WASHINGTON -- A federal law adding five years to the prison sentence of
anyone who carries a gun while selling or buying illegal drugs can apply to
those who keep a gun locked in a car's glove compartment or trunk, the
Supreme Court ruled yesterday.

The 5-4 decision made the law a more potent weapon in Congress' war on
drugs, and could affect thousands of federal cases each year. Federal
appeals courts had disagreed on what Congress had in mind when it passed the
somewhat ambiguously worded law.

Drug traffickers arrested while in or near their cars can be convicted of
carrying a gun even if it is not immediately accessible, the justices ruled
in a pair of cases from rural Louisiana and Boston.

"The generally accepted contemporary meaning of the word 'carry' includes
the carrying of a firearm in a vehicle," Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote for
the court.

Defense lawyers decried the ruling. Gerald Lefcourt, president of the
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the decision "ignores
the plain language of the statute, the clear intention of Congress and the
multitude of laws already available to punish drug dealers."

He predicted the law would serve no purpose "other than to add to our
already overflowing prisons."

In the gun-carrying decision, the court interpreted a federal law that adds
five years to the prison term of anyone who "uses or carries" a gun "during
and in relation to" a drug-trafficking crime. Frank Muscarello got the extra
five years for carrying a gun when arrested in Tangipahoa Parish, La., in
1994 while distributing marijuana from his car. He had a loaded pistol in
the car's locked glove compartment.

Cocaine traffickers Donald Cleveland and Enrique Gray-Santana also were hit
with the extra five years after their convictions in Boston. When arrested,
they had three loaded pistols inside a duffel bag locked in the trunk of
their rental car.

In an unanimous 1995 decision, the Supreme Court said Prosecutors cannot
invoke the "use" facet of the law unless they show "active employment of the
firearm." Just having a gun nearby in case of a confrontation is not enough
to be in violation of the use provision, the justices ruled then.

But Breyer's opinion for the court said someone does "carry" a gun when
transporting it in his or her car.

Breyer was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor,
Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin
Scalia and David H. Souter dissented.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett