An Uncomfortable Truth: Arkansas’s Approach to Warrantless Vehicle Searches is Unconstitutional

For over seven decades, the United States Supreme Court has limited the scope of the Fourth Amendment’s automobile exception to permit only warrantless searches of vehicles and their containers. Against that precedent, the American Law Institute adopted Section 260.3 of the Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure in 1975. Section 260.3 permitted police officers to not only conduct warrantless searches of vehicles, but also vehicle occupants when the search of the vehicle failed to turn up evidence of a crime. As of 2019, only one state in the country maintains Section 260.3 as a rule or statute of criminal procedure. That state is Arkansas. Arkansas adopted Arkansas Rule of Criminal Procedure 14.1, governing warrantless vehicle searches, in 1976. Like Section 260.3, Rule 14.1 permits the warrantless search of a vehicle occupant—in addition to the vehicle itself. This Article argues that Rule 14.1 is unconstitutional for two independent reasons. First, Rule 14.1 deviates from clear Supreme Court precedent by broadly expanding the scope of the automobile exception to include the warrantless search of a vehicle occupant. Second, it permits the warrantless search of an individual’s person without a firm constitutional basis. Considering the Supreme Court precedent underlying the automobile exception alongside Rule 14.1’s remarkable history, this Article concludes that Rule 14.1—Arkansas’s expansive approach to warrantless vehicle searches—is unconstitutional and must be significantly amended.