JUSTICES' RULING SETS BROAD 'PROBABLE CAUSE' STANDARD IN DRUG ARRESTS

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Baltimore County police acted
properly four years ago when they arrested all three occupants of a car
after the officers discovered drugs and cash inside and everyone denied
owning them.

By a vote of 9 to 0, the court said that such an arrest was consistent with
the constitutional requirement that arrests be based on "probable cause,"
because under the circumstances it was reasonable to assume that one, some
or all of the people in the car were involved in illegal activity.

The decision reversed the judgment of Maryland's highest court, which last
year overturned the conviction of the one occupant of the car who was
eventually tried in the case, Joseph Jermaine Pringle. The Maryland court
ruled that his arrest was unconstitutional because the police had lacked a
reason to think he was individually involved in a crime.

"We think it an entirely reasonable inference from these facts that any or
all three of the occupants had knowledge of, and exercised dominion and
control over, the cocaine," Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote for
the court. "Thus a reasonable officer could conclude that there was
probable cause to believe Pringle committed the crime of possession of
cocaine, either solely or jointly."

The case called on the court to apply the concept of probable cause to a
situation in which the police were bound to err in one of two ways: either
by sweeping up several innocent people in pursuit of one guilty party or by
letting a guilty individual go free for fear of infringing the rights of
his companions.

Yesterday's decision means that, in such cases involving drugs, officers
may now err on the side of arresting the innocent without violating the
Constitution.

"With this decision, the court has reaffirmed the necessary flexibility of
the probable cause standard, which allows police to deal appropriately with
the varying circumstances associated with encounters with criminals on the
street," said Charles Hobson, an attorney with the Criminal Justice Legal
Foundation, a Sacramento-based nonprofit that filed a friend-of-the-court
brief urging the justices to uphold Pringle's arrest.

But Tracy Maclin, a professor of law at Boston University who wrote a
friend-of-the-court brief on Pringle's behalf, said the court had written a
sweeping opinion that could expose innocent people to arrest in a wide
variety of situations.

"It's going to be easier to arrest people, and there is . . . nothing in
this opinion to cabin this rationale," Maclin said. "If someone has 20
friends over, and a cop comes to the house and finds contraband under the
couch pillow, what's to prevent the police from arresting everyone in the
house?"

The case, Maryland v. Pringle, No. 02-809, began at 3:16 a.m. on Aug. 7,
1999, when a Baltimore County police officer stopped a Nissan Maxima for
speeding and, upon searching the vehicle, found $763 in cash wadded up in
the glove compartment and five small plastic bags containing crack cocaine
stuffed behind a back-seat armrest.

The officer, Jeffrey Snyder, told the driver and two passengers that if
none of them confessed to ownership of the drugs, he would arrest all
three. They kept silent, and he made good on his threat.

The front-seat passenger, Pringle, eventually admitted that the contraband
was his and was convicted of possession of cocaine with intent to
distribute; he is serving a 10-year sentence. The other two men were
quickly released.

But last year, the Maryland Court of Appeals, the state's highest court,
reversed Pringle's conviction, ruling 4 to 3 that "a policy of arresting
everyone until somebody confesses is constitutionally unacceptable."