Often, yes. The Northern Territory gives police broad powers to search without a warrant, and in practice a great many searches happen with no warrant at all.
But those powers all have conditions attached, and whether the conditions were met on the day is a real question, one that is worth asking after the search rather than arguing about during it.
The general position
The ordinary route is a search warrant, issued by a justice of the peace on sworn information. A warrant sets out what can be searched and what can be looked for.
The exceptions are wide enough that the ordinary route is not the usual one.
When police can search without a warrant
Urgency. Police can search a person, or enter and search land, premises or a vehicle, where they hold the necessary reasonable belief and the situation will not wait for a warrant. Anything they reasonably believe is connected with an offence, or poses a safety risk, can be seized.
Weapons. Police can search a person or a vehicle without a warrant where they reasonably believe a weapon is being carried and seize what they find.
Drugs. Under the Police Administration Act police can search on the lower threshold of reasonable suspicion where dangerous drugs are involved. This is the power behind most roadside vehicle searches in the Territory.
Drug premises orders. Where premises have been declared drug premises under the Misuse of Drugs Act, police can enter and search without a warrant, and search people found there.
Arrest and custody. Police can enter to make an arrest, and there are separate powers relating to people apprehended for intoxication, including entry onto private property.
Property forfeiture. Under the Criminal Property Forfeiture Act, police can stop and detain a person, and stop and detain a vehicle, where they reasonably suspect the person is carrying property liable to forfeiture or documents that would help trace it.
Where these cases are won and lost
Almost always on reasonable suspicion or reasonable belief.
Those are not empty words. The officer has to have had something, specific facts known to them at the time, pointing to what they suspected. A hunch is not enough. Nor is the area you were in, the car you drive, or what you look like.
So the questions we ask are always the same. What did the officer say the grounds were? What was said before the search started? Were those grounds recorded anywhere at the time, or did they appear later in a statement? Did the search stay within what the power allows?
Consent
Police can ask for your consent to search. You are not required to give it.
If you do consent, you generally cannot argue later that the search was unlawful. You have removed the question. This is the most common way a good argument is thrown away before a lawyer is anywhere near the case.
You can say no. Saying no is not an offence and it is not evidence of anything. If police then search anyway on a power they hold, the lawfulness of that search remains open for us to examine.
What to do during a search
- Do not physically resist or obstruct. Both are separate offences and both hand the prosecution something it did not have.
- Ask what the power is. Politely: "What are you searching under?" Then remember the answer or write it down as soon as you can.
- Say clearly that you do not consent, if you do not. Say it once. Do not repeat it or argue.
- Do not answer questions. The right to silence applies during a search exactly as it does anywhere else.
- Write it down afterwards. Time, place, officers present, what was said, what was taken, whether a receipt was given. Do it the same day. Your memory of the sequence will not survive the week.
If the search was unlawful
Evidence obtained unlawfully or improperly is not automatically thrown out in the Territory. The court weighs the desirability of admitting it against the undesirability of the way it was obtained.
That balancing exercise is fact-heavy, and it is where a search that was done on thin grounds, or that went further than the power permitted, can decide a case. It also gets harder to run the longer you wait, because the material we need (body-worn footage, running sheets, the record of what was said) does not keep forever.