HIGH COURT SAYS POLICE CAN SEARCH PASSENGERS IN VEHICLE

WASHINGTON - Police can search the personal belongings of all passengers
inside a car when lawfully seeking criminal evidence against the driver, the
Supreme Court ruled today.

By a 6-3 vote in a Wyoming case, the court expanded the already considerable
police power to search motor vehicles without a court warrant.

"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," Justice
Antonin Scalia wrote for the court.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said, "Today, instead of adhering to
the settled distinction between drivers and passengers, the court fashions a
new rule." Under that rule, Stevens said, police might be able to search a
taxi passenger's briefcase if they had reason to believe the driver had a
syringe somewhere in his vehicle.

Other decisions today:

Right to silence: Criminal defendants who plead guilty have a constitutional
right to remain silent at sentencing without judges imposing harsher
punishment on them, the justices said. The 5-4 ruling in a Pennsylvania drug
case reverses a lower-court decision.

Prior restraint: The justices refused to review a South Carolina judge's
order that barred pretrial reporting on a secretly recorded conversation
between a murder defendant and his lawyer. Without comment, they rejected a
Columbia, S.C., newspaper's arguments that the judge's 1997 "prior
restraint" on publication was unconstitutional.

Lawyers' rights: Prosecutors cannot be sued for having lawyers searched and
interfering with their ability to advise a client appearing before a grand
jury, the justices said. The court ruled unanimously that such action by
California prosecutors in the Menendez brothers' murder case did not violate
a lawyer's constitutional right to practice his profession.

"We hold that the Fourteenth Amendment right to practice one's calling is
not violated by the execution of a search warrant, whether calculated to
annoy or even to prevent consultation with a grand-jury witness," Chief
Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the court.

Death sentence: The court agreed to review the death sentence of a convicted
Virginia killer whose execution, which had been scheduled for tomorrow, was
postponed last week. The justices said they will decide whether death-row
inmate Terry Williams should get a federal-court hearing on his claims that
he was denied adequate legal help during his sentencing trial.

Libel case: The justices refused to revive a Waco television reporter's
libel lawsuit over coverage of a federal raid on the Branch Davidian
compound in 1993. Without comment, they let stand a Texas Supreme Court
ruling that threw out John McLemore's lawsuit against Dallas-Forth Worth
station WFAA-TV. The lawsuit accused the station of airing reports implying
McLemore had tipped the religious sect about the raid. A Treasury Department
investigation cleared McLemore of any misconduct.

The peculiar Wyoming case that spurred today's decision on car searches
began as 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 in the early-morning hours of July 23, 1995. After a Highway
Patrol officer saw a hypodermic syringe in Young's pocket, Young candidly
said he had used it to take drugs.

During the ensuing search, two other officers asked the car's two 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.

Today's decision reversed the state court's ruling.

"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."

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