Supreme Court OKs pat down

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Boston (Dolan) — An officer who stopped a vehicle for a minor infraction, then asked a passenger to get out and patted him down did not violate the Fourth Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.

The case stemmed from a 2002 traffic stop for a minor insurance infraction. During the stop, an officer noticed defendant Lemon Johnson in the back seat looking at the squad car and whispering something to the other passengers.

The officer asked the defendant, who was wearing what the officer believed to be gang colors, to get out of the car, and he complied.

The office then asked him to turn around so she could pat him down. She found a gun in his waistband and marijuana.

During his trial on charges of illegal possession of a gun and drugs, the defendant moved to suppress the evidence on the grounds that the pat down constituted an illegal search because the officer had no reason to believe he was involved in a crime. The trial judge denied the motion and he was convicted.

But the Arizona Court of Appeals reversed the conviction, ruling that a police frisk absent suspicion of criminal activity violated Johnson’s Fourth Amendment rights. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, and on Jan. 26 reversed the state court’s ruling.

In a unanimous opinion written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the court said that an officer making a traffic stop may question passengers on unrelated matters “so long as these inquiries do not measurably extend the duration of the stop.”

Because a seizure for purposes of a traffic stop extends to all passengers for the duration of the stop, an officer is constitutionally permitted to search passengers to protect him or herself and to secure evidence, the court held.

The officer “surely was not constitutionally required to give [the passenger] an opportunity to depart the scene after he exited the vehicle without first ensuring that, in so doing, she was not permitting a dangerous person to get behind her,” Ginsburg wrote.

U.S. Supreme Court. Arizona v. Johnson, No. 07-1122. Jan. 26, 2009.