TEXAS DRUG SEARCH TAKEN AS TEST CASE BY SUPREME COURT

At Issue: Police Squeezing Luggage

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to use a Texas case
to decide if the Constitution permits police, in their zeal to uncover
illegal drugs, to squeeze a person's luggage without either the
owner's consent or suspicion that a crime had been committed.

The high court also will consider independent counsel Kenneth Starr's
appeal of a lower court decision that threw out former Justice
Department official Webster Hubbell's indictment on tax-related
offenses. The lower courts said Starr violated Hubbell's Fifth
Amendment privilege against self-incrimination by securing the
indictment with tax documents that Hubbell was compelled to provide.

In the police case, Border Patrol Agent Cesar Cantu stopped a
Greyhound Bus at Sierra Blanca, in far West Texas, in July 1997 to
conduct a routine immigration check. He boarded the bus and worked his
way to the back, checking the passengers' identification.

Satisfied that no illegal immigrants were on board, Cantu slowly
returned to the front of the bus, all the while stopping to squeeze
the passengers' luggage in an apparent effort to find illegal drugs.
Cantu stopped when he squeezed Steven Dewayne Bond's green canvas bag
and felt a hard object.

Cantu asked for and received Bond's consent before opening the bag, in
which the officer found methamphetamine tightly wrapped in tape. Cantu
then arrested Bond.

Bond argued in the U.S. District Court for Western Texas that the
methamphetamine could not be introduced as evidence because Cantu had
no constitutional right to squeeze the bag. Bond said the officer's
actions, without Bond's consent or any suspicion of illegal activity,
violated the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches.

But the trial judge rejected Bond's argument and a jury convicted him
of illegal drug possession. He was sentenced to 57 months in prison to
be followed by three years' supervised release.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld the
conviction. The court said that Cantu's mere squeezing of the bag,
which Bond had left out in the open for anyone to touch, did not
qualify as a "search" under the Constitution.

In successfully requesting that the justices hear Bond's case, federal
public defender Lucien Campbell of San Antonio argued that Bond had a
"reasonable expectation of privacy" regarding the contents of his bag.

"A traveler who checks his bags with a commercial carrier may expect
that his bags will receive rough handling," Campbell conceded in a
legal brief to the justices.

"No traveler, however, expects that others will squeeze or feel his
carry-on luggage in a manner that is intended to reveal the contents
of that luggage."

The Clinton administration countered in a brief to the justices that
Bond could not have reasonably expected his luggage to go untouched on
a crowded bus.

"Accordingly," wrote Solicitor General Seth Waxman, the
administration's chief advocate before the high court, Bond "did not
have a reasonable expectation that such handling or manipulation by
others would not occur."

In the Hubbell case, Starr is urging the justices to overturn
decisions of the U.S. District Court and the U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals in Washington. Those courts threw out the indictment of
Hubbell, saying Starr violated the Clinton friend's Fifth Amendment
privilege by subpoenaing and then using the defendant's tax records
against him.

Starr, in his successful request that the court consider his appeal,
distinguished prepared documents from written or spoken testimony that
is protected by the privilege against self incrimination.

The justices are expected to render their decisions in the two cases
by July.

In other cases, the justices:

* Refused to hear arguments from two Louisiana duck hunters who said
the federal government violated their Second Amendment right to bear
arms by prohibiting them from buying guns because they had been
convicted of cheating on tax forms.

James Kostmayer Jr. was found guilty of conspiracy to defraud the U.S.
government after he failed to pay and report accurately
employer-withholding tax information. Robert Lawson had been convicted
of submitting a false Internal Revenue Service form.

After they had served their prison sentences, the Louisiana governor
pardoned both men and restored their right to bear arms. Nevertheless,
the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, citing a federal
law prohibiting felons from owning guns, rejected their application to
own weapons.

* Refused to hear, without comment, an appeal from Terry Nichols, who
argued that his conviction and life sentence for his role in the
Oklahoma City bombing should be overturned because prosecutors failed
to prove he had intended to kill anyone. Nichols was convicted of
conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction in the April 1995
bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which killed 168
people and injured hundreds more.