WASHINGTON -- The House voted yesterday to give law-enforcement officials more latitude to make searches without warrants, an idea long favored by conservatives but which some Democrats say infringes on the rights of law-abiding citizens.
Supporters of the measure, which passed 289-142, said it would stop the all-too-frequent occurrence of criminals' getting off on technicalities, as in cases in which evidence against them was ruled inadmissible in court because it was obtained with a faulty warrant.
Opponents said the bill would undermine one of the fundamental protections embedded in the Constitution: the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Sixty-nine Democrats joined 220 Republicans for passage. Seven Republicans, 134 Democrats and one independent voted against it.
The bill approved yesterday would permit the use during federal trials of evidence that the authorities obtained without a search warrant if they believed they were acting in compliance with the Constitution.
The Supreme Court has said that anything seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment cannot be used as evidence during a trial. But in a 1984 case involving a narcotics investigation in California, the court carved out a narrow exception to allow evidence obtained with defective search warrants if the authorities acted in the "good faith" belief that the warrant was valid.
What the House approved yesterday was an effort to create this "good faith" exception legislatively. But yesterday's measure goes further than the court did by extending the exception to searches conducted without warrants, not just searches with warrants later found to be invalid.
The legislation would apply to FBI agents, other federal law officers and to local police officers if the evidence was later introduced in a federal court.
An unlikely coalition of gun advocates and liberal Democrats blocked the House from extending the rule to agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, whom Rep. John D. Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, called "jackbooted American fascists." The bureau, which has been involved in several disputed raids to seize firearms, is the scourge of gun owners, who were joined by many liberal Democrats eager to seize any limitation on the overall measure.
"They've shown by their actions that they don't want people to have guns," Rep. Harold L. Volkmer, a Missouri Democrat who sponsored the exemption, said of the bureau. "I haven't seen any agency as abusive as BATF."
The 228-198 vote on this amendment marked a victory for supporters of firearms in the first test of their strength in this Congress. It also marked the first time that a substantial number of Republicans broke with their party leaders. Seventy-three Republicans joined 154 Democrats for passage, while 154 Republicans and 44 Democrats opposed it.
The vote on the search-and-seizure bill was the second of six that the Republicans will consider in the next few days as they rewrite last year's $30 billion anti-crime package. The House voted Tuesday to require anyone convicted of a federal crime to make restitution to the victim.
The outlook for these House initiatives is uncertain in the Senate, which is not expected to take them up for several weeks. Of all the Republicans' anti-crime proposals, President Clinton has explicitly threatened to veto only an attempt to repeal last year's ban on assault weapons.
Under the provisions of the search-and-seizure measure, evidence would not be excluded if the search was carried out "in circumstances justifying an objectively reasonable belief that it was in conformity" with Fourth Amendment protections.
At least two federal circuit courts have already allowed warrantless searches.
"The public is tired of people getting off on technicalities," said Rep. Bill McCollum, a Florida Republican who managed the bill on the floor. He said that citizens' rights would still be protected because a judge, not a police officer, would ultimately make the objective determination about whether evidence was gathered properly.
Critics argued that the bill undermined a primary protection of long standing, one asserted by the Founding Fathers and rooted in 400-year-old English law that held, basically, that a man's home is his castle and cannot be breached even by the king.
Passage of this bill, said the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, "marks a frightening and historic departure from the respect normally accorded the Fourth Amendment in the American legal system and in American society."
Critics also said that the proponents of the bill were
exaggerating the number of criminals set free because of violations of search-and-seizure rules. Proponents said 5 percent of cases fall through, while critics said only between 0.6 percent and 2.3 percent do.
While yesterday's debates were heated, the arguments are expected to grow even more contentious in the days ahead as the House considers the remaining Republican proposals in the anti-crime package.
These include measures that would set strict terms for states to receive money to build more prisons, require the federal government to reimburse states fully for incarcerating illegal aliens and undermine Mr. Clinton's pledge to put 100,000 police officers on the streets.
Also yesterday, Mr. Clinton announced the awarding of $434 million in federal grants that will enable 6,661 small local law enforcement agencies to hire 7,105 police officers.
The awards, when combined with previously announced police-hiring grants, raises to 16,671 the number of new officers who can be hired under the program.
The grants pay up to 75 percent of a new officer's salary over three years, to a maximum of $75,000 per officer. The rest of the salary is to be paid through state or local funds.