The Court paid much consideration to two previous Supreme Court cases that involved authorities conducting a warrantless search of a vehicle in order to examine the contents of a container inside of the vehicle: "United States v. Chadwick", 433 U.S. 1 (1977) and "Arkansas v. Sanders", 442 U.S. 753 (1979). In those cases the authorities had first observed containers suspected of containing marijuana outside of a vehicle, where a warrant would be required to search them, and had waited until they were carried into a vehicle, at which point officers took advantage of the "automobile exception" to search the containers inside the vehicle. In those cases, the court found that those searches were unconstitutional because the police did not have probable cause to search the vehicles, but rather just the suspect containers which had been placed inside, and they did not have the warrant required to search the containers. Since the police had probable cause to suspect the containers before they came near an automobile, the relationship between the containers and the vehicles were purely coincidental. Since the police did not have probable cause to search the vehicle, they could not take advantage of the "automobile exception" to perform a warrantless search of the containers. From "Arkansas v. Sanders":