A good chuckle.

One of the reasons the government offers in its brief for allowing the police to search and seize a car after an arrest is that, were the court to not allow them to do this, there would be the danger that "if the arrestee appeared to get out of the car voluntarily, the arrestee nevertheless [might have done] so to avoid the application of Belton []."

If people had this nuanced understanding of con law, the government's conviction rate would decrease by at least 25%. Anyone who has worked around criminal defendants can recount dozens (or hundreds depending upon the number of years in the field) of examples where clients consent to searches, give incriminating statements, allow the police to enter their house 'just to talk' (which allows the police to both elicit incriminating statements as well as conduct a 'plain view' search of the suspect's home). In fact, I doubt many non-criminal defense lawyers know the holding in New York v. Belton.

It is pretty funny to think that many people likely buy into such reasoning.