WASHINGTON - Police can order all the passengers, as well as the driver, to get out of the car during a traffic stop, even when they have no reason to suspect danger or wrongdoing, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday.
On a 7-2 vote, the justices said the need to protect an officer's safety outweighs the privacy rights of innocent passengers.
"Regrettably, traffic stops may be dangerous encounters," said Chief Justice William Rehnquist. In 1994 alone, 11 officers were killed and 5,762 assaulted or injured during traffic stops or pursuits, he said.
Yesterday's ruling does not say all police must or should order passengers out of cars, only that the decision to do so lies entirely with them.
The Supreme Court ruled 20 years ago that police can routinely order drivers out of the car during traffic stops. But until yesterday, many courts have assumed that an officer needs at least some specific reason or suspicion before ordering a passenger to get out and possibly be frisked.
Dissenting justices said the ruling takes away the privacy protections of tens of millions of innocent passengers. The Fourth Amendment bans "unreasonable searches and seizures" by the government, and in years past, the court regularly said officers needed a "particularized suspicion" before invading a person's privacy.
But more recently, the Supreme Court under Rehnquist has upheld broad and routine searches by police even in instances where officers have no reason to suspect an individual did anything wrong.
In 1989, the Supreme Court upheld sobriety roadblocks on the highways, and yesterday's decision brought to three the number of pro-police rulings in traffic cases in less than a year.
In June, the Supreme Court said police can use trivial traffic violations as a reason to stop a car and search the motorist. That decision, in Whren vs. U.S., upheld a common technique in the war on drugs. Police in Washington, D.C. were stopping cars that eased through stop signs in a neighborhood where drug use was rampant.
Though the court agreed the traffic stop was a pretext to search for drugs, it unanimously upheld the stop anyway.
In November, the court said in Ohio vs. Robinette that police who stop a motorist can press to search the entire vehicle and its trunk, even though they have no reason to suspect wrongdoing. The ruling reversed a decision of the Ohio courts, which said motorists must be told they is free to go after dealing with a traffic violations.
The latest decision stems from an incident on the evening of June 8, 1994 when a state trooper spotted a car driving on Interstate Highway 95 near Baltimore without a license tag. After speaking to the driver, he noted the front seat passenger was extremely nervous, and he ordered him to get out of the car. When he did, the passenger, Jerry Wilson, dropped crack cocaine to the ground.
Wilson was arrested for drug possession, but a Maryland court of appeals threw out the evidence on the grounds the officer had no authority to order him out of the car.
Reversing that decision in Maryland vs. Wilson, Rehnquist said the intrusion on the passenger's privacy is minimal and not a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
In a partial dissent, Justices John Paul Stevens and Anthony Kennedy agreed the passenger in this case could have been searched, but they disagreed with giving the police a blanket authority to order such searches of passengers.
"The practical effect of our holding in Whren (vs. U.S., in June) is to allow the police to stop vehicles in almost countless circumstances," Kennedy said. "When Whren is coupled with today's holding, the Court puts tens of millions of passengers at risk of arbitrary control by the police."