June 10, 1999
Web posted at: 12:15 p.m. EDT (1615 GMT)

In this story: Other rulings RELATED STORIES, SITES

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Chicago's anti-gang, anti-loitering ordinance, which led to more than 40,000 arrests, was found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on Thursday. The ruling, though, produced a sharp dissent over whose rights were violated.

The justices found the 1992 ordinance, which gave police authority to disperse and subsequently arrest known gang members and those associating with them, was a "violation of freedom of assembly."

"It criminalized status, not conduct," Justice John Paul Stevens said in delivering the opinion for the six-justice majority.

"It allows and even encourages arbitrary police enforcement," Stevens added.

Stevens, a Chicago baseball fan, said the anti-loitering ordinance could be used to prevent a father and son from hanging around Wrigley Field because police would not know if they "intended to rob someone, or just wanted to get a glimpse of Sammy Sosa."

But Justice Antonin Scalia, delivered a strong dissent from the bench on t he 6-3 ruling.

"I would trade my right to loiter in the company of a gang member for the liberation of my neighborhood in an instant," Scalia said.

The ordinance had previously been found unconstitutional by the Illinois Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld that judgment.

The case is City of Chicago vs. Morales, 97-1121, argued December 9, 1998.

Other rulings

In other rulings on Thursday, the Supreme Court:

• Limited the use of out-of-court statements as evidence in criminal trials, a decision that revives a Virginia death row inmate's challenge of his conviction. The ruling makes it harder for prosecutors to use as evidence the earlier confession of an alleged accomplice who admitted some wrongdoing but pinned the primary blame on the defendant.
  
  
• Made it harder for prosecutors to prove federal cases alleging bank, wire or mail fraud. The court unanimously ruled in a Florida case that prosecutors in such cases must prove that an allegedly fraudulent act affected the outcome of the transaction. However, the court also said, 6-3, that in tax fraud cases -- where proof of legal relevance also is required -- a judge's failure to submit the question to the jury can be considered harmless.
  
  
• Resolved a major patent law dispute in the government's favor. The justices narrowed a specialized court's authority to second-guess federal officials' decisions on which inventions deserve patent protection.
  
  The ruling said such decisions by the Patent and Trademark Office must be given more deference by a federal appeals court that specializes in technical cases. Under that standard, the appeals court can overturn a Patent and Trademark Office decision only if it is deemed "arbitrary, capricious" or "unsupported by substantial evidence."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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