SUPREME COURT EMBRACES RIGHTS FOR CAR PASSENGERS

WASHINGTON -- A passenger as well as a driver has the right to
challenge the legality of a police officer's decision to stop a car,
the Supreme Court ruled unanimously today.

The ruling came in the case of Bruce E. Brendlin, who was a passenger
in a car that was stopped by a deputy sheriff in Yuba City, Calif.,
on Nov. 27, 2001. The deputy soon ascertained that Mr. Brendlin was
an ex-convict who was wanted for violating his parole. An ensuing
search of the driver, the car and Mr. Brendlin turned up
methamphetamine supplies.

Eventually, Mr. Brendlin pleaded guilty to a drug charge and drew a
four-year prison sentence. But he continued to appeal on the issue of
whether the evidence of drugs found on him resulted from an illegal
search and should have been suppressed because of the Fourth
Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

The California Supreme Court found that, consitutionally speaking,
only the driver had been "seized" by the stop, and that therefore Mr.
Brendlin had no basis for challenging the search that turned up the
drugs. The State of California made that argument again when the case
was heard before the United States Supreme Court on April 23.

But Mr. Brendlin's lawyer, Elizabeth M. Campbell, argued that when an
officer makes a traffic stop, "he seizes not only the driver of the
car, but also the car, and every person and every thing in that car."

The justices agreed. "When police make a traffic stop, a passenger in
the car, like the driver, is seized for Fourth Amendment purposes and
so may challenge the stop's constitutionality," Justice David H.
Souter wrote for the high court.

Most federal and state courts have ruled that passengers in a traffic
stop are also "seized," legally speaking, and thus may challenge the
legality of the stop. But the state courts in Washington and
Colorado, as well as California, had held otherwise until today.

Although today's ruling overturns the California Supreme Court's
ruling against Mr. Brendlin, it does not necessarily end his legal
troubles. Justice Souter said that it will now be up to the state
courts to determine whether the drug evidence should have been
suppressed. Prosecutors may try to show that the search was justified
on other grounds, in part because Mr. Brendlin was a parole violator
and the subject of an outstanding warrant.

The April 23 argument before the high court seemed to foreshadow
today's ruling. When California's deputy Attorney General, Clifford
E. Zall, asserted that when a car is stopped by the police, it is the
driver, not the passenger, who is "seized" and submits to authority,
Justice Souter asked him, "Have you every been subject to a traffic stop?"

"Tell the truth now," Justice Antonin Scalia interjected.

"Yes, yes, I have," Mr. Zall replied.

"O.K.," Justice Souter said. "The heart rate went up. The blood
pressure went up."