STATE POLICE SUED FOR DRUG SEARCH

Barbour Sheriff's Dept. Also Sued For Stopping 2 Men On Way To Pot Rally

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the State Police and Barbour County
Sheriff's Department on Thursday for establishing a drug checkpoint last
year near a rally organized by marijuana-law reform advocates.

ACLU attorneys Allan Karlin and Jason Huber filed the lawsuit on behalf of
Thomas Thacker and Brett Gasper. The men said police violated their
constitutional rights in July 2001 when they stopped and searched them for
drugs on the way to a Barbour County event held by the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML.

Police violated Thacker and Gasper's rights to assemble and to due process
of law when they used specially trained dogs to search them without their
consent and without lawful justification on their way to the political
rally, according to the lawsuit.

"I was asked if my car could be searched, and when I said no, the drug dogs
were brought on the scene to pressure me to waive my constitutional
rights," Gasper said in an ACLU media release. "I don't like drugs, and I
especially don't like big German shepherds in my face, or dirty looks from
policemen or insinuating remarks from the same."

The officers ran the checkpoint "in a manner that singled out and
discriminated against NORML members, supporters and other festival
attendees," according to the lawsuit.

"Members of law enforcement shouldn't have to violate the law to enforce
the law," said state ACLU Director Andrew Schneider.

Neither Thacker nor Gasper was charged as a result of the search, Schneider
said.

The lawsuit says that drug roadblocks are set up to investigate criminal
activity and therefore require individualized suspicion.

Thacker and Gasper are seeking compensation and punitive damages and an
injunction that would forbid State Police or the sheriff's department from
establishing similar checkpoints.

Earlier this week, the ACLU settled a separate lawsuit against Mildred
Mitchell-Bateman Hospital, a state-owned psychiatric hospital in
Huntington. The lawsuit challenged a state policy that prohibited hospital
employees from talking to reporters without an administrator's permission.

Monday's deal calls for the policy to be rewritten. Employees will not be
disciplined or face retaliation for providing the media with
nonconfidential information, as long as they do not imply that they are
speaking on behalf of the hospital, Schneider said.

U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers approved the settlement.

"The First Amendment is based upon the belief that, in a free and
democratic society, the public has a right to know how its institutions are
being conducted, and our plaintiffs have a right to tell the public what it
has a right to know," Schneider said in a media release.