2 STATE COURTS RULE ON MIRANDA WARNINGS IN TRAFFIC SEARCHES

A New Jersey appeals court ruled yesterday that it was legal for a police
officer to question occupants of a car about drugs without giving them
their Miranda warnings against self-incrimination.

And in Albany, New York's highest court agreed yesterday to hear a
potentially significant case involving the right of the police to search
vehicles pulled over for traffic violations.

The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that the Miranda warnings,
familiar to anyone who watches police shows on television, do not
automatically apply during traffic stops. But the New Jersey appeals court,
in an opinion designated for publication in lawbooks, said this had to be
further clarified because a state judge in Gloucester County had disagreed.

The case arose from a drug arrest in January 1999 in which a Westville,
N.J., police officer put this question to the two men in a car he had
stopped because the driver's license had been revoked: "Have you got
something on you that you should surrender right now? Any contraband,
weapons, anything like that?"

Daniel Hickman Jr., a passenger, promptly replied, "Yes, I have something
in my shoe." He then took it off and produced a small packet of crack
cocaine, for which he was arrested.

Martin Herman, the State Superior Court judge in Gloucester County, said
the evidence could not be used in court and criticized the officer's
directness. "Field inquiry means being more gentle," Judge Herman wrote.

The judge said the question and the environment -- a car on the side of the
road with a patrol car behind it, lights flashing -- was coercive. And a
coercive environment means that police officers are required under the 1966
Miranda ruling of the United States Supreme Court to inform suspects that
they have a right to be silent and to seek the help of a lawyer.

"The officer is basically compelling and demanding information in which
this defendant knew he had no reason to believe that he was free to get out
of that car and walk away," Judge Herman said.

Perhaps Mr. Hickman was not free to just walk away, Judge Stephen Skillman
wrote for a three-judge panel of the Appellate Division of State Superior
Court, but a traffic stop is not the same as a police interrogation, for
which the Miranda rules were intended.

In the case of a traffic stop like this one, Judge Skillman said, the
officer was within his rights to ask the question, to take the drugs when
Mr. Hickman produced them and to apply them as evidence. Judge Skillman
reversed Judge Herman's findings and ordered that Mr. Hickman stand trial.

In the New York State case, Judge Richard Wesley granted a motion for the
full Court of Appeals to hear a Bronx case involving a man, Frank Robinson,
who was riding in a cab when it was pulled over by New York City police
officers for speeding.

An officer shining a light into the back seat of the cab saw a bulge under
Mr. Robinson's jacket (it was later found to be a bulletproof vest, which
is illegal for a civilian to wear in New York) and a gun on the floor. Mr.
Robinson was charged with and convicted of third-degree unlawful possession
of a weapon. But the high court will consider whether evidence gathered
against him should have been admissible in court.

The case could be another in which the Court of Appeals decides that the
State Constitution affords New York citizens greater civil liberties than
the United States Supreme Court does for Americans at large under the
Constitution.