Bond, Steven v. U.S. (04/17/2000)

By: Amy Merrick, Medill News Service

Questions presented

Whether a search occurs for 4th Amendment purposes when a law enforcement officer manipulates a bus passenger's personal carry-on luggage to determine its contents?

Brief

Steven DeWayne Bond set out on a cross-country trip, heading from California to Arkansas aboard a Greyhound bus. While passing through Texas, the bus stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint in Sierra Blanca for an immigration inspection.

At the checkpoint, Border Patrol Agent Cesar Cantu moved through the bus, heading from front to back as he verified the immigration status of each passenger. Once he completed this brief check, Cantu returned to the front of the bus. Along the way, he stopped to feel and squeeze all the carry-on luggage stored in the Greyhound's overhead bins.

Something in Bond's bag made him stop.

Cantu asked to open the bag. ""Go ahead,"" Bond replied. Inside the bag the agent found a brick of methamphetamine wrapped in a pair of pants. After Cantu told him his Miranda rights, Bond admitted he was taking the drugs to be sold in Little Rock, Ark.

Bond was indicted on charges of conspiracy to possess and possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine. Prior to trial, Bond claimed that Cantu's search was illegal and moved to suppress the brick of drugs found in his bag. A federal judge denied the motion, and a district court convicted Bond of both charges. and sentenced him to 57 months in prison.

In a brief opinion, a unanimous 5th Circuit Court of Appeals panel affirmed, concluding that because Bond consented to the agent's search of the inside of his bag, the court needed to decide only whether Cantu violated the defendant's 4th Amendment rights by squeezing the bag prior to that search.

How does the court determine whether an item has been searched? According to the previous standard, ""Government action amounts to a search when it infringes an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to accept as reasonable."" The appeals court ruled that Cantu's squeezing the bag did not infringe Bond's privacy because Bond had placed his bag in a common area of the bus.

""By placing his bag in the overhead bin, Bond knowingly exposed it to the public and, therefore, did not have a reasonable expectation that his bag would not be handled or manipulated by others,"" the court stated in its opinion.

However, Bond said Cantu's action amounted to a search because the agent manipulated his bag in a different manner than other passengers would. The appeals court rejected this argument, referring to a 1986 Supreme Court decision that a defendant who grew marijuana plants in his backyard knowingly exposed the plants to aerial observation. According to the Court, the fact that the officers were trained to recognize marijuana plants was irrelevant.

Thus in the Bond case, the court concluded, ""The fact that Agent Cantu's manipulation of Bond's bag was calculated to detect contraband is irrelevant for Fourth Amendment purposes.""

The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari on Oct. 12, 1999, allowed Bond to proceed in forma pauperis, and limited review to the first question presented in Bond's petition.

On April 17, 2000, the Court, divided 7-2, held that the 4th Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches is violated when agents physically manipulate a carry-on bag.

In so holding, the Court rejected the government's argument that by exposing his bag to the public, Bond lost a reasonable expectation that his bag would not be physically manipulated bu authorities. Although a bus passenger clearly expects that other passengers or bus employees may handle his bag, he does not expect that they will feel the bag in an exploratory manner, the Court reasoned.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice William Rehnquist found that physically invasive inspections are simply more intrusive than purely visual ones.

Justices Stephen Breyer and Antonin Scalia, two traditionally ideological opposites, dissented.