WASHINGTON - April 21, 2009 - A divided U.S. Supreme Court limited police powers, ruling that officers violated the Constitution when they searched the car of an Arizona man who had already been handcuffed and put in a patrol car.

Voting 5-4, the justices today overturned Rodney Gant’s three-year prison sentence for possessing the cocaine officers found in his car. The majority said police needed a warrant because Gant had already parked the car and walked away from it when police arrested him for driving with a suspended license.

Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens said the search didn’t fall within an exception to the warrant requirement the court has carved out for searches that take place at the time of arrest. Stevens said that exception existed to ensure an arrested person didn’t grab a weapon or destroy evidence.

“Police could not reasonably have believed either that Gant could have accessed his car at the time of the search or that evidence of the offense for which he was arrested might have been found therein,” Stevens wrote.

The case split the court into an unusual alignment, with Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, David Souter, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg joining Stevens.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito dissented.

Alito wrote that the majority effectively overturned two high court precedents. He said the ruling “will cause the suppression of evidence gathered in many searches carried out in good-faith reliance on well-settled case law.”

The case is Arizona v. Gant, 07-542.