v. Knowels Iowa, 525 U.S. 113 (1998) 4th Amendment
Summation of Fact: The two parties involved in this court case are Patrick Knowels and the state of Iowa. Knowels was suing the state of Iowa for violating his fourth amendment rights. The facts from this court case are that Knowels was going at 43 miles per hour in a 25 mile per hour zone. This caused him to be pulled over by a cop. According to Iowa State rules the officer here has a chance to either give the driver a speeding citation or arrest the driver for speeding. If an arrest is done the car is allowed to be searched. In this specific case the officer gave Knowels the ticket and then proceeded to search his car after he had already given him the ticket. While searching his car the officer found a "pot pipe" and marijuana. This of course violated the law in Iowa since he was in possession of a drug. Knowels however claimed that the search was a violation of his fourth amendment right since the officer did not have a warrant and the search was unreasonable. He took him to court and lost, appealed and lost again. The court said that because the officer has the option to either ticket him or arrest him he has the right to search the car even if he already handed him a ticket.
Legal Issues: The legal issue in question was if it was okay for the officer to search Knowels' car even though he had not arrested him. The reason that officers are allowed to search stopped cars is to make sure that the person they are arresting isn't hiding something they may harm them with. However, if the person is not being arrested is it still reasonable to search the stopped car or does it then violate the fourth amendment?
Court Decision: The court with sided Knowels in this case. They said that his fourth amendment rights were being violated when the officer searched his car and he therefore was not to be convicted. i) The decision in this court case was unanimous. All of the nine judges were present and all voted that Knowels was right when he said his rights were violated. The justices involved are: Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, O'Connor, Kennedy, Souter, Breyer, Ginsburg, and Stevens. ii) The majority opinion written by chief justice Rehnquist stated that it was unconstitutional for the officer to search Knowels' car after he had already given him a ticket. The reason that cops were allowed to search cars was to make sure that the person did not have anything that might hurt the cop if he tried to arrest him. However, in this specific case the officer had already given Knowels his ticket. He did have the option to either arrest him or give him the ticket and if he had chosen to arrest him instead of simply giving him a citation then he would have been allowed to search the car but that is not how the situation happened. When the officer handed Knowels his ticket the stop was over, searching the car was not going to bring up any more evidence that Knowels was speeding. That fact was already established so in the end the search was completely unreasonable. iii) Ideology had absolutely nothing to do with this court case since the decision was unanimous. iv) The precedent that can be looked at would be States v. Robinson but that was different because the person was arrested. So in a way this case was a whole new topic since it dealt with someone who was not arrested. This case has now set the precedent on how traffic stops are to be handled.