McClatchy: Supreme Court considers case involving searches of car passengers

[babylonsister]

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/17123501.htm

Supreme Court considers case involving searches of car passengers
By Michael Doyle
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - A routine traffic stop in California's rural Central Valley six years ago yielded drugs, arrests and a constitutional conundrum that finally reached the Supreme Court on Monday.

Passengers should be heeding this case. Police definitely are.

In hour-long oral arguments Monday morning, justices weighed whether a passenger in a stopped car is considered detained. Paradoxes complicate the case, which arose from a 2001 arrest in Yuba City, 40 minutes north of Sacramento.

For the first time, the Supreme Court will decide whether the Fourth Amendment's protections against illegal search and seizure cover passengers in a car that law enforcement officers have stopped. Some lower courts have ruled that such passengers are free to walk away. Other lower courts have ruled that passengers in a stopped car are, in fact, detained. The Supreme Court's ruling will resolve the ambiguity.

more...