COURT BROADENS DRUG-GUN LAW

WASHINGTON (AP) -- 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 Monday.

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.

President Clinton praised the ruling, saying that despite falling crime
rates, ``guns and drugs remain serious problems among our youth and in many
of our neighborhoods. Today's decision is one more victory for law
enforcement and law-abiding citizens in the fight against crime and drugs.''

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 other matters Monday, the court:

- --Heard arguments over Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr's
efforts to obtain the notes of a meeting between presidential aide Vincent
Foster and his lawyer nine days before Foster's 1993 suicide.

- --Ruled in a Nebraska case that jurors in capital punishment cases do not
always have to be given the option of finding a defendant guilty of a lesser
crime, one that does not carry a death sentence.

- --Told New Mexico's highest court it was wrong in blocking the extradition
to Ohio of an American Indian activist who faces charges of violating parole
and whom the New Mexico court called ``a refugee from injustice.''

- --Agreed to use a Kentucky case to clarify when hospitals can be forced to
pay monetary damages for ``dumping,'' or moving to other facilities some
patients needing emergency care.

- --Said it will decide in an environmental dispute from Pennsylvania whether
private citizens can sue over government agency regulations that allegedly
result in racial discrimination.

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. Writing for the four, Ginsburg said
the court ``should leave it to Congress to speak in language that is clear
and definite if the Legislature wishes to impose the sterner penalty.''

The voting alignment was unusual. Stevens has earned a reputation as the
justice most sensitive to the rights of criminal suspects, while Rehnquist
and Scalia are viewed as tough law-and-order jurists.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett