[JURIST] The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals [official website] in San Francisco has upheld [opinion, PDF] the drug conviction of a passenger found with cocaine during an airport security check. Sergio Ramon Marquez was randomly selected from a line of passengers in October 2002 to be searched with a hand-held scanner. An object that security gurads thought could have been explosives turned out to be cocaine. The court ruled Tuesday that the search was constitutional since it was designed to detect weapons instead of drugs, was not overly extensive, and was avoidable if one chose not to fly. The San Francisco Chronicle has more.