FindLaw > Criminal Law Summaries > Arkansas v. Sullivan

Fourth Amendment – Pretextual Arrests

Case: Arkansas v. Sullivan

Issue: If an officer with probable cause to arrest a motorist for traffic law violations makes the arrest and discovers drugs during a resulting inventory search, can the arrest and search be invalidated because the arrest was merely a pretext to search the motorist’s car for drugs?

Facts: Conway, Arkansas policeman Joe Taylor stopped Kenneth Sullivan for speeding and having an improperly tinted window. Upon seeing Sullivan’s license, Taylor remembered that he had “narcotics intelligence” on Sullivan. Taylor also noticed a roofing hatchet on the floorboard of Sullivan’s car. Sullivan was arrested for speeding, driving without registration and insurance documents, unlawfully carrying a weapon (the roofing hatchet) and improper window tinting. Upon conducting an on-site inventory search, Taylor found methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia under the vehicle’s armrest. Sullivan was charged with various state law drug-related offenses, unlawful possession of a weapon and speeding. He moved to suppress the evidence seized from his vehicle on the ground that his arrest was a “pretext and sham” to search his vehicle and therefore violated the Fourth Amendment. The trial court agreed and granted Sullivan’s suppression motion. The Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed, rejecting the State’s contention that the case was controlled by Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996), in which the United States Supreme Court held that “[s]ubjective intentions play no role in ordinary, probable-cause Fourth Amendment analysis.” The Arkansas Supreme Court thought that much of Whren was dicta. Even if Whren covered Sullivan’s fact pattern, the Arkansas Supreme Court noted that Arkansas courts were free to interpret the Fourth Amendment in a more expansive fashion than the United States Supreme Court.

Holding: “Because the Arkansas Supreme Court’s decision . . . is flatly contrary to this Court’s controlling precedent, we grant the State’s petition for a writ of certiorari and reverse.”

Reasoning: In a per curiam opinion, the Court noted that this matter was squarely controlled by Whren. Whren involved an allegedly pretextual traffic stop which led to a plain view sighting of drugs. The distinction between the traffic stop in Whren and the custodial arrest here was unimportant, as Whren itself relied on United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218 (1973), a case involving a traffic-violation arrest. The actual subjective motivations of an officer are irrelevant if probable cause is present. Moreover, the notion that Arkansas can interpret the United States Constitution more broadly than the United States Supreme Court was foreclosed in Oregon v. Haas, 420 U.S. 714 (1975), though Arkansas can certainly interpret its state constitution in this fashion.

Comment: In an unpublished and “double secret” portion of its opinion, sent only to Arkansas, the Supreme Court ordered all Arkansas judges to take several hundred hours of remedial continuing legal education courses in federal constitutional law.