Are Passengers Seized Too ?

I've been in cars that have been pulled over by the
police and treated by them just as if I too was driving.
Yeah, they asked me for identification and subjected me
to unwanted searches. Well the U.S. Supreme court will
take up this matter to determine if a passenger is also
seized or not during a routine traffic stop. What do you
think about this?


Are the passengers in a car that has been stopped by the police "seized" by the authorities, or are they free to walk away?The Supreme Court took up that question Monday in a California case that could decide whether passengers are protected from "unreasonable searches and seizures" when officers pull over the vehicle in which they are riding.

Last year, the California Supreme Court gave police more leeway to search occupants of cars they stop when it ruled that drug evidence found on a passenger could be used against him.The passenger was "not seized as a constitutional matter" when the driver was pulled over, the state court said in a 4-3 decision. Under that reasoning, the passenger had given tacit consent to be searched by staying in the car. Most of the justices on the U.S. high court said Monday that view did not square with common sense. Several said they would not feel free to walk away if a police officer stopped the car they were riding in.

The tenor of their comments suggested the California ruling would be reversed."Policemen don't like people jumping out of the car," said Justice Antonin Scalia. "If I were … a passenger … I would certainly not feel free to immediately open the door and start walking away."Asked Justice David H. Souter: "Don't you think that a reasonable passenger … would assume the officer is in control and that, in the absence of some affirmative indication that the passenger can go, that he's supposed to sit there?"A lawyer for California defending the state court's ruling insisted passengers in stopped cars are free to leave.

He also described the interaction between police and passengers as "consensual encounters."When a police car flashes its red light, the officer is ordering the driver to pull over, said Clifford Zall, a deputy state attorney general. "When the driver submits to that show of authority, the driver is seized. The passenger is not seized."





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