HIGH COURT EXPANDS POLICE POWER TO DETAIN CITIZENS

WASHINGTON - Police who believe a drug suspect will destroy evidence if
left alone may hold him outside his home while they get a warrant, the
Supreme Court ruled yesterday.

In a second case exploring the balance between law enforcement and privacy
rights, the court heard the arguments of a man arrested after police
outside his house used a heat-measuring device to detect a
marijuana-growing operation inside.

In the first case, Charles McArthur and a Sullivan, Ill., officer had a
polite standoff outside his trailer four years ago, after police confronted
him with allegations from his estranged wife that he had marijuana hidden
under his couch.

For about two hours, McArthur refused to let the officer inside without a
warrant, and the officer refused to let McArthur go inside alone.

The justices voted 8-1 that the officer had acted appropriately.

Police "had probable cause to believe that a home contained contraband,
which was evidence of a crime," and every reason to think that McArthur
would destroy the stash if he got the chance, Justice Stephen J. Breyer
wrote for the majority.

Indeed, McArthur has admitted that is exactly what he would have done.

As it has in several recent cases, the court explored the same
privacy-rights vs. police-necessity issues in the heat-detector case.

Last November, the court ruled that police may not erect random roadblocks
to look for drug dealers because such checkpoints subject many innocent
motorists to scrutiny. In April, the court said authorities may not
randomly squeeze luggage on buses while hunting for drugs.

Danny Lee Kyllo claims police violated the Fourth Amendment's protections
against unreasonable searches when they used the heat detector to scan his
house from a distance.

Police did not have a search warrant, and the government argued that none
was needed. The heat sensor was not "like an X-ray machine" that would
allow authorities to see inside a house, Deputy Solicitor General Michael
Dreeben argued to the justices yesterday.

"We are not learning what activities are going on or where they are going
on in the house," Dreeben said.

Kyllo's attorney, Kenneth Lerner, argued that the heat scan was invasive
enough to violate his client's privacy.

"We may expect people to walk around with binoculars, but we don't expect
them to walk around with thermal imagers," Lerner said.

Narcotics detectives used the information from the heat scan, along with a
tip from an informant and electricity records, to get a warrant for Kyllo's
Florence, Ore., home.

When agents searched the house in January 1992, they found drug
paraphernalia and more than 100 marijuana plants. Kyllo was arrested.

A decision in his case is expected before the close of the court's current
term in June.

In the Illinois standoff case decided yesterday, the high court overturned
a state appeals court's ruling that the seizure had violated McArthur's
Fourth Amendment rights.

Justice John Paul Stevens was the lone dissent. He said the tiny amount of
drugs found in McArthur's home made the case a poor instrument for such an
important constitutional test.

Lower courts, Stevens wrote, "placed a higher value on the sanctity of the
ordinary citizen's home than on the prosecution of this petty offense."

Stevens argued the court should not have tried to decide the case at all,
but if pressed he would have upheld the Illinois courts.

"They correctly viewed that interest - whether the home be a humble
cottage, a secondhand trailer or a stately mansion - as one meriting the
most serious constitutional protection," Stevens wrote.