HIGH COURT LETS POLICE SEARCH CAR PASSENGERS

The U.S. Supreme court rules that police with probable cause may search car
passengers and their belongings without a warrant.

Passengers' personal belongings are fair game when police officers
search a car for criminal evidence against the driver, the Supreme
Court ruled Monday.

The 6-3 decision reinstated a Wyoming drug conviction and expanded the
already considerable police power to stop and search vehicles without
a court warrant. Police officials praised the ruling, but defense
lawyers condemned it.

"Officers must be free of unreasonable, confusing and unworkable
restrictions on what may be searched," said Robert Scully of the
National Association of Police Organizations. He thanked the court for
"giving officers the tools they need to do their jobs."

But Lisa Kemler of the National Association of Criminal Defense
Lawyers called the decision "an abomination," adding: "You get in a
car and, as a passenger, you basically have no rights. Almost anything
goes, as long as police can come up with some reason to say they
expected to find evidence of a crime."

The Constitution's Fourth Amendment, which protects against
unreasonable police searches and seizures, generally requires police
to obtain court warrants. Since 1925, the Supreme Court has carved out
numerous exceptions when police targets are in vehicles.

In a key 1996 ruling, the justices said police can stop motorists for
routine traffic violations such as a faulty brake light even if the
officers really want to search for illegal drugs. Monday's ruling
means officers who participate in such stops can search all containers
in the car if something gives them reason to believe they will find
drugs.

The court's latest ruling on privacy rights stems from a routine
traffic stop, a situation that arises countless times daily across the
nation.

A car driven by David Young was stopped for speeding on Interstate 25
in Natrona County, Wyo., in the early morning hours of July 23, 1995.
After a Highway Patrol officer saw a hypodermic syringe in Young's
pocket, Young acknowledged that he had used it to take drugs.

During the ensuing search, two other officers asked the car's two
female passengers to get out of the car. One of them, Sandra Houghton,
left her purse on the car's back seat. Inside it, police found drug
paraphernalia and liquid methamphetamine.

She was convicted on a felony charge but appealed.

The Wyoming Supreme Court threw out her conviction last year, ruling
that police were justified only in searching the car for drugs Young
may have had with him - and therefore could not search Houghton's
purse.

Writing for the nation's highest court, Justice Antonin Scalia said
the Wyoming court was wrong.

"Effective law enforcement would be appreciably impaired without the
ability to search a passenger's personal belongings when there is
reason to believe contraband or evidence of criminal wrongdoing is
hidden in the car," Scalia said.

"The sensible rule ... is that such a package may be searched, whether
or not its owner is present as a passenger or otherwise, because it
may contain the contraband that the officer has reason to believe is
in the car," Scalia said.

He added that car passengers "will often be engaged in a common
enterprise with the driver and have the same interest in concealing

the fruits or the evidence of their wrongdoing."

The decision, however, did not give police the authority to pat down
or search the pockets of a passenger when looking for evidence linked
to the driver. Such tactics were banned by a 1948 Supreme Court ruling.

Joining Scalia in reinstating Houghton's conviction were Chief Justice
William Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy,
Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the court had created
"a new rule" that would let police search even a taxi passenger's
briefcase if they had reason to believe the driver had a syringe
somewhere in his vehicle.

Joining him in dissent were Justices David Souter and Ruth Bader
Ginsburg.