Supreme Court to Review Rulings in 2 Drug Cases

Heeding pleas from state prosecutors, the Supreme Court on Monday said it would review two cases in which California courts threw out drug evidence seized by the police.

In one case, a state appeals court ruled that policemen patrolling a high crime area in Oakland had no valid basis for chasing a fleeing young male and, therefore, could not legally seize cocaine that he had thrown to the ground.

In the second case, a state appeals court in Orange County ruled that police officers in Santa Ana acted illegally when they seized a bag full of marijuana from an auto trunk without having obtained a search warrant.

State Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp urged the Supreme Court to hear the cases because, he said, the California courts are in “hopeless disarray” on how to apply the 4th Amendment ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures.”

Prosecutors and police contend that the war on drugs has been hampered by hypertechnical applications of the 4th Amendment and the so-called “exclusionary rule.” If officers are judged to have acted illegally in searching for or seizing evidence, the evidence is excluded from a trial, which often permits a crime suspect to go free.

In recent years, the Supreme Court, has shown sympathy for the prosecutors’ view and has appeared to be on the lookout for cases in which drug evidence has been tossed out of court. But civil libertarians as well as many state judges say they worry that police officers are being given unfettered power to stop citizens and seize their belongings as part of the war on drugs.

The Oakland case began on the night of April 18, 1988, when two officers in a patrol car came upon four youths standing near a car parked at the curb. On spotting the policemen, the young men fled, The officers chased them. Before one youth was caught, he tossed aside what later proved to be a lump of cocaine.

Based on this account, a three-judge state appeals court ruled that police did not have “specific and articulable facts” of a crime in progress and, therefore, had no legal reason for chasing the young men. The cocaine evidence must be thrown out, the court said in the case (California vs. Hodari D.).

In March, the California Supreme Court refused to hear the state’s appeal. But, on Monday, the high court justices announced that they would hear the case, probably in January.

The Orange County case stems from the Oct. 30, 1987 arrest of Charles Steven Acevedo, then 21, who had left a West Stevens Avenue apartment that was under police surveillance.

The surveillance was begun after Santa Ana narcotics Officer Don Coleman had been notified by a federal agent in Hawaii that a picnic cooler containing nine bags of marijuana was being sent by Federal Express to the apartment.

Santa Ana narcotics officers waiting outside the apartment watched Acevedo and another man enter the apartment, then emerge with a brown paper bag that Acevedo placed in his trunk. The officers stopped Acevedo a few blocks away. Although they did not have a search warrant, the police searched his trunk, found the bag, and discovered that it contained about half a pound of marijuana.

Justice Thomas F. Crosby Jr. of the 4th District Court of Appeal ruled that the search was illegal, but he noted that the police had a legitimate fear that the evidence would be gone once Acevedo drove away. Crosby agreed that the police were permitted to search the trunk and seize the bag.

“But could the officers open the bag they lawfully seized?” Crosby asked in his ruling. “They could not without first obtaining a search warrant.”

In earlier rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court has said that officers who have evidence that a motorist has committed a crime may search that person’s entire car. But in other rulings, the court has suggested that a locked trunk containing luggage is entitled to a higher level of privacy than the rest the car.

In a third case from California, the justices will decide whether Riverside County is violating the rights of arrested persons by holding them for up to five days before they are given hearings.

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