Pennsylvania high court casts doubt on searches at bus stops
----------
A Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision puts serious doubt on
the growing practice of police boarding commercial buses,
intimidating passengers and searching luggage. (12/21/00)

from - http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1907/a07.html?397

HIGH COURT CASTS DOUBT ON SEARCHES AT BUS STOPS

BEDFORD, Pa. -- Smalltime boxer Mark Anthony Turner could have been in Bedford
County Jail today, marking his second day of a one-to two-year stint for carrying a brick of
cocaine in his briefcase.

Instead, he's waiting to withdraw his guilty plea -- and probably to watch drug charges being
dropped, his lawyer said -- thanks to a state Supreme Court decision that puts police on
shakier ground when they use the proven tactic of boarding commercial buses and trying to
ferret out drug carriers among the passengers.

"They probably ought not to do that," said Thomas Crawford, a Pittsburgh attorney
representing Turner. "People are citizens. You can't just board a bus and say, 'Stop, identify
your luggage. Sieg heil!' "

The Supreme Court ruling doesn't name Turner.

It's about Dorothy Cooke, a New York City woman who was caught aboard a bus at a
suburban Philadelphia bus stop in January 1998. In her purse was a pound of cocaine.

The Montgomery County public defender's office fought the county district attorney,
convincing the Supreme Court that Cooke was detained improperly when police boarded the
bus, questioned passengers and focused on her during what was supposed to be a random
hunt for drugs.

But the decision -- filed Dec. 5, two weeks before Turner was to be sentenced -- mirrors the
Turner case and similar searches at a bus stop in Breezewood, a heavily traveled Pennsylvania
Turnpike interchange in eastern Bedford County.

There, just after midnight on Oct. 21, 1999, state police boarded a Greyhound bus at the Post
House, a popular bus stopover, and wound up arresting Turner, 30, of New Albany, Ind., for
drug possession and possession with intent to deliver.

It was one of three buses police boarded at random that night, troopers testified at a hearing a
week later. They followed their practiced routine, asking passengers to pair up with their
luggage, then fishing an unclaimed briefcase from an overhead luggage rack, declaring it
abandoned and opening it.

Inside, police found a 2.2-pound brick of cocaine, wrapped in duct tape. They identified the
bag as Turner's when they found a cell phone carrier that matched his phone, a motel key, and
later, DNA from a toothbrush found in the briefcase.

"The procedure was more akin to a border search in Nazi Germany than to a public bus rest
stop encounter between citizens and the police," Crawford complained in a court brief last
year, asking to have the evidence suppressed.

But Bedford County Judge Daniel Howsare disagreed, saying police were not threatening, that
nobody was being detained, and that state law classified the briefcase as abandoned and
allowed police to search it.

Turner responded by pleading guilty to possession with intent to deliver under a deal that was
supposed to get him one to two years in the county jail.

But before he could appear for sentencing Monday, Crawford asked Howsare to delay the
proceedings to give everybody a chance to digest the Cooke decision, a one-page order
accompanied by a two-page statement of dissent from Justices Thomas Saylor and Ronald
Castille Jr.

Kevin Harley, a spokesman for state Attorney General Mike Fisher, said that Fisher would
review the Cooke decision "and make appropriate changes" to police procedure during bus
stop drug searches.

Howsare expects to take up the matter again Jan. 18, likely deciding then if the evidence -- the
linchpin in the prosecution's case -- will be tossed out.