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Wyoming Nights

© Frank Monaldo

DAVID WAS DRIVING. David's girl friend and another passenger Sandra Houghton were crammed in the front seat with him as they cruised Wyoming roads in the early hours of July 23, 1995. A state trooper pulled over Young for speeding and a broken brake light. Apparently, Young's brake light was not the only bulb that was not lit. Young had a hypodermic syringe sticking out of his pocket. When asked about the syringe, Young replied that he used it to take drugs. This was not the answer Young's lawyer would have preferred, but it was Houghton who makes this case interesting.

After Young's admission, the police had probable cause to search Young's vehicle. Houghton's purse was in the back seat and the Wyoming officer searched through it. Inside he found a syringe with 60 ccs of methamphetamine. The judge allowed the evidence in the trial and a jury convicted Houghton.

On appeal the Wyoming Supreme Court overturned the conviction arguing that when an "officer knows or should know that a container is the personal effect of a passenger who is not suspected of criminal activity, then the container is outside the scope of the search." Without evidence, Houghton walks.

This year in a 6-3 vote, the US Supreme Court ruled the search "reasonable" and consequently the results of the search were admissible. At first blush, it appears that the Wyoming Supreme Court got it right and the Supreme Court's decision was just one more, as the American Civil Liberties Union put it, "example of the so-called war on drugs exemption to our Constitution's rule on searches and seizers."

However, the decision was far more considered and thoughtful than the disproportionate reaction to it. Justice Scalia's majority opinion traces precedent to the search of ships and carriages for contraband in the eighteenth century to United States v. Ross (1982). Ross held that when probable cause justifies a vehicle search, "it justifies the search of every part of the vehicle and its contents that may conceal the object the search." There is no general exclusion based on the ownership of the contents of the vehicle.

The distinction the Court was trying to draw was between containers in a vehicle and the "heightened protection" accorded a person proper. In the present case, a majority of the Court viewed the search of a purse in the back seat of the car a search of a container, not the search of a person proper. By contrast, searching an unsuspected person's pocket in this context would not have been permitted. One can easily imagine in between situations the court did not address. What if the purse was resting in the woman's lap? What if a purse is slung around a person's neck? Just how close to the person must a container be before it is considered to be on the person proper?

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