The Crittenden Automotive Library

RUM IN AUTOMOBILES.

Publication: The New York Times
Date: 26 December 1923

Two Philadelphia judges have decided that a policeman, without a search warrant, may legally stop, search and seize on the highway a motor truck carrying liquor. At 1:30 A. M. three detectives “ held up ” such a truck and asked what was in it. One of the occupants said, “ I've got beer.” Whereupon they searched and found sixty gallons of preter-Volsteadian beer. Any peace officer can stop an automobile. At that hour of the morning a motor truck is a just object of suspicion. It is hard for the layman to see why this wasn't a clear case under the provision of the Volstead act making it the duty of any officer of the law, discovering any person transporting liquor in violation of it, in “ any automobile,” to seize the liquor.

This was a clear case of discovery, resting on a voluntary confession. Liquor in one's own dwelling house for the use of one's self, family and guests is its only lawful possession for beverage purposes. But the defendants in this Philadelphia case stood on their supposed Constitutional rights. The court held that the reasonableness of a search depends upon the circumstances, not the presence or absence of a warrant. “ The search of an automobile without a warrant is not unreasonable within the meaning of the Constitution, although a similar search of a stationary or permanent habitation might under otherwise identical circumstances be.” As hundreds of thousands of people some of the time, and most Californians all of the time, have a stationary or permanent wheel habitation or car house, this distinction is important.

Without following in detail the reasoning of the Court, concluding that the right to stop and search an automobile for rum is no different from that to stop and search it for opium, a bandit or an infernal machine, or dwelling on the point that the officers are merely supressing a crime then in perpetration, we pass to what seems the nub of the decision. The nature of the use of automobiles makes search warrants impossible “ in the detection of crime by their means”; and so “ the absence of such warrants can scarcely be said to be ' unreasonable',” Then comes the most curious part of the decision:

Since the operation of automobiles must be licensed by the State, the constitutional provision does not apply to them in the same manner and to the same degree as in the case of one's person, dwelling house, place of business or the like.

Irrespective of the fact that automobiles are in many cases dwelling houses and in some cases places of business, how can any State statute abridge the constitutional rights of automobilists or anybody else?