Court: Planning To Get A