TOP COURT REJECTS RULING IN MINNESOTA DRUG CASE

WASHINGTON -- People who are temporarily in someone else's home to conduct
business may not invoke the Constitution's protection against unreasonable
police searches, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday by a vote of 5-4.

The decision overturned a 1997 ruling of the Minnesota Supreme Court, which
set aside the narcotics convictions of two men who had spent several hours
in a third person's apartment preparing cocaine for sale.

A police officer, acting on a tip, observed the activity in the basement
apartment through a gap in the closed Venetian blinds. Although the officer
later obtained a warrant to search the apartment, the Minnesota court ruled
that the initial observation was an illegal search that the two men, as
guests of the resident, were entitled to
challenge.

In his majority opinion Tuesday, Minnesota vs. Carter, Chief Justice
William Rehnquist said the men had no "legitimate expectation of privacy"
in a home that was not theirs and that was "simply a place to do business."
There was no need to decide whether the officer's observation amounted to a
search, he said, because the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable
searches and seizures did not apply.

The Supreme Court's precedents in this area have made a "legitimate
expectation of privacy" the test for determining whether someone is
entitled to invoke the Fourth Amendment's protections. In a 1990 case,
Minnesota vs. Olson, the court ruled that an overnight guest had such an
expectation and thus could claim Fourth Amendment rights. By contrast, a
1978 ruling, Rakas vs. Illinois, held that automobile passengers were not
entitled to raise a Fourth Amendment objection to the seizure of
incriminating evidence if they owned neither the evidence nor the car,
even if they had a right to be in the car at the time.

Rehnquist, in an opinion joined by Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin
Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas, said that in this case, the
"purely commercial nature of the transaction," combined with the men's
short stay and lack of previous connection to the apartment's resident,
made their situation "closer to that of one simply permitted on the
premises," much like the passengers in the 1978 decision.

But in a dissenting opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the case was
much closer to the 1990 ruling about the overnight guest. The majority
opinion overlooked "the unique importance of the home -- the most essential
bastion of privacy recognized by law," she said, adding that the logic of
shielding an overnight guest's privacy "extends to shorter-term guests as
well." Justices John Paul Stevens and David Souter joined the dissenting
opinion.

In a separate opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer said that even though the men
were entitled to the Fourth Amendment's protections, the officer's
observation through the window blinds did not amount to a search. For that
reason, Breyer joined the majority's judgment, making the vote 6-3 to
reinstate the men's convictions while making the vote 5-4 on the underlying
Fourth Amendment issue.

Checked-by: Joel W. Johnson