WOMAN WINS $450,000 IN SFO DRUG SEARCH SUIT

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A woman held for 22 hours at San Francisco
International Airport, strip-searched and forced to take laxatives by
Customs agents during a futile search for drugs has been awarded $450,000
by a federal court jury.

Lawyers for Amanda Buritica of Port Chester, N.Y., argued the agents at SFO
had no reason to suspect her of being a drug courier, intensified their
search when they found no evidence and ignored the fact she was already
suffering from diarrhea. Agents found : anti- diarrhea medicine in their
initial search.

"The more they searched, the less they found, and the less they found, the
more suspicious they became," her lawyer, Gregory M. Fox, said.

A government lawyer countered that agents had several reasons for
suspicion: Buritica was a woman in her 50s, traveling alone, on a Singapore
Airlines flight from Hong Kong-a "high-risk flight" from a city that iS a
common source of drugs- wore loose clothing, carried no mementos from her
trip and was unresponsive to questions.

But the U.S. District Court jury on Tuesday found the search unreasonable
and awarded $225,000 in damages against each of two Customs agents involved
in the search. The government usually pays such damages against its
employees, although Assistant U.S. Attorney Gail Killefer said no decision
to do so has been made yet.

Jurors also ordered punitive damages of $1,000 for malicious conduct
against John Petrin, chief Customs inspector at the airport, who was also
involved in a 1989 case before the same judge in which a bodycavity search
of a passenger was ruled illegal.

U.S. District Judge Vaughm Walker will decide at a later date whether to
order changes in Customs' local search policies and training procedures. He
could also order additional damages against the government.

Buritica, who said she lost her job because of stress from the incident,
told reporters the damages did not make up for her ordeal, "but I am glad
that the jury realized that they did something very awful to me."

Killefer declined comment. She has asked Walker to overturn the verdict and
dismiss the suit on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence of an
unreasonable, search or inadequate training.

Buritica, then 50, a Colombian-born U.S. citizen, was returning from a
round-the-world trip when she was detained at San Francisco International
Airport in September 1994. After a luggage search, she was patted down,
then strip-searched, Xrayed, and sent to a hospital for administration of a
strong purgative.

She testified she was told she would be forcibly fed the purgative if she
refused to drink it. Two agents watched her continuously while she used a
portable toilet repeatedly during an eight-hour period, she said. After
finally concluding she had no drugs in her system, the agents left the
room, but no one told her she was free to leave for six to eight hours, she
said.

Fox said local U.S. Customs agents randomly select passengers for scrutiny
as possible drug couriers, without any grounds for suspicion. Even after
reasonable suspicion justifies an initial search, he said, an intensified
search should be prohibited unless agents find some evidence of smuggling
and consider the passenger's innocent explanations.