JUSTICE : Court to Decide if Pursuit Is Detention : In California, a suspect may fare better at trial if he runs from the police. Evidence produced by chases is thrown out.

Two police officers on patrol in a high-crime area in Oakland spotted four young men standing next to a car. As the patrol car approached, the other car sped away and the youths ran.

With their curiosity aroused, the policemen stopped, and one chased the youths. Has the officer “seized” them by chasing them down an Oakland street?

Yes, said a California court of appeals, thus bringing into play strict rules that govern what evidence may be used in such a case. Based on the conclusion that the youths were seized as they were being chased, the state court dismissed as evidence a rock of cocaine one of the juveniles had tossed aside.

Now, the question is before the U.S. Supreme Court: Can the police “seize” a suspect merely by chasing him?

ISSUE: For the street-level war on drugs, the answer is significant. Hundreds of times a day, police officers on patrol come across persons who they think might be dealing in illegal drugs.

The officers may ask questions of a person on the street, but they may not officially “seize” someone without a clear reason to believe he has broken the law. If an officer is judged to have illegally seized a person, any evidence that is later found is thrown out of court under the so-called “exclusionary rule.”

According to California prosecutors, the state courts are “in hopeless disarray” in defining a “seizure.” The legal confusion is hampering the daily pursuit of drug criminals, they say.

“If a person runs from a police officer, it is a fiction, both physically and constitutionally, to assert that the person is seized,” Deputy Atty. Gen. Ronald Niver told the justices in an appeal of the Oakland case. On Monday, the high court heard arguments in the case (California vs. Hodari D., 89-1632).

BACKGROUND: Last year, a three-judge state appeals court in San Francisco overturned the youth’s drug conviction. It ruled that the officer’s pursuit of Hodari D. was “intimidating” and “coercive.” Because the officer did not have a firm reason to seize the youth, the chase was illegal, and the evidence against the juvenile was thrown out.

James L. Lozenski, a Berkeley attorney representing Hodari D., said in an interview that the policemen had no reason to chase the youth, so the evidence should have been suppressed. “Wouldn’t you find it intimidating to have police running at you?” he asked.

In March, an appeals court in Orange County issued a similar ruling. It threw out evidence against Ignacio Salgado, who ran when officers in San Juan Capistrano saw him talking to a known drug dealer. Before he was caught, Salgado tossed away “four bags of white powder.”

But the appeals court ruled that the policemen had engaged in an illegal “seizure” by running after Salgado.

“Giving chase in a manner designed to overtake . . . the individual . . . is a detention,” the court said. Orange County prosecutors appealed the case (California vs. Salgado, 90-209), and it will probably be governed by the high court’s decision in the Hodari D. case.

Under the prevailing law in California, a drug suspect may be well advised to run from the police. Last year, the high court let stand the drug conviction of a Santa Ana man who was stopped on a city street, questioned and ordered to turn over identification. When he opened his wallet, police saw a packet of cocaine and arrested him. In this situation, the court said, the suspect has not been seized but is merely engaged in a “consensual encounter” with officers.

The cases will force the Supreme Court to take another look at its own hazy definition of what constitutes a “seizure” under the 4th Amendment. In the 1980 case of U.S. vs. Mendenhall, the court said that police officers have seized an individual if he has reason to believe he is not “free to leave.”

In the Santa Ana case, a state court interpreted the Supreme Court decision to mean that the suspect stopped on the street should have known he was free to walk away, one court said. In the Oakland case, a second state court said that a youth being chased by police would not feel free to leave--even though the youth in fact ran away.

OUTLOOK: The Supreme Court under Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist has been inclined to give the police more leeway in searching and seizing criminal suspects. The Bush Administration has urged the justices to use the Hodari D. case to set a clear, simple rule: A person is seized only when police have “physical control” over him. In a friend-of-the-court brief, the Justice Department said the drugs tossed away by a fleeing suspect should be allowed as evidence because the suspect is not seized until he is caught.

Meanwhile, other pro-prosecution groups urged the justices to say an officer is justified in running after a fleeing person.

“Flight is a good indicator of a guilty mind and raises important questions that an officer should try to answer,” said the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, based in Sacramento.

A decision in the Hodari D. case is expected in the spring.