Drug Courier Challenges ‘Profile’ Arrest

The fact that Andrew Sokolow was wearing a black jump suit with a lot of gold jewelry when he returned from a quick flight to Miami, after paying for two round-trip tickets with $20 bills from a large wad of cash, was enough for federal drug agents waiting for him at Honolulu.

They grabbed him as he and a woman companion waited for a cab outside the air terminal.

Drug-sniffing dogs showed intense interest in one of Sokolow’s carry-on bags. The drug agents obtained a warrant and opened the bag, where they found 1,000 grams of cocaine.

That was on July 25, 1984. Sokolow subsequently entered a conditional plea of guilty to possessing cocaine with intent to distribute it but held on to his right to challenge a Honolulu federal judge’s negative ruling on his claim that his constitutional rights had been trampled.

In Agreement

On Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco agreed with him 2 to 1.

“Style of clothing as an indicator of life style,” wrote Judge William A. Norris, “is an extremely unreliable ground for suspecting ongoing criminal activity.”

Any curtailment of a person’s liberty, wrote Norris, must be supported by “at least a reasonable and articulable suspicion” that he is doing something illegal.

For instance, Norris and Judge Warren J. Ferguson maintained, police certainly would not be justified in stopping someone as an insider-trading suspect simply “because that person wears a pin-striped suit and a gold Cartier watch.”

Federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents, however, believed that they had reasonable cause to stop Sokolow. For one thing, they noted, he was traveling under an assumed name.

Also, he had made a fast, three-day trip to Miami, a known drug center, with only carry-on luggage. When the agents stopped him outside the Honolulu terminal--having kept tabs on him since a ticket agent had seen him peel off $2,100 in 20s--he claimed that he no longer had his ticket.

Then there was the black jump suit and all the gold jewelry.

Matched Profile

In short, Sokolow matched the DEA’s “drug courier profile” about as neatly as anyone could.

In dissent, Judge Charles Wiggins declared that innocent people do not usually carry thousands of dollars in $20 bills around and that “narcotics agents would be unlikely to ensnare ‘a large category of presumably innocent’ persons . . . if this characteristic were accorded substantial weight.”

Sokolow’s conduct, Wiggins insisted, “established a reasonable suspicion of narcotics trafficking sufficient to warrant a valid investigative stop.”

The guilty plea was reversed and the matter was sent back to the district court in Honolulu.