SUPREME COURT TO RULE ON POLICE SEARCH-SEIZURE

WASHINGTON -- Taking on a police search and seizure case, the Supreme Court
said Monday it will decide whether officers can keep people from going into
their homes alone while police get a search warrant.

Illinois prosecutors say police needed to keep a man from destroying
marijuana, but the man says officers violated the Constitution's Fourth
Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.

The justices will hear arguments in the case this fall, and a decision is
expected next year.

"Police should not be able to detain you and keep you from re-entering your
own home," attorney Deanne F. Jones, representing Charles McArthur of
Sullivan, Ill., said in a telephone interview Monday.

However, assistant Illinois attorney general Colleen Griffin said, "There
was probable cause to believe he had this contraband in his house."
Therefore, she added, police were justified in saying that no one could
re-enter the home for the period of time necessary to secure the warrant.

The dispute began in April 1997 when two Sullivan police officers
accompanied Tera McArthur to retrieve her belongings from a trailer home
she shared with McArthur, her husband. When she came outside, she told
police he had marijuana under the couch.

An officer knocked on the door, and McArthur came outside, denied he had
drugs and told police they could not search without a warrant. During the
two hours it took to get a warrant, police did not let McArthur re-enter
his home except for a few times when an officer accompanied him and stood
inside the door.

When an officer returned with a warrant, police said they conducted a
search and found marijuana and drug paraphernalia. McArthur was charged
with possessing less than 2.5 grams of marijuana and possessing drug
paraphernalia.

McArthur conceded that if he had been allowed to go inside his home alone
he would have destroyed the marijuana. But he asked a state trial judge to
bar use of the marijuana as evidence, contending the officer violated his
Fourth Amendment rights. The trial judge ruled the drugs could not be used
as evidence, and an Illinois appeals court agreed. The drug charge was a
misdemeanor.

"At the heart of this issue is the preservation of evidence," the appeals
court said.

However, the court said the officers essentially evicted McArthur from his
home, adding that no special circumstances justified the officer's entering
the trailer with McArthur.

The appellate judges said McArthur's case was not similar to others in
which police were allowed to keep someone outside while seeking a warrant.
In those cases, the person was under arrest or subject to arrest on
arrival, or the person consented to stay outside, the court said.