Other Cases The Supreme Court also yesterday: Refused to hear Florida's appeal of a state Supreme Court decision invalidating a law designed to preserve the life of a brain-damaged woman whose husband wants to end life support. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush had persuaded the state Legislature to enact legislation authorizing reattachment of a feeding tube to Terri Schiavo, who suffered brain damage in 1990. She has become a symbol for anti-abortion groups. Yesterday, the National Right To Life Committee denounced the court's refusal to hear Florida's appeal. Declined to review a ruling by the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that South Carolina engaged in unconstitutional "viewpoint discrimination" by letting motorists opposed to abortion pay $70 for special license plates reading "Choose Life." The proceeds went to pregnancy crisis centers but not to abortion clinics. Eleven other states have similar programs and another 11 -- including Ohio -- are considering them. The justices passed up an opportunity to reconcile the 4th Circuit's ruling with a decision by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that abortion-rights supporters couldn't challenge Louisiana's license-plate program. Returned hundreds of cases challenging federal criminal sentences with instructions to lower courts to consider them in light of the court's holding earlier this month that it is unconstitutional for federal judges to increase a convicted defendant's prison time based on conduct not found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. The court in that ruling said federal sentencing guidelines based in part on such conduct could still serve an "advisory" role for judges.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled yesterday that police can turn a drug-sniffing dog loose on a car whose driver was stopped for speeding without violating the Constitution's ban on "unreasonable searches and seizures."

By a surprisingly lopsided vote of 6-2, the court reinstated the drug conviction of an Illinois man who was stopped for driving 71 mph on a highway with a posted speed limit of 65 mph.

While the officer who stopped Roy Caballes was writing a ticket, another officer who heard about the stop on a police radio arrived with a drug-sniffing dog that "alerted" when it smelled the outside of the car's trunk. Police opened the trunk and found marijuana.

The Illinois Supreme Court had reversed Caballes' conviction -- which had brought a 12-year prison sentence -- on the grounds that use of the dog unnecessarily prolonged a routine traffic stop and violated Caballes' right under the Fourth Amendment to be free of "unreasonable searches and seizures."

In an opinion by Justice John Paul Stevens, the U.S. high court disagreed, noting that the stop including the deployment of the dog "lasted less than 10 minutes."

Stevens stopped short of saying whether the use of a drug-sniffing canine is a "search" under the Fourth Amendment. Instead, he cited an earlier decision in which the court said drug detection by dogs is in a legal class by itself because the only thing they can detect is the presence of contraband.

Stevens' opinion left open the possibility that it would be unconstitutional to detain a motorist "beyond the time reasonably required" to deal with the traffic offense to await the arrival of a drug-sniffing dog.

It was silent, however, on a question that attracted considerable attention at oral arguments in November: If having a dog sniff the outside of a stopped car is constitutional, would it also be constitutional for police to have dogs sniff parked cars? "What's to prevent people from taking canine units up and down the aisles in a parking lot until they get the alert?" asked Sharon L. Davies, a professor and associate dean at Ohio State University's law school. "The majority does not answer that question."

Justices David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented from yesterday's ruling. Souter asserted that there was ample evidence that dogs sometimes erred or picked up traces of drug residue on currency.

"The infallible dog ... is a creature of legal fiction," Souter wrote.

In her dissent, Ginsburg wrote: "A drug-detection dog is an intimidating animal. Injecting such an animal into a routine traffic stop changes the character of the encounter between the police and the motorist. The stop becomes broader, more adversarial and (in at least some cases) longer."

Only eight justices participated in the decision because Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who is being treated for thyroid cancer, has withdrawn from cases argued in November, as this one was, unless his vote is needed to break a tie.