Jacqueline D. Crowley, a partner in the law practice of Farkas & Crowley of West Palm Beach, Florida, discusses the question of whether a police officer has the right to search your vehicle during a stop, and the circumstances where you consent or they will force a search if they suspect another crime at the time.

Both attorneys, Adam Farkas and Jacqueline Crowley, have considerable experience and strong legal backgrounds. Together they serve their clients in both criminal defense and family law cases. As Jacqueline says, you are getting two lawyers for the price of one.

Transcript: 

By the nature of just being pulled over for a traffic stop, absolutely not. In order to have the right to search the vehicle, there would have to be something that gives them a reasonable suspicion of another type of crime. The most common that you hear of and see of is going to be the odor of marijuana. That’s an interesting topic being that marijuana is becoming more and more legal and marijuana cards. Then when you’re driving, if you’re using marijuana, that could still be the potential for a driving under the influence type of charge.

There has been some thought about how the legality of marijuana may change that. However, I’m using that as an example to show that, if you’re pulled over for any normal routine type of traffic stop and an officer claims to smell the odor of marijuana, he can use that as a basis to search your vehicle. There’s also situations where odors lead them to request a call out for a canine or a drug dog that can do a sniff.

That’s an interesting issue as well because sometimes you can be sitting waiting for some time for a police officer that has a drug dog to show up, so there’s different analysis of the law of how long is a reasonable amount of time that you should have to sit on the side of the road. There’s no clear-cut answer to that, but I’m just using it as an example to show that there has to be more than just the traffic stop before an officer can ask to search your car.

Now, I don’t want to give the impression that they can’t ask you to voluntarily consent to the search of the vehicle. They can. As a defense attorney, it would be my advice to refuse that. However, they are legally allowed to ask you, and if you consent to that search, then it’s fine. You voluntarily allowed them to consent, but a forced search would require reasonable suspicion of another type of crime having been committed.