2 CASES TEST POLICE RIGHTS ON SEARCHES

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court yesterday grappled with how to balance
a person's right to be left alone against the power of police to
investigate and deter crime.

Justices heard arguments in two cases that would expand police
authority to investigate people for illegal drugs and guns. Defendants
in the two cases maintain that police searched them illegally, in
violation of constitutional rights.

The cases raise different issues but, as arguments made clear, involve
similar concerns about the breadth of police power and a person's
right to be free from unreasonable government interference.

"This goes to the heart of the relationship between police and
citizens in a free society," Harvey Sepler, an assistant public
defender in Miami, told the justices during arguments in one of the
cases.

Sepler argued on behalf of a Florida teenager frisked for weapons
after police received an anonymous tip that he had a gun. He said the
frisk violated the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable
searches and seizures.

Courts have allowed police to frisk suspects for safety if they
suspect criminal activity is afoot, but Sepler said the anonymous tip
wasn't enough to raise suspicions.

The Florida Supreme Court agreed, ruling that anonymous tips didn't
justify the officer's decision to frisk the boy.

Justice Anthony Kennedy seemed to concur, saying, "We fear tips
because of pranks, because people often have vendettas. The assumption
is that they're unreliable."

Justice Antonin Scalia noted that police could phone in so-called tips
to justify a frisk.

But government lawyers argued that police, who found the gun on the
boy, shouldn't be required to investigate or ask questions first
because of the danger to themselves and others.

Some justices seemed concerned that, with recent high-profile episodes
of mass violence such as the murders at Columbine High School in
Colorado, police must be able to investigate tips to protect the
public. Justice Stephen Breyer, for instance, asked whether police
could investigate tips of a bomb at a school or at a federal building.

"I just can't believe if somebody called up, described a certain
person in detail and said he has a bag with a 1,000-pound bomb outside
a courthouse or school - I can't believe police couldn't go and find
out," Breyer said.

The other case yesterday examined an officer's right to investigate
luggage in the overhead bin of a bus. The case came about when a
border-patrol officer boarded a bus in Texas to see if the passengers
were legally in the U.S. He began poking luggage in overhead bins.

When he squeezed Steven Dewayne Bond's green duffel bag, he felt a
hard object he suspected could be drugs. The object turned out to be
methamphetamine that Bond was taking to Arkansas.

Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Lamken told the justices that
officers were entitled to move luggage around just like other bus
passengers and that Bond had no reason to expect his bag wouldn't be
handled when he threw it in the overhead bin.

But Carolyn Fuentes, an assistant federal defender, said Bond never
expected passengers or police officers to squeeze the bag to determine
what was inside.

"When a uniformed officer comes in, starts squeezing baggage, and
trying to find out what's inside, that is horribly intrusive," she
said.

Scalia quipped that Bond should've carried hard-sided luggage, and
suggested he had little sympathy for his argument that police acted
illegally. But other justices were less convinced. Justice David
Souter said a person may expect his belongings to be observed but not
"explored by someone who is trying to find out what he can feel."