The People of the State of Colorado, Plaintiff-Appellant v. John Jacob McCarty, Defendant, Appellee

Summary

The court affirmed suppression of drugs found in the defendant's vehicle. It held that possession of a newly purchased, unused pipe did not establish probable cause to search the vehicle under the automobile exception, and that the search was not valid under the vehicle-search incident-to-arrest rule because the defendant could not access the vehicle and the circumstances did not support a reasonable belief that evidence of the arrest offense would be found there. The court also rejected a good-faith exception based on reliance on preexisting state precedent. Justice Eid, dissenting, would have applied the good-faith exception and upheld the search as reasonable because the defendant was arrested for a drug-related offense.