- WASHINGTON - In terms of
personal privacy, a man's home is his castle.
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- It is a bedrock principle of the Fourth Amendment that
law-enforcement officers may not intrude into someone's house without the
authorization of a judge.
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- But what about a car? Do Americans have the same right
to privacy when they take to the nation's roads and highways?
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- Not even close, say legal experts.
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- "When you are in a car, you are fair game,"
says Tracey Maclin, a law professor and Fourth Amendment scholar at Boston
University School of Law.
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- The limited privacy protections that do exist for cars
may shrink even more as a result of a case set for oral argument Wednesday
at the US Supreme Court. At issue in Thornton v. US is whether police may
conduct a search of a passenger compartment without a warrant even if they
arrest the driver or a recent occupant outside the car.
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- If a majority of justices permit the practice, it would
expand an existing rule from a 1981 Supreme Court decision called New York
v. Belton. That ruling allowed police to search a car's interior, without
first obtaining a warrant, whenever a suspect is arrested while inside
the car.
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- The Bush administration and 21 states are urging the
justices to extend the rule to authorize warrantless searches when the
arrestee exits his or her vehicle voluntarily prior to encountering police.
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- "Belton's bright-line rule applies whenever such
an arrest takes place, whether or not the police initiate contact with
an arrestee while he is still inside the vehicle," says US Solicitor
General Theodore Olson in his brief to the court.
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- The issue arises in the case of Marcus Thornton. In July
2001, a police officer in Norfolk, Va., became suspicious of Mr. Thornton
after noticing that the license plate on his Lincoln Town Car was registered
to a 1982 Chevrolet.
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- The officer followed Thornton into a shopping-center
parking lot. But before the officer could intercept him, Thornton got out
of his car. The police officer confronted Thornton in the lot, questioning
him about his car registration. The officer asked Thornton a series of
questions, including whether he had any narcotics or weapons. Thornton
said he did not.
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- Thornton then consented to a frisk, and the officer soon
discovered a quantity of marijuana and crack cocaine in his pocket.
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- After arresting Thornton, the officer searched his car.
He found a loaded semiautomatic pistol.
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- At trial, Thornton was convicted of drug dealing and
weapons possession charges. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
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- On appeal, Thornton's lawyers challenged the admission
of the handgun as evidence, saying that police needed a warrant to search
Thornton's car. A federal appeals court panel in Richmond ruled that the
officer acted within his authority.
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- Thornton's lawyer, Frank Dunham, says the high court
should reverse that decision and make clear that such warrantless searches
may take place only when the initial contact with police occurs while the
arrestee is still in the car.
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- If the person leaves the car after contact with police,
the police could still search the car, Mr. Dunham says. But police should
not be permitted to search when the driver or occupant left the car without
knowledge they would be confronted by police.
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- Dunham says this approach is in keeping with two original
justifications for warrantless searches of cars as part of arrests: to
protect the safety of officers by permitting them to search for weapons
that might be within reach, and to protect against the destruction or concealment
of evidence.
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- Olson sees problems with certain curbs on searches. "Such
a limitation would create an incentive for suspects to jump out of cars
before police initiate contact with them and, at the same time, encourage
police to rush contact with suspects before they can exit a car, creating
a potentially explosive dynamic," he says in his brief.
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- Copyright © 2003 The Christian Science Monitor.
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