidence of the
offense of arrest.” Id. at 1723. The Court further explained
that “[w]hen these justifications are absent, a search of an
arrestee’s vehicle will be unreasonable unless police obtain a
warrant or show that another exception to the warrant
requirement applies.” Id. at 1723-24.
In light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Gant, the
facts of this case do not justify the warrantless search of
Megginson’s car incident to his arrest. Therefore, the firearm
seized from the vehicle should be suppressed. Megginson
acknowledged to Officer Crooks that he was aware of the warrants
against him. Megginson was cooperative, and was not engaged in
other criminal behavior at the time of the stop. Crooks asked
Megginson to step out of the car, he complied, she handcuffed
him, searched his person, and then placed him in the back of the
patrol car. After Megginson was removed from the car and
secured, Crooks and another officer found and searched a bag in
the back seat of Megginson’s car. When asked at the suppression
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hearing the basis for the search, Officer Crooks responded “for
officer’s safety reasons and search incident to arrest.”
Because Megginson was handcuffed and placed in the
police vehicle before the search, he was not in reaching
distance of the passenger compartment, and the contents of the
bag could not have posed a threat to the officers’ safety. Nor
did the officers have reason to believe that the vehicle
contained evidence of the offense of the domestic abuse for
which Megginson was stopped. Accordingly, under Gant, the
search incident to arrest was not justified, and the officers
were required to obtain a warrant or show that another exception
to the warrant requirement applies. No exception validates the
search of Megginson’s vehicle.
Accordingly, we vacate the judgment of the district
court and remand for further proceedings. We dispense with oral
argument because the facts and legal contentions are adequately
presented in the materials before the court and argument would
not aid the decisional process.
VACATED AND
REMANDED
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