COURT UPHOLDS RIGHT TO SEARCH CAR PASSENGER

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 17, 1993                   TAG: 9304170035
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium
COURT UPHOLDS RIGHT TO SEARCH CAR PASSENGER
Police have the right to search a passenger in a car stopped for a traffic violation, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled Friday in upholding a drug conviction.
The court voted 6-1 to uphold the cocaine conviction of George Bethea Jr., who was arrested after the car in which he was riding in Richmond was stopped for not having a city registration decal. Bethea was sentenced to 15 years in prison with seven years suspended.
His conviction was thrown out by a panel of the Virginia Court of Appeals, which found that Bethea's right against unreasonable search and seizure was violated when police ordered him out of the car. But the full court later reinstated the conviction.
The state's high court agreed that Bethea could be ordered out of the car because he was in a high-crime area and police were concerned that weapons might be in the car. He was arrested when packets of cocaine fell out of his shorts.
The police officer "was reasonably concerned for his safety and believed that Bethea might have had access to weapons with which to assault him. These facts justified the intrusion on Bethea's Fourth Amendment rights," said the opinion by Justice Elizabeth B. Lacy.
In dissent, Justice Leroy R. Hassell said police were just looking for an excuse to search Bethea for drugs.
"I do not believe that it is the law in this commonwealth, or in this nation, that one's Fourth Amendment rights are lessened simply because one happens to live or travel in a high-crime area," he wrote.
In other action, the justices ordered a new trial for a woman who sued The Alexandria Hospital for malpractice after she was operated on with improperly sterilized instruments.
Alexandria Circuit Judge Donald H. Kent had dismissed the case, saying that the patient, Margaret Howard, suffered no physical injury but only emotional distress from the hospital's error.
But the justices said the woman had to receive antibiotics intravenously and worry about getting AIDS until her test for the virus came back negative six months later.
"Clearly, as a result of the hospital's use of inadequately sterilized instruments, the plaintiff sustained positive, physical and mental hurt," said the opinion by Justice A. Christian Compton.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB