TRAFFIC TICKETS RULED NO CAUSE FOR SEARCH

WASHINGTON -- In a rare win for privacy rights, the Supreme Court ruled
yesterday that police cannot search people and their cars after merely
ticketing them for routine traffic violations.

Such a search -- without suspicion of other wrongdoing -- is unreasonable
and unconstitutional, the court ruled unanimously in an Iowa case.

The justices said police unlawfully searched an Iowa man's car after he was
stopped for speeding. The search found marijuana and a pipe in Patrick
Knowles' car.

The decision amounted to "a pretty resounding no" to police, said Knowles'
lawyer, Paul Rosenberg. Allowing the search would have created a "very big
category of permissible searches," he said.

"Which of us has not at some point gone over the speed limit or made an
illegal left turn?" added Brooklyn Law professor Susan Herman, who signed a
friend-of-the-court brief on Knowles' behalf.

Even Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who wrote the court's opinion, was
ticketed in 1986 for driving 41 mph in a 30 mph zone in his hometown of
Arlington, Va.

During arguments in the case last month, Knowles' lawyer acknowledged that
the state law would even let police search someone stopped for jaywalking.

The ruling disappointed the National Association of Police Organizations.
Traffic stops are "one of the least predictable and most dangerous duties of
a law enforcement officer," said Robert Scully, the group's executive
director.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that police can search people after
arresting them, citing a need to disarm suspects and preserve evidence.

But Rehnquist wrote for the court yesterday that those needs are not as
great when someone is simply being given a traffic citation.

Concern for officer safety may justify ordering a driver and passengers out
of the car but "does not by itself justify the often considerably greater
intrusion attending a full field-type search," Rehnquist said.

Police already have the authority to perform a patdown search of motorists
if the officer has reason to suspect they may be armed, the chief justice
noted. He also discounted prosecutors' argument that officers needed to
search Knowles' car to preserve evidence.

"No further evidence of excessive speed was going to be found either on the
person of the offender or in the passenger compartment of the car,"
Rehnquist said.

The decision ran counter to the court's trend over the past several decades
of dramatically narrowing the privacy rights afforded by the Constitution's
Fourth Amendment.

Checked-by: Don Beck