Michigan Supreme Court rules police can't search passengers during stops without consent
The Michigan Supreme Court ruled that police officers do not have the authority to search passengers of a vehicle without consent.
The ruling stems from May 2014 case involving a passenger named Larry Mead, who was arrested shortly after what he claimed to be an unlawful search of his backpack by Jackson County police around the time, The Detroit News Times reports.
According to the court’s 16-page opinion, Mead had been riding as a passenger in the car of Rachel Taylor, a woman he had met earlier that day, when the vehicle had been stopped by Jackson Police Officer Richard Burkart due to the car’s expired plate.
“As he approached the car to ask for Taylor’s license and registration, Burkart observed the defendant, Larry Gerald Mead, in the passenger seat, clutching a black backpack on his lap,” the court wrote in its opinion last week.
The officer then asked Mead to exit the car and proceeded to ask Taylor how she knew the man and whether he could have consent to search her vehicle. During his search of the car, the officer found Mead’s backpack to have contained a digital scale, prescription pills, and almost 10 grams of marijuana and methamphetamine.
Mead was convicted soon after and sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. During his trial, a court ruled against his motion to “suppress the evidence of methamphetamine in his backpack as the fruit of an illegal search.”
But the Michigan Supreme court said in a ruling that Mead had “legitimate expectation” of privacy regarding his backpack and that Mead, who has served roughly three years in prison so far, had a challenge the search of his backpack on the grounds of the Fourth Amendment.
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/441439-michigan-supreme-court-rules-police-cant-search-passengers-during
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