Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs
From: [b--l--n] at [aha.com]
Subject: Some Justice in Idaho?
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 93 19:02:52 GMT

Standard copyright disclaimer applies(I didn't get permission to copy this),
and all spelling/grammatic  errors are mine.
-----------------------------------------------------
>From The Lewiston Morning Tribune: Sunday, August 15, 1993

JUDGE TRASHES RUBBISH SEARCH

AP COEUR D'ALENE ID- First District Judge Gary Haman has trashed a state
narcotics cop's warrantless search through a Post Falls family's garbage.

Haman's ruling remands Tom Kline's case back to Magistrate Paul McCabe,
where Kline pleaded guilty last year to simple possession of marijuana.

Kline and his Moscow Attorney on Friday hailed the rubbish ruling.

"This is a very hot issue nationally," said Thomas Adams, who represented
Kline in his appeal.

A growing number of states are breaking away from the U.S. Supreme Court's
decision it is alright for police to sift through peoples' garbage cans
without a warrant, Adams said.

If Haman's ruling withstands likely appeals, Idaho would become the seventh
state to declare its citizens enjoy greater privacy under their state consti-
tution than they do under the U.S. Constitution.

Kline, a member of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws,
had written a letter to the Coeur d'Alene Press in 1991, urging readers to
re-think the nation's ban on hemp.

The letter prompted Walt Richard, a former Coeur d'Alene police officer now
employed by the state narcotics bureau, to search Kline's curbside garbage
cans.

After two such searches, a thorough reading of all the papers and bills Kline
and his wife had thrown out, and a phone call to Kline posing as a marijuana
legalization sympathizer, Richard turned up three-tenths of a gram of mari-
juana stems.

He used that to support a warrant to search the Klines' home where 3.1 grams
of rolled marijuana cigarettes were found.

Kline appealed the search, arguing Richard had no business going through his
trash.

In agreeing, Haman said Idahoans "have a long tradition of clinging to their
independence and privacy. ...Most Idahoans would find it offensive to have
anyone-neighbor, friend, detective or government agent-rifling through their 
trash.

"If government agents were permitted to indiscriminately search through
curbside garbage with less than probable cause to support a search warrant,
there would be a chilling effect upon political affiliation and journalistic
endeavors," Haman continued.

Kootenai County Deputy Prosecutor Lansing Haynes said he is reviewing Haman's
ruling.  It has 42 days to appeal.

"I think it's a terrible waste of the taxpayers' money," Kline said.  "When
you look at what it cost to execute the initial investigation and then take it
through  the system and the appeals process,it's typical of the current policy.

"I'm more upset about the First Amendment aspects of the case than the search
and seizure aspect, the fact that the investigation was instigated solely on a 
letter to the editor," he said.

"It's cut and dried that if you're going to speak out, you've got to be pre-
pared to pay the consequences."
---------------------------------


--