Sotomayor Sedated

[NOIRTRASH]

SOTOMAYOR wrote the losing dissent in a case involving a white driver stopped for an active arrest warrant. She used the occasion to become very excited about the nobility of BLACK LIVES MATTER, tho the incident involved a white. Kagan saty on her face as they pumped her fulla Haldol.

 

[someoneyouknow]

Nice way to spin the story. For those reading, here is what really happened.

A guy was seen leaving a house which an anonymous tipster had said was being used to deal drugs.

A cop followed the guy and pulled him over for no reason. The cop demanded the guy produce identification.

With identification in hand the cop ran a check on the guy and found he had an outstanding warrant for a minor traffic violation. After performing a search, the cop found meth and drug paraphernalia on the guy.

Normally evidence of a crime found as the result of an impermissible search is not valid but today "conservative" Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas expanded the power of government over the people by using the twisted logic:

such searches do not violate the Fourth Amendment when the warrant is valid and unconnected to the conduct that prompted the stop.

“Officer Fackrell was at most negligent,” Justice Thomas wrote, adding that “there is no evidence that Officer Fackrell’s illegal stop reflected flagrantly unlawful police misconduct.”

In other words, if a cop pulls you over for whatever reason they feel like and you happen to have an outstanding warrant, anything else which is found is perfectly legal to be used against you.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/us/supreme-court-says-police-may-use-evidence-found-after-illegal-stops.html

 

[eyerami]

In other words, if a cop pulls you over for whatever reason they feel like and you happen to have an outstanding warrant, anything else which is found is perfectly legal to be used against you.

And the moral of that WoeIsMe summary is?

 

[someoneyouknow]

And the moral of that WoeIsMe summary is?

If expanding the power of government over the people to include allowing police to randomly stop people, without a just cause, isn't enough, then nothing is.

And this coming from someone who thinks we coddle criminals.

 

[phrodeau]

Acting on a tip, even an anonymous one, is not equivalent to "no reason".

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Asked for a comment, Sotomayor said, GET THE SQUIRRELS OFF ME!

 

[sr71plt]

Gee, I guess it isn't a great idea to have outstanding warrants on you.

I think that maybe JBJ is the most squirrelly thing about this thread.

 

[eyerami]

If expanding the power of government over the people to include allowing police to randomly stop people, without a just cause, isn't enough, then nothing is.

And this coming from someone who thinks we coddle criminals.

And there you were pontificating to rpos James about "spin".

Do you champion methheads freely going to and fro in your neighborhood to score their Tweak?

Would a search have occurred if the methhead - who just scored his Tweak - wouldn't have had a warrant out on him?

Are you actually proposing that justice would've been best served if that methhead would've been freely allowed to score his Tweak in a neighborhood with children and families all around and driven away without any consequence for his illegal act?

What the fvck is wrong with you?

Hopefully, a year or so from now - and despite your pathetic coddling of a methhead illegally possessing with a warrant out on him - the methhead himself will have gotten the help he needs and will offer that getting busted this time was the very best thing that's ever happened to him.

You do realize many people who get busted for such utterly stupid stuff do wake up and smell the blessed justice of such righteous intervention, right?

Pay your tickets and don't do meth - NEXT!

 

[Colonel Hogan]

If expanding the power of government over the people to include allowing police to randomly stop people, without a just cause, isn't enough, then nothing is.

And this coming from someone who thinks we coddle criminals.

At first blush, I would have agreed with you, and your fuller description of the facts beyond the cheap shot from BLACKRASH was wholly appropriate.

But here is what is really fascinating about the ruling in the case of Utah v. Streiff: in a Supreme Court currently divided four to three along liberal/conservative political ideologies with Justice Kennedy being the moderate swing vote available to either side, we have a 5-3 majority decision. So even allowing Kennedy siding with the conservatives, there had to have been a liberal defector to achieve the majority. Any guesses before you highlight the whited out type which follows: Justice Stephen Breyer!

This alone should caution anyone from making a knee-jerk reaction about the motivations for the decision, and anyone familiar with how the court works knows that the opinion authored by Justice Thomas reflects the views of ALL members of the majority and not just his own. In fact, it is entirely possible that some of his own views were struck from the final written opinion so that they would NOT constitute future legal precedent. On such bargains SCOTUS majorities are often fashioned.

I can 't wait to read this opinion simply because of the interesting alliance of justices and will probably post an analysis here later.

I know you are all waiting anxiously on the edges of your seats.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

Briefly, here is the holding from the case syllabus.

Held: The evidence Officer Fackrell seized incident to Strieff’s arrest is admissible based on an application of the attenuation factors from Brown v. Illinois, 422 U. S. 590. In this case, there was no flagrant police misconduct. Therefore, Officer Fackrell’s discovery of a valid, pre-existing, and untainted arrest warrant attenuated the connection between the unconstitutional investigatory stop and the evidence seized incident to a lawful arrest. Pp. 4–10.

