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In recent decades, many state legislatures have enacted laws creating a preference for the issuance of citations or summonses or tickets for many misdemeanor offenses in lieu of custodial arrests. This approach reduces police processing time, frees up jail resources, and makes life a bit easier for a lot of minor criminals. Some state laws require a citation ramer than an arrest of certain misdemeanants while others allow the officer discretion in choosing to issue a summons or make a custodial arrest.
A big question that has arisen from the development of these procedural laws is whether a police officer may conduct a warrantless search of the person incident to the issuance of a citation, especially where the crime involved is an arrestable offense. That is, may the officer conduct a search incident to citation where otherwise he could conduct a search incident to arrest? There is strong authority suggesting that in some instances, at least, such a search would be reasonable, notwithstanding a powerful mythology flowing from the VS. Supreme Court decision in Knowles v. Iowa, 525 U.S. 113 (1998).
Knowles v. Iowa
Knowles is the only U.S. Supreme Court case that addresses the "search incident to citation" issue. In Knowles, a police officer issued a driver a citation for speeding and then conducted a search of the driver's car incident to citation (without probable cause or consent) in which he located marijuana. The officer conducted this search under the purported authority of Iowa state law, which had beai interpreted by Iowa courts to allow searches of vehicles and persons incident to the issuance of a citation.
Knowles contended that such a search was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment, regardless of what Iowa law authorized. The state of Iowa argued, among other things, that a search incident to citation is justified under the bright-line search incident to custodial arrest rule and they asked the U.S. Supreme Court to extend that bright line rule to citation situations. The Court unanimously refused to do so, which resulted in a widespread myth that the Court had rejected all search incident to citation.
It is extremely significant that Knowles involved the issuance of a citation for a traffic violation and not for a criminal offense. In discussing the...