Legal Question in Criminal Law in Wisconsin

Re: Was the search legal

Sometimes yes, sometimes no - depending on the circumstances. A law-enforcement officer is free to search a vehicle interior for purposes of insuring his or her personal security, but the search has to be directly incident to the person's arrest. I had a case in Racine County last year where I was able to get the case dismissed on a motion to suppress a bunch of drugs in the car's trunk because, after my client and the other defendant exited the car and had been standing away to the side for a while already, the officer decided to open the trunk and look inside without first obtaining permission. At the hearing, the officer said he did that "because [he] could." Well, he obviously didn't know how far his authority extended to search the vehicle. The judge suppressed the evidence (and there was a lot of it), and the prosecutor was forced to move to dismiss the case. The case caption is State of Wisconsin vs. Ervie L. Hankins, Racine County Case Number 2006CF001014. I think I would have won the case anyway because my client was completely innocent and had no knowledge that all those drugs were in the trunk of that car!