(a) As the primary judicial remedy for deterring Fourth Amendment violations, the exclusionary rule encompasses both the “primary evidence obtained as a direct result of an illegal search or seizure” and, relevant here, “evidence later discovered and found to be derivative of an illegality.”
Segura v. United States, 468 U. S. 796, 804. But to ensure that those deterrence benefits are not outweighed by the rule’s substantial social costs, there are several exceptions to the rule. One exception is the attenuation doctrine, which provides for admissibility when the connection between unconstitutional police conduct and the evidence is sufficiently remote or has been interrupted by some intervening circumstance. See Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U. S. 586, 593. Pp. 4–5.

(b) As a threshold matter, the attenuation doctrine is not limited to the defendant’s independent acts. The doctrine therefore applies here, where the intervening circumstance is the discovery of a valid, pre-existing, and untainted arrest warrant. Assuming, without deciding, that Officer Fackrell lacked reasonable suspicion to stop Strieff initially, the discovery of that arrest warrant attenuated the connection between the unlawful stop and the evidence seized from Strieff incident to his arrest. Pp. 5–10.

(1) Three factors articulated in Brown v. Illinois, 422 U. S. 590, lead to this conclusion. The first, “temporal proximity” between the initially unlawful stop and the search, id., at 603, favors suppressing the evidence. Officer Fackrell discovered drug contraband on Strieff only minutes after the illegal stop. In contrast, the second factor, “the presence of intervening circumstances, id., at 603–604, strongly favors the State. The existence of a valid warrant, predating the investigation and entirely unconnected with the stop, favors finding sufficient attenuation between the unlawful conduct and the discovery of evidence. That warrant authorized Officer Fackrell to arrest Strieff, and once the arrest was authorized, his search of Strieff incident to that arrest was undisputedly lawful. The third factor, “the purpose and flagrancy of the official misconduct,”
id., at 604, also strongly favors the State. Officer Fackrell was at most egligent, but his errors in judgment hardly rise to a purposeful or flagrant violation of Strieff’s Fourth Amendment rights. After the unlawful stop, his conduct was lawful, and there is no indication that the stop was part of any systemic or recurrent police misconduct. Pp. 6–9.

(2) Strieff’s counterarguments are unpersuasive. First, neither Officer Fackrell’s purpose nor the flagrancy of the violation rises to a level of misconduct warranting suppression. Officer Fackrell’s purpose was not to conduct a suspicionless fishing expedition but was to gather information about activity inside a house whose occupants were legitimately suspected of dealing drugs. Strieff conflates the standard for an illegal stop with the standard for flagrancy, which requires more than the mere absence of proper cause. Second, it is unlikely that the prevalence of outstanding warrants will lead to dragnet searches by police. Such misconduct would expose police to civil liability and, in any event, is already accounted for by Brown’s purpose and flagrancy” factor. Pp. 9–10.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/15pdf/14-1373_83i7.pdf

In short, there are specific exceptions defined by prior legal precedent to the general application of the Exclusionary Rule to "illegally" obtained evidence. Breyer obviously went with the existing precedence, and I say, good for him.

Justices Sotomayor and Kagan wrote separate dissents (Ginsburg joined both). All the dissenters essentially argued that an otherwise lawful arrest on an outstanding warrant for a minor offense should not void the Exclusionary Rule as it would otherwise appropriately apply to evidence in a case of far greater severity. But, imho, Kagan did a far better job of applying that rationale to the Brown precedent on which the majority relied. But obviously not good enough to sway Breyer.

Since none of you likely give a shit about these technicalities anyway, I'm not inclined to analyze the Brown case. I'm just always enriched by these cases by the fact that they invariably teach me something I did not know before -- in this case, a specifically relevant legal exception to the Exclusionary Rule.

I happen to think that is a fairly important thing to know.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Beware that cops don't need warrants when a child is in your home or aboard your car. The rule applies to old folks, too, and extends to medical records etc.

The rule doesn't apply in this case, but is useful information.

That said, I've been in court and alerted the judge that the defendant, sitting across from me, has an arrest warrant. Judges always ignored me tho an active arrest warrant was relevant information. Plenty of judges hate cops and the state, and sometimes for good reason.

 

[someoneyouknow]

Acting on a tip, even an anonymous one, is not equivalent to "no reason".

The tip was for the drug house, not the person. The person, though leaving the scene of a possible drug house, did nothing wrong to warrant being pulled over. They weren't speeding, didn't run a red light, didn't have a tail light out. The cop simply pulled them over and demanded identification.

What this means is at any time a cop can pull you over, run a check on you and if they find anything, or think they find anything, you're screwed.

One of the many things we rebelled against the Crown for doing (random searches by authorities, just because).

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

There is a difference between a local cop's suspicion, be it a black guy in a white community after midnight, or a white guy in a black community after midnight and the power of the state to look into your affairs with no justification what-so-ever...

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I recall what one judge said to a pervert I dragged into court.

In court dirtbags lawyer said, MISTER JOHNSON TOLD MY CLIENT HE'D KICK HIS ASS IF HE GOES NEAR JEWEL. Jewel was a young teen and pregnant with dirtbags baby. Dirtbag was 30.

The judge looked at me and asked, DID YOU SAY THAT?

I replied. YES, I DID.

