Everybody Out: The Supreme Court Grants Police the Authority to Automatically Order Passengers Out of Lawfully Stopped Vehicles in Maryland v. Wilson
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Authors
Humphrey, James M. IV
Issue Date
1998
Volume
31
Issue
Type
Journal Article
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Abstract
INTRODUCTION|In Pennsylvania v. Mimms, the United States Supreme Court held that a police officer may order the driver of a lawfully stopped vehicle to exit the vehicle without violating the reasonableness requirement of the Fourth Amendment. In reaching its holding, the Supreme Court in Mimms found that legitimate concerns for officer safety outweighed the additional "de minimis" intrusion on the driver's personal liberty caused by the order to exit the car. While the Court in Mimms held that a driver may be ordered out of a lawfully stopped vehicle, the Court did not address the question of whether passengers may also be ordered to exit the vehicle. As a result, lower courts reached conflicting conclusions. The majority of lower courts considering the issue concluded that the holding of Mimms applied to passengers as well as to drivers.|Recently, in Maryland v. Wilson, the United States Supreme Court approved the result reached by the majority of jurisdictions by holding that a police officer may also order passengers to exit a lawfully stopped vehicle without running afoul of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures. The Supreme Court stated that regardless of whether the occupant of a stopped vehicle is a driver or a passenger, "the same weighty interest in officer safety is present." In addition, the Court reasoned that danger to an officer is likely to increase when there is more than one occupant in a stopped vehicle. The Court also found the additional intrusion on a passenger in being ordered out of a car to be minimal. Accordingly, the Court held that the rule of Pennsylvania v. Mimms applies to passengers as well as to drivers...
Description
Citation
31 Creighton L. Rev. 997 (1997-1998)
Publisher
Creighton University School of Law