By MICHAEL VIRTANEN

Associated Press

ALBANY - New York's top court ruled April 1 that police can't continue a common practice of using a broad warrant to strip-search everyone in a particular location without a strong indication that the place is "devoted" to crime.

The Court of Appeals said drugs found on one man during a 2006 Syracuse apartment raid can't be used as evidence. Robert Mothersell and a half-dozen others were strip-searched. The warrant was based on two drug purchases by informants over three weeks before the search.

The court said broad warrants are constitutional when police surveillance shows everyone likely has contraband or crime evidence, but the warrant was invalid in Mothersell's case.

Hon. Jonathan Lippman wrote that there is an "unwavering" requirement for a magistrate to find probable cause when signing warrants to search both a place and each person present.

"The essential object ... is to guard against the authorization of a dragnet likely to include the innocent, a danger that would otherwise routinely be courted in issuing all-persons-present warrants," Lippman wrote. The court's other six judges agreed.

The court said police need "a reasonable suspicion" of hidden contraband for strip searches and specific facts to justify intrusive body cavity inspections.

Police said Mothersell was strip-searched - he said cavity-searched - with drugs found in his buttocks. Police acknowledged that he wasn't under arrest at the time.

A Syracuse detective in the case said at a court hearing that he had taken part "in the execution of hundreds of all-person-present warrants," that the people were "routinely" strip-searched "and required to facilitate the examination of their anal and genital cavities."

Lippman described circumstances where such warrants should be approved.

"We think it clear that surveillance of a location may yield a factual basis to infer with the requisite force that the place is devoted to an ongoing illicit purpose, such as the manufacture or marketing of narcotics ... and that all those present at the time of the contemplated search will probably be in possession of contraband or other specified evidence of illegality," he wrote.

In a concurring opinion, Hon. Susan Read said the warrant was "a close question" in this case, but the information in the police application was "too skimpy." She said such broad warrants, when properly supported, are a tool for protecting nearby residents and combatting drug crimes in their midst.

Onondaga County Chief Assistant District Attorney James Maxwell said the court ruled on both state and federal constitutional grounds, ending the case. He noted that the court did not strike down the provision in criminal-procedure law that permits all-persons-present warrants, but gave examples of what judges should be looking for in authorizing them.

Maxwell said it is essentially a fact-specific case that will likely have an effect going forward, not retroactively.

Calls to Mothersell's lawyer were not immediately returned.