The judge then said to the lawyer, I'D BELIEVE MISTER JOHNSON.

 

[eyerami]

The tip was for the drug house, not the person. The person, though leaving the scene of a possible drug house, did nothing wrong to warrant being pulled over. They weren't speeding, didn't run a red light, didn't have a tail light out. The cop simply pulled them over and demanded identification.

What this means is at any time a cop can pull you over, run a check on you and if they find anything, or think they find anything, you're screwed.

One of the many things we rebelled against the Crown for doing (random searches by authorities, just because).

Why do you keep spinning?

There is absolutely none of your "random" or "just because" crap about this case:

- the house the perp was observed patronizing was under surveillance as a suspected methamphetamine distribution point.

- the perp, after being observed leaving the meth house, was illegally stopped and asked for identification.

- he was found to have an outstanding warrant issued for him.

- he was then arrested for that outstanding warrant and he was searched.

- he was found to be in illegal possession of both methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia.

- the Court ruled that his warrant predated the illegal stop, and thus the exclusionary rule pertaining to such illegal stops applied.

You shouldn't feel lonely about your spin, though - here's how a newspaper opened its unbiased reporting of the case:

The Supreme Court on Monday empowered police to stop people on the streets and question them, even when it is not clear they have done anything wrong.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-supreme-court-decision-reaction-20160620-story.html

Patronizing a known methamphetamine distribution point greatly diminishes the "not clear" crap, and having a warrant out on you - for any reason - totally wipes away the "not...done anything wrong" crap.

Thus, the exclusionary rule most definitely applies to this specific case and worked to perfection, as a methhead with a warrant out on him and illegally possessing is righteously busted.

Stop with the "random" and "just because" crap, because it in no way applies to the case ruled on at all.

If a person without any warrants on him is randomly stopped, just because, the police officer who illegally stopped him is still fully liable for that illegal action - as the exclusionary rule doesn't apply at all in actual "random" and "just because" cases.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

The tip was for the drug house, not the person. The person, though leaving the scene of a possible drug house, did nothing wrong to warrant being pulled over. They weren't speeding, didn't run a red light, didn't have a tail light out. The cop simply pulled them over and demanded identification.

What this means is at any time a cop can pull you over, run a check on you and if they find anything, or think they find anything, you're screwed.

One of the many things we rebelled against the Crown for doing (random searches by authorities, just because).

First things first. "The tip was for the drug house..." I'm sorry, but that's just dumb. The tip was for alleged illegal activity occurring within a house. Houses and other intangible objects don't commit crimes. It became a "drug house" solely as a result of the HUMAN activity in it. The police were investigating human behavior, not a house.

Secondly, your assertion that a cop can pull you over at "any time" flies in the face of the very "purposeful and flagrant" standard the Court tells us they use to judge police misconduct. As the Court stated in Strieff, an element of such misconduct is whether it is "systematic or recurrent." The fact that we all know someone or ourselves have run afoul of a law that was different from the one for which we were initially detained does not imply systematic or recurrent. "Systematic or recurrent" means most of those other cars would not be speeding by you as you sat there by the curb awaiting your fate.

To make this analogy more germane to the Strieff case itself, systematic misconduct would have likely been held had the police gone around rousting people out of neighboring homes with the companion thoughts that they might well be customers of the drug dealers being investigated AND that some of these neighbors/customers might well have outstanding warrants that would justify a lawful arrest thus enabling a broader search and seizure that would not normally be lawful. THAT is systematic, and if you do it repeatedly it is recurrent.

Officer Fackrell was at most negligent. In stopping Strieff, Officer Fackrell made two good-faith mistakes. First, he had not observed what time Strieff entered the suspected drug house, so he did not know how long Strieff had been there. Officer Fackrell thus lacked a sufficient basis to conclude that Strieff was a short-term visitor who may have been consummating a drug ransaction. Second, because he lacked confirmation that Strieff was a short-term visitor, Officer Fackrell should have asked Strieff whether he would speak with him, instead of demanding that Strieff do so. Officer Fackrell’s stated purpose was to “find out what was going on [in] the house.” App. 17. Nothing prevented him from approaching Strieff simply to ask. See Florida v. Bostick, 501 U. S. 429, 434 (1991) (“[A] seizure does not occur simply because a police officer approaches an individual and asks a few questions”). But these errors in judgment hardly rise to a purposeful or flagrant violation of Strieff ’s Fourth Amendment rights.

While Officer Fackrell’s decision to initiate the stop was mistaken, his conduct thereafter was lawful. The officer’s decision to run the warrant check was a “negligibly burdensome precautio[n]” for officer safety. Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U. S. ___, ___ (2015) (slip op., at 7). And Officer Fackrell’s actual search of Strieff was a lawful search incident to arrest. See Gant, supra, at 339.

Moreover, there is no indication that this unlawful stop was part of any systemic or recurrent police misconduct. To the contrary, all the evidence suggests that the stop was an isolated instance of negligence that occurred in connection with a bona fide investigation of a suspected drug house.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/15pdf/14-1373_83i7.pdf (p. 11)