COURT LETS PA. POLICE SEIZE CASH WITH DRUG TRACES

HARRISBURG -- Cash with far higher-than-normal trace levels of
cocaine can be seized as contraband from speeding drivers, a divided
state appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The 5-2 Commonwealth Court decision concerned the seizure of $451,000
from two separate vehicle stops by state police on the Pennsylvania
Turnpike in 2002 and 2004.

The majority opinion by Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt said the amount of
money, the way it was bundled, the level of drugs on the bills and
the stories the vehicle occupants told all helped link the money to
drug trafficking.

But a dissenting judge, Rochelle S. Friedman, said the ion-scan test
that was used to detect cocaine traces on the bills is "nothing more
than junk science."

The first case involved Dien Vy Phung, who said the $310,000 found in
the trunk of the rental car he was driving on April 4, 2002, had come
from several sources, including his plastics-factory job in Canada,
and that he planned to use it to buy a Pittsburgh nail salon.

A state police expert testified that the money in Phung's possession
contained 10 to 20 times more cocaine residue than random samples of
cash tested from Boston and northern New Jersey.

The second case involved Herman Keese Jr., a passenger in a rental
car that was stopped on May 22, 2004. A drug dog helped police locate
a shoe box filled with $141,000 that Keese said was proceeds of a
mortgage loan he planned to invest in a California auto business.

An ion scan of Keese's cash showed levels six times higher than
levels of random samples circulating in Pennsylvania or South
Carolina, according to police testimony.