Searches of Vehicles and Occupants Based on the Odor of Marijuana

May an officer search a motor vehicle based on the officer’s detection of the odor of marijuana coming from the vehicle? May the officer search the occupants of the vehicle? Several recent cases address these questions. The odor of marijuana provides probable cause to search the vehicle. We have known this for some time. State v. Greenwood, 301 N.C. 705 (1981); State v. Smith, 192 N.C. App. 690 (2008) (“When an officer detects the odor of marijuana emanating from a vehicle, probable cause exists for a warrantless search of the vehicle for marijuana.”). The principle was recently reaffirmed in State v. Armstrong, 236 N.C. App. 130 (2014) (“[O]fficers had probable cause to search [a vehicle] based upon the odor of marijuana emanating from the vehicle.”). What about the trunk? The North Carolina cases closest to the mark suggest that a search based on the odor of marijuana may extend to the trunk. State v. Cash, 89 N.C. App. 563 (1988) (ruling briefly that a search based on the “odor of marijuana” properly extended to the search of “plastic garbage bags found in the trunk of the car” because marijuana could be located in the trunk). Cf. State v. Mitchell, 224 N.C. App. 171 (2012) (holding that the fact that a passenger in a vehicle had marijuana on her person provided probable cause to search the trunk, but expressing this ruling in a way that arguably supports the idea that the odor of marijuana alone would also support a search of the [...]