CAR SEARCH POLICE POWER EXPANDED

WASHINGTON -- In a decision that continues the trend of giving police
greater authority to search motorists and their cars, the Supreme Court
swept aside the distinction between motorists and their passengers yesterday.

A police officer who stops a car and has reason to suspect it contains
illegal drugs or guns may search everything in the vehicle, including a
passenger's belongings, the justices ruled on a 6-3 vote.

"We hold that police officers with probable cause to search a car may
inspect passengers' belongings found in the car that are capable of
concealing the object of the search," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the
court.

Defense lawyers were outraged.

"We're becoming a police state. This ruling tells the police that when they
pull over a car to investigate a driver, they can search any one of us in
the vehicle for any reason or no reason whatsoever," said Denver attorney
Larry Pozner, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense
Lawyers.

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

Legal experts who have tracked the court's cases on car searches said the
ruling was more of a clarification than a bold departure.

The scope of police power to search inside a stopped car has been fought
out in a series of cases over the past 20 years.

"All these decisions basically say that once you get in your car, you are
fair game," said Boston University Law Professor Tracey Maclin. But
yesterday's ruling "is significant," he added, "because it affects
potentially millions of people."

For decades, the court has said that once people leave home and go onto the
highways, they have a diminished right to privacy.

To maintain safety on the roads, police have nearly unchecked power to stop
and question motorists, the court has said.

The officer needs something beyond a mere traffic violation to justify a
full-fledged search of the car, the court has said.

If, for example, the motorist appears to be drunk or on drugs, or is
thought to be carrying a concealed weapon, the officer can search "every
part of the vehicle and its contents," the court has said in the past.

Until yesterday, however, it had been unclear whether this power to search
widely extended to the personal belongings of a presumably innocent passenger.

The issue came before the court when state judges in Wyoming threw out the
drug evidence found in the purse of Sandra Houghton, a passenger in a car
driven by a man who had a syringe sticking out of his front pocket.

This search violated the Fourth Amendment, the Wyoming Supreme Court said,
because police had no reason to suspect the passenger of wrongdoing.

Yesterday's ruling reversed that decision.

It would be confusing for the police and for local judges, Scalia said, if
a national rule were set that allowed searches of some containers in cars,
but not others, depending who claimed them.

"One would expect passenger-confederates to claim everything as their own,"
he said, prompting a "bog of litigation" to resolve whether the officers
acted correctly.

INFOBOX

OTHER CASES

The Supreme Court took the following actions yesterday:

Ruled that judges cannot impose stiffer punishments on criminal defendants
who plead guilty but refuse at sentencing to give details about the crime.

Ruled that prosecutors don't violate lawyers' rights to practice their
profession by having them searched and interfering with their ability to
advise a client appearing before a grand jury.

Said it will review the death sentence of convicted Virginia killer Terry
Williams, whose scheduled execution today was postponed last week.

Clarified the deadline for transferring cases from state court to federal
court, saying the 30-day clock begins to run when someone is formally
served and receives a copy of a lawsuit.