SUPREME COURT RULES ON CAR DRUG SEARCHES

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court said on Monday that when police find
drugs in a car and no one claims them, it's "reasonable" to arrest all
the occupants because everyone could be involved in a crime.

Some criminal justice experts say the court's ruling, a short,
unanimous opinion penned by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, gives
the nod to police dragnets that could snare innocent people with the
guilty.

"People get into cars all the time and have no idea what the driver or
someone else may have put in the vehicle," said Tracey Maclin, a
Boston University law professor who wrote a brief for the National
Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in the case. "This will apply
to people like the coed who's at a party late at night and accepts a
ride home from a group of friends. If that car is stopped and police
find drugs, 10 out of 10 police officers will now arrest everyone to
find out whose they are."

But Charles Hobson, a lawyer for the conservative Criminal Justice
Legal Foundation, said the court's ruling struck the right balance
between police authority and civil liberties.

"It's not a license to detain people generally," Hobson said. "It's
just an acknowledgment of the considerable difficulty officers
encounter in multiple suspect situations. You don't want to turn them
into grand juries or judges, who have to come up with enough evidence
to convict someone. They just need to have enough evidence to arrest."

The opinion is the second in a series of search-and-seizure rulings
scheduled for this term. Already, the court has said police can wait
as little at 15 to 20 seconds after knocking before they forcibly
enter a suspect's home. The justices also will decide whether police
can be sued for acting on inaccurate search warrants and whether
informational checkpoints that lead to arrests are legal.

In the case that led to Monday's ruling, Maryland v. Pringle, the
court weighed the limits of police officers' arrest power when they
know a crime has been committed but aren't sure who among a limited
number of suspects is responsible.

Suburban Baltimore police found five bags of cocaine and $768 in Donte
Partlow's car in late 1999, but none of the three men in the car would
admit to owning the money or the drugs.

Hoping to elicit a confession from the guilty party, the officer
arrested everyone. It worked, and Joseph Pringle gave himself up. He
was tried and convicted. But then he challenged the admission of his
confession in court, saying the officer lacked probable cause to
arrest him because he wasn't the owner of the car and wasn't driving.

Maryland's highest court overturned his conviction.

Maryland officials appealed, with the support of 20 other states,
saying police need to be able to be decisive in cases where criminal
responsibility is in doubt.

The Supreme Court on Monday disagreed with the state court, saying the
drugs and money were cause enough to detain everyone in Partlow's car.

The car, the judges said, wasn't a public place, where other people
might be. And no one confessed to being owner of the contraband.

It was "entirely reasonable" to assume that all of the car's occupants
"had knowledge of, and exercised dominion and control over" the drugs
and money, Rehnquist wrote.

Maclin said the ruling sets a dangerous precedent for police, and that
it was written so broadly that it could be applied to houses or other
places where police find drugs. He said the justices seemed blinded by
Pringle's guilt in the case.

"It's hard for the justices to imagine themselves or people they know
under the same circumstances," Maclin said. "They are very quick to
defer to the judgment of police officers."

Hobson said the decision was a simple matter of allowing police to
solve perplexing criminal situations.

"It's a little like an Agatha Christie novel, where you have a crime
committed in a room and a certain number of people were in that room,"
he said. "The court is just saying police should be able to arrest
everyone in that room to determine `whodunnit."