HIGH COURT TO RULE ON ILLINOIS CASE

WASHINGTON--The Supreme Court will decide in an Illinois case whether police
officers can stop 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.

"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
Downstate Sullivan, said in a telephone interview Monday.

Illinois Assistant Attorney General Colleen Griffin said, "There was
probable cause to believe he had this contraband in his house." Therefore,
police were justified in saying that no one could re-enter the home for the
time necessary to get the warrant, she said.

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
that he had marijuana under the couch.

An officer knocked on the door, and McArthur came outside, denied that 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.

Prosecutors' appeal to the Supreme Court said the government had an interest
in keeping McArthur from destroying evidence, and that the appeals court
ruling would make it virtually impossible for police to secure homes in such
cases.

"A seizure is not necessarily unconstitutional for the period of time
necessary to secure the warrant," Griffin said Monday.