Comments: New York v. Belton and Its Expansion of the Search Incident to Arrest Exception to the Fourth Amendment Warrant Requirement

This article analyzes the Supreme Court\u27s holding in New York v. Belton and the expansion this decision has occasioned over the search incident to arrest exception to the fourth amendment warrant requirement. The author begins by tracing the development of the exception through various court decisions over the years. Thereafter, Belton is examined in the context of prior Supreme Court decisions which had been viewed as the precedential authority when dealing with searches incident to arrests. The article concludes with a comparison between Belton\u27s holding pertaining to warrantless container searches and prior Supreme Court decisions addressing this subject area