Denver DUI lawyer / don't they need a warrant?

One of the most common misconceptions that I hear as a Denver DUI lawyer is that people think police officers need a warrant to search or arrest you. Having already talked about reasons the police can arrest you, I'm going to zero in a little bit more on warrants.

There are two types of warrants: a search warrant and an arrest warrant. In the case of a DUI or any other traffic offense, it is very unlikely that the lack of an arrest warrant will be a problem. You Denver DUI lawyer is very unlikely to contest that there was no arrest warrant. That's because a police officer can arrest someone if they have probable cause that a misdemeanor was committed in their presence, with or without a warrant. A DUI is a misdemeanor. If they establish through their roadside sobriety tests and observations that there was probable cause you were driving under the influence, the arrest is probably OK. Thus, you Denver DUI lawyer will be more likely to contest the lack of probable cause rather than lack of a warrant.

A search is more an issue where law enforcement decides to search your car. Sometimes, in looking for more probable cause to base an arrest on, the police will order a search of your car. Again, however, it is very unlikely that the lack of a warrant will be a problem. That's because of some very old, and very strange, reasoning from the Supreme Court. Law enforcement does not need a warrant where it would be hard to get one. Back during prohibition, the United States Supreme Court ruled that essentially every case with a car made it difficult to get a warrant. In those cases the police stopped suspected bootleggers. Because it would have taken several hours to drive and see a judge to get a search warrant, the court said the police did not need a warrant. That's because the cops would either have to let the bad guys drive away (and presumably dispose of the evidence) or arrest them.

Now this reasoning makes almost no sense. It is possible to get a warrant by phone, and many states have judges on duty all night long. So there is really no reason that it has to be hard to get a warrant to search somebody's car. Of course, with the Supreme Court going on 30 years of rolling back instead of extending rights for criminal defendants, it's unlikely this outdated rule will change. The upshot is the police essentially never need a warrant to search your car.