AN UNREASONABLE RULING

Three policemen boarded a cramped bus in Tallahassee, Fla., and began a
systematic questioning of passengers on an expedition for drug couriers.
Would it be too difficult if they mentioned that the passengers are not
legally obliged to cooperate?

Guess so. The U.S. Supreme Court decided that any reasonable person would
believe that he was free to decline to answer questions or consent to a
search. Hence, there was no "coercion."

As such, two guys with cocaine taped along their thighs agreed to pat-
downs; the evidence will not be suppressed.

We grant that the drug-runners were stupid - for carrying the drugs, then
for cooperating. But what we don't grant is that a citizen, guilty or not,
would so quickly apprehend the "correct" legal landscape, one that Supreme
Court Justice Anthony Kennedy took 11 1/2 pages of dense prose to lay out.

Don't we all know the subtext? The police don't want you to know that you
may decline cooperation.

This isn't the same as pre-boarding searches at airports. In his dissent,
Justice David Souter, joined by Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader
Ginsburg, pointed out correctly that the rules governing access to air
travel have not yet extended to ground transportation.

But even if those rules did, the drug couriers already were on board. If
the general purpose was to protect people on the bus, then it seems to us
the government had already declined that option by failing to conduct
searches beforehand.

But the police did show up, later. It does behoove us to figure out what
that means because constitutional scholarship is required if we are to
understand what our rights are in the course of an ordinary day. Just ask
the court majority.

Put yourself in the passengers' shoes. In view of the few seconds we would
have to observe and then analyze these circumstances, maybe it's better if
we do cooperate on the chance that we're doing something wrong if we don't.
Right?

Why would any reasonable person not feel "coerced" on that bus?

Infrequently do we endorse the view of the liberal wing of the court. But
why not explicitly inform people of their rights before questioning begins?

It seems a commonsense approach to establishing trust between police and
the public that is, in the long run, of benefit to law enforcement in a
free society.