NO REVIEW FOR DRUG DEALER POLICY

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court refused Monday to enter a constitutional
debate over the policy of banishing drug dealers or other criminals from
neighborhoods with severe drug and crime problems.

The court did not comment in rejecting an appeal from authorities in
Cincinnati. The city tried to ban drug criminals from the crime- and
drug-plagued Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, but the policy was declared
unconstitutional in state and federal courts.

The issue may return to the high court soon, however. Challenges to
"drug-free zones" are still working their way through lower courts.

Cincinnati's 1996 law drew figurative lines around drug-infested
neighborhoods. People arrested or convicted on drug charges could be banned
from the outlined neighborhood for a year or more, or face arrest if they
were caught in their old haunts.

The city claims the policy targeted repeat criminals and helped cut down on
drug crime. Cincinnati stopped enforcing the law after a federal court
declared it unconstitutional in 2000.

Last year, the state's highest court issued a similar ruling.

The Ohio Supreme Court found that banishing someone violated a
constitutionally protected right to travel. The court also said banishment
amounts to double punishment, since it imposed an additional restriction on
a convict beyond his regular sentence or fine.

"A person subject to the exclusion ordinance may not enter a drug-exclusion
zone to speak with counsel, to visit family, to attend church, to receive
emergency medical care, to go to a grocery store, or just stand on a street
corner and look at a blue sky," Ohio Chief Justice Thomas Moyer wrote.

The case involved George Burnett, convicted of possessing drug
paraphernalia in 1998. Burnett was banished from Over-the-Rhine for 90 days
after his arrest, and for a year following his conviction. He was arrested
for trespassing in the exclusion zone a few months after his conviction.

"Temporary exclusion from a neighborhood is not a punitive criminal-type
physical incarceration," city lawyers wrote in asking the Supreme Court to
hear the case.

Cincinnati's law was based on one in Portland, Oregon. A state court upheld
the Portland ban.

"Drug crime is rampant in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati,
recidivism contributes to that rampant drug crime, and a comparable
exclusion zone ordinance in Portland, Oregon was very successful,"
Cincinnati's lawyers wrote.

Over-the-Rhine is a poor, mostly black neighborhood near Cincinnati's
downtown business district. The neighborhood erupted in three nights of
rioting last year after a white police officer fatally shot an unarmed
black man. Dozens of people were injured and more than 800 were arrested.

The case is Ohio v. Burnett, 01-1235.