JUSTICES AFFIRM POLICE RIGHT TO SEARCH CAR PASSENGERS

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

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.

"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," said Denver attorney Larry Pozner, head of
the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "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."

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 during 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 Monday'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
believed 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 Monday, 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 syringe sticking out of his front pocket. That
search violated the 4th Amendment, the Wyoming Supreme Court said, because
police had no reason to suspect the passenger of wrongdoing.

Monday'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.

In previous rulings, the court has said police need some specific reason to
justify searching inside a car. In a December ruling, police were told that
a routine traffic violation is not enough to trigger a full-blown vehicle
search.

By contrast, the Wyoming case decided Monday involved a traffic stop in
which the motorist, David Young, had a hypodermic syringe sticking out of
his shirt pocket.

The officer asked why he had the syringe. "With refreshing candor, Young
replied he had used it to take drugs," Scalia wrote.

That in turn prompted the officers to search his car and his two passengers,
including Sandra Houghton. She had a syringe and methamphetamines in her
purse.

She was convicted of a drug felony and served two years in prison before the
Wyoming Supreme Court ruled the search of her purse was illegal.

In dissent, Justices John Paul Stevens, joined by Justices David Souter and
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, faulted the majority for abandoning "settled
distinction between drivers and their passengers."