HIGH COURT OKS POLICE SEARCH

Says Police Waiting For Warrant Can Briefly Prevent Suspect From Going In Home

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that police waiting for a
warrant to search a suspect's home may briefly prevent the suspect from
going into the house unless he has a police escort.

The case, Illinois vs. McArthur, began in 1997 when Charles McArthur's
estranged wife informed police officers that he had marijuana in the
trailer they shared in Sullivan, Ill. Police kept McArthur outside for
about two hours, permitting him to enter only under the watchful eye of an
officer, while they waited for a search warrant.

When it came, they entered the trailer, found a small amount of drugs and
arrested McArthur. Illinois courts, however, considered the search
impermissible and threw out the drug evidence, which consisted of less than
2.5 grams of marijuana. Illinois appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Writing for an eight-member majority of the court, Justice Stephen Breyer
said the police had acted appropriately, given their understandable fear
that McArthur might try to destroy the evidence if he went into the house
by himself.

The lone dissenter on the court, Justice John Paul Stevens, suggested that
the majority had gotten "the balance wrong." The police interest in
"prosecuting this petty offense" could not justify even a relatively modest
intrusion on the "sanctity of the ordinary citizen's home," Stevens wrote.

In other decisions, the court:

Heard arguments over whether law enforcement officials violated an Oregon
man's constitutional rights when they used a heat-sensing device to find he
was growing marijuana in his home.

At issue is whether narcotics agents violated a constitutional ban on
unreasonable searches when they trained a thermal imaging device on Danny
Lee Kyllo's house -- without a search warrant.

Kyllo's attorney, Kenneth Lerner, said the home should be a refuge, where
people should be free to let down their guard without fearing the
government could be unreasonably looking over their shoulder.

The government argues that law enforcement officials were within
constitutional limitations when they utilized the scan, which sensed heat
patterns emanating from Kyllo's home indicative of lights used to grow
marijuana. They used the images -- along with a tip from an informant and
electricity records -- to obtain a search warrant of his Florence, Ore., home.

"If the thermal imager functioned like an X-ray machine ... then we don't
dispute that it would be a search," Deputy Solicitor General Michael
Dreeben said. "We are not learning what activities are going on or where
they are going on in that house."

The case is Kyllo v. U.S., 99-8508.

Passed up ruling on a challenge to California's pioneering assault-weapons
ban, opting not to decide if the state is applying the law unconstitutionally.

The court, without comment, let stand a lower court decision that upheld
the state's ability to selectively add weapons to the list of banned models
while allowing the sale of nearly identical guns.

California's 1989 law was passed in part as a response to a schoolyard
shooting in Stockton that year in which five children died. The gunman
sprayed the playground with a semiautomatic AK-47 rifle before killing himself.

The law was a compromise that backers knew would not cover all forms of
assault weapons. Instead, the law banned future sales of specific models of
military-style semiautomatic weapons and included a provision that the
state attorney general could ask courts to ban other models down the line.

Gun-control advocates prefer bans that describe the action or
characteristics of a prohibited gun without regard to a specific make or
model. That way copies of a banned gun are also automatically banned.

California amended the 1989 law a decade later to add that kind of coverage.

A group of California men and the gunmaker Colt argued that through the
expansion mechanism "the attorney general is now able to accomplish through
the judicial back door what there was insufficient political support to
accomplish in the legislature."

Ruled 5-4 in a Tennessee case that state high school athletic associations
can be sued for allegedly violating a member's rights if the association is
so closely connected with public school officials that it acts for the
state. The justices cited "the pervasive entwinement of state school
officials in the structure of the association."

Agreed to clarify the government's procedures for firing or disciplining
some employees who have been disciplined previously. The U.S. Postal
Service argues that it can base its firing of a letter carrier on the fact
that she was disciplined before, even though the worker's challenge of the
prior discipline was pending.

Refused to reopen debate over the Endangered Species Act's impact on
private landowners. The justices turned aside a North Carolina case testing
whether farmers may kill endangered red wolves that stray from a federal
refuge.

Rejected an appeal by a retired aircraft worker whose U.S. citizenship was
revoked because he served as a Nazi concentration camp guard during World
War II. Michael Negele argued that a federal court improperly revoked his
citizenship.

This story was compiled using reports from the Associated Press and
Washington Post.