`SQUEEZE' SEARCHES SLAPPED DOWN

STEVEN DWAYNE BOND was on a Greyhound bus, traveling from California
to Arkansas, minding his own business. Unfortunately, his business
involved trafficking in illegal drugs. So now he is a footnote in
constitutional history, having contributed to the creation of ``a
constitutional jurisprudence of `squeezes.' '' His case illustrates
how reasonable Supreme Court justices can disagree about how finely
some procedural hairs should be split.

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled 7 to 2 that Bond's conviction on
conspiracy and drug possession charges was improper because of the way
the drugs he was transporting were found. A Border Patrol agent
squeezed Bond's canvas carry-on bag.

When the bus pulled in, as it was required to do, at the immigration
checkpoint on Interstate 10 near Sierra Blanca, Texas, the agent,
working from the front to the back, checked that the approximately 45
passengers were legally in the country. Then, working from back to
front, he looked for drugs by squeezing luggage in overhead bins.

When he felt a ``brick-like'' object in Bond's bag, and noted that
Bond seemed nervous, he asked for and received Bond's permission to
open the bag. What he found, wrapped in tape and wrapped additionally
in a pair of pants, was methamphetamine. After his arrest, Bond made
incriminating statements.

But before his trial he remembered the Fourth Amendment (``The right
of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated . . .''). At trial, he argued that the drugs were found by an
illegal search, and that his statements were inadmissible as evidence
because they were a consequence of the search.

The court was not persuaded. He was sentenced to 57 months in prison.
He appealed, but the appellate court affirmed his conviction. It noted
that when he stored his bag overhead, it was reasonable for him to
expect that it would be moved and handled without his permission, by
other passengers or people working for Greyhound making more room
overhead. The court also said there was no constitutional importance
in the fact that passengers touching his bag would have a purpose
unlike that of the Border Patrol agent.

Then the Supreme Court, which has lots of experience fine-tuning the
meaning of the Fourth Amendment, decided to get more such experience.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice William Rehnquist reasoned
Bond's case is different because tactile examination of a person's
``effects'' is different -- constitutionally different -- than visual
examination: ``Physically invasive inspection is simply more intrusive
than purely visual inspection.'' Bond reasonably did not expect
passengers or Greyhound employees to ``feel the bag in an exploratory
manner.''

Dissenting, Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by Antonin Scalia, said, in
effect, that Fourth Amendment casuistry could make your head hurt.

``Privacy,'' said Breyer, ``itself implies the exclusion of uninvited
strangers, not just strangers who work for the government.'' And ``in
determining whether an expectation of privacy is reasonable, it is the
effect, not the purpose, that matters.'' This is so because ``a Fourth
Amendment rule that turns on purpose could prevent police alone from
intruding where other strangers freely tread.'' And by the way, surely
whether tactile investigation is more or less intrusive than visual
investigation depends on circumstances -- think of observing someone
through a lighted window.

So, the Bond case has not occasioned the last word on police practices
and the Fourth Amendment.