UPDATES & ANALYSIS

Iowa Supreme Court rejects bid to abolish exception to Fourth Amendment warrant requirement

by Rox Laird | May 7, 2025

A law enforcement officer making a roadside stop is legally allowed to search a vehicle without a warrant under an “automobile exception” to the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures granted by the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and separately under the Iowa Constitution. That exception, recognized by the United States Supreme Court and retained by most states, is based on the reasoning that there is a lower expectation of privacy in a vehicle than in a home and that a vehicle’s inherent mobility provides the risk of flight.

The Iowa Supreme Court has recognized that exception for 45 years, and it declined to abandon it in a unanimous May 2 decision in State v. McClain written by Justice Thomas Waterman. Justice Matthew McDermott wrote a separate opinion concurring with the judgment, which was joined by Justice Dana Oxley.

Amadeus Demetrius McClain was a passenger in a vehicle stopped by the Iowa State Patrol in Buchanan County and searched after a trooper detected what he said was the scent of marijuana in the vehicle. McClain entered a conditional guilty plea in Buchanan County District Court to a charge of possession of marijuana with intent to deliver and appealed the trial court’s denial of his motion to suppress evidence from the search.

On appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court, McClain argued the State failed to establish that the state trooper had the necessary training to identify the odor of marijuana. And he argued that the Court should abandon the automobile exception under Article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution.

The State argued the Court lacked jurisdiction to hear McClain’s appeal from his conditional guilty plea because he raised new, unpreserved arguments on appeal that were not raised in district court.

Under Iowa Code section 814.6(3), “An appellate court shall have jurisdiction over only conditional guilty pleas that comply with this section and when the appellate adjudication of the reserved issue is in the interest of justice.” While the State did not object to McClain entering a conditional plea at the trial court stage, it argued McClain’s appeal is not in the interest of justice because McClain, in his appellate brief, relied on unpreserved arguments regarding the state trooper’s lack of training to detect the odor of marijuana.

The Court disagreed, noting that rejecting McClain’s appeal would deny him the benefit of the bargain he struck in the district court when entering a conditional plea.

“The very purpose of conditional pleas is to allow defendants the benefit of their bargain: the right to appeal a specific issue and withdraw the guilty plea if the ruling is reversed, avoiding the time and expense of a trial for both sides if the challenged ruling is affirmed,” Justice Waterman wrote. “The State contends McClain is raising new arguments on appeal with respect to the motion to suppress, but we conclude that those matters can be addressed under our normal rules of error preservation.”

The Court, however, agreed with the State that McClain failed to preserve the question of the state trooper’s ability to detect the odor of marijuana, and it therefore did not reach that issue.

McClain was also unsuccessful in persuading the Court to eliminate the automobile exception to the warrant requirement. He argued that with current electronic technology, law enforcement officers are able to use laptop computers and cell phones in their vehicles to quickly obtain a warrant, thus undermining the exigent circumstances justification for a warrantless search.

This was not the first time the Iowa Supreme Court has addressed this question and answered it in the same way. Since the Court first recognized the automobile exception under the Iowa Constitution in 1980, it has repeatedly relied on the exception to justify warrantless searches conducted by law enforcement during traffic stops, as recently as 2022, even in light of evolving technology for obtaining warrants remotely.

The inherent mobility of the vehicle as a rationale for the exception has not been undermined by electronic search warrants, the Court said in its May 2 decision. “If we required law enforcement to obtain a warrant before searching a vehicle, then traffic stops would be prolonged,” Justice Waterman wrote. “Why require an officer to accurately complete a warrant application while controlling the scene and ensuring the suspect does not flee or destroy evidence?”

Finally, the Court said stare decisis dictates continued adherence to its precedent without a compelling reason to change the law. “We do not believe the existence of electronic search warrants, by itself, constitutes a compelling reason to overrule forty-five years’ worth of precedent,” Justice Waterman wrote.

In his concurring opinion, Justice McDermott wrote that while he agreed that the automobile exception remains necessary in Iowa, “I have reservations about the way in which the majority embraces it, almost as a ‘now and forever’ exception, despite the ongoing erosion of its primary justification.”

He cited the Court’s 2017 decision in State v. Storm in which the Court declined to abandon the automobile exception while leaving open the possibility that in future cases technological advances could undermine the exception. “When that happens,” he wrote, “we should not hesitate to abolish the exception and return to what the state and federal constitutions mandate.”

Tags: Iowa Supreme Court 2024-25