SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS POLICE POWER ON BUS SEARCHES

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court ( news - web sites) upheld on Monday
police searches of bus passengers and their luggage for drugs or weapons,
rejecting the argument that such coercive tactics require that people be
told of their rights.

The justices, by a 6-3 vote, overturned a U.S. appeals court ruling that a
bus search should be considered unconstitutionally coercive unless the
police first warn passengers they have the right to refuse to cooperate.
The appeals court held the consent given by two Greyhound bus passengers in
1999 in Tallahassee, Florida, was not sufficiently free of coercion and
therefore amounted to an unconstitutional search and seizure. The high
court's ruling was a major victory for the Bush administration. It argued
the police should not be deprived of an essential crime-fighting tool
needed to protect the nation's public transportation system after the Sept.
11 hijacked plane attacks on America.

Justice Anthony Kennedy ( news - web sites) said for the court majority
that the Constitution's Fourth Amendment does not require police officers
to advise bus passengers of their right not to cooperate and to refuse
consent to searches.

Three officers had boarded the bus, which was bound from Fort Lauderdale,
Florida, to Detroit. One officer remained at the front of the bus, watching
passengers without blocking the exit, while the other two officers asked
the passengers about their travel plans and requested to inspect their
luggage. An officer told passengers Christopher Drayton and Clifton Brown
that he was looking for illegal drugs and weapons.

They agreed to allow the officers to search their overhead luggage, which
contained nothing illegal. Drayton and Brown then agreed to a pat-down
search of their clothing.

It revealed that they were carrying nearly a kilogram of cocaine. Drayton
and Brown then were convicted on drug charges and received prison sentences
of 10 years and 7 1/3 years, respectively. The appeals court ruled the
cocaine should not have been admitted as evidence, saying the passengers
were not told they were free to leave and their consent was not truly
voluntary.

Solicitor General Theodore Olson of the Justice Department ( news - web
sites) said the appeals court was wrong.

He said such searches were "an important part of the national effort to
combat the flow of illegal narcotics and weapons."

Kennedy agreed with the government. He said the appeals court erroneously
adopted a rule that evidence obtained during such drug searches on buses
must be suppressed unless the officers advised the passengers of their
rights. He said Drayton and Brown were not subjected to an unreasonable
search. Justices David Souter ( news - web sites), John Paul Stevens ( news
- - web sites) and Ruth Bader Ginsburg ( news - web sites) dissented.

Souter said extensive searches have been used on airplanes, but not on
buses and trains. "Anyone who travels by air today submits to searches of
the person and luggage as a condition of boarding the aircraft.

It is universally accepted that such intrusions are necessary to hedge
against risks that, nowadays, even small children understand," he said.

"There is therefore an air of unreality about the court's explanation that
bus passengers consent to searches of their luggage to 'enhance their own
safety and the safety of those around them,"' Souter added. He said a
passenger on the bus would not have felt free to end the encounter with the
officers by saying no and ignoring them.