The state's highest court further limited police drug searches yesterday, ruling that police cannot search passengers for drugs solely because a police dog detects a drug scent in a car.

The 5-2 ruling on an issue previously untouched by the Court of Appeals draws a sharp distinction between a vehicle and its driver or owner, and the passengers.

It says that there must be a link between the suspected drugs and the passengers before an officer can frisk the passengers.

"A passenger in an automobile is generally not perceived to have the kind of control over the contents of the vehicle as does a driver," Judge Dale R. Cathell wrote for the majority of the Court of Appeals in a case stemming from a 1999 drug arrest in Annapolis.

Defense lawyers said they believe the ruling increases the protection of individual citizens.

"I think it matters to anyone who rides as a passenger with someone else," said Bradford C. Peabody, the assistant public defender who successfully argued the appeal.

But the state attorney general's office - which argued that if a drug dog alerts police to the possibility of drugs in a vehicle, everyone inside falls under suspicion - will consider asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case.

"It limits what the police can do," said Kathryn Grill Graeff, chief of the office's criminal appeals division.

"Here, there were five people in the vehicle, and under the circumstances in that case, we had argued that we would have probable cause to believe there were drugs."

The case stems from the arrest of Earmon Alvin Wallace Sr. on July 9, 1999, after a traffic stop in Annapolis. Wallace, then 34 and a Landover resident, was one of four passengers in a car that was stopped for speeding and running a red light.

While an Annapolis police officer was checking driver's license information, an officer brought took a drug-sniffing dog to the car, and the dog detected a drug odor.

Officers who searched the passengers said they felt something on Wallace. After Wallace wiggled his hips, they said, a plastic bag of crack cocaine slipped down his pants leg. Wallace was arrested.

Assistant public defender William Davis argued during the Anne Arundel County Circuit Court trial two years ago that, under prosecutors' logic, an entire busload of riders could be searched if a police dog detected the smell of drugs on the bus. That, he said, was unreasonable.

Wallace was convicted of possession with intent to distribute drugs. He was sentenced to five years in prison, with 15 years suspended.

His conviction was overturned by the Court of Special Appeals in February, a decision upheld yesterday.

Other rulings

The ruling is the latest in a series in which the Court of Appeals, and some federal benches and courts in other states, has drawn a line between the passengers in a vehicle and the car and its driver.

Some courts have said that being near incriminating evidence - such as two marijuana seeds on the floor of a car, in one Maryland case - is not enough reason to search a passenger.

But at least two federal courts have ruled the other way on passenger searches.

In a dissenting opinion yesterday, Judges Glenn T. Harrell Jr. and Lynne A. Battaglia said they believe the passenger search should have been allowed, as it was in those federal cases.

The decision does not rule out all passenger searches, and it suggests that a police dog sniffing a specific passenger or a passenger acting suspiciously might be among the reasons for a search.

'Very disappointed'

But prosecutors are still unsatisfied.

"We are very disappointed with the Court of Appeals decision," said Kristin Riggin, spokeswoman for the Anne Arundel County state's attorney's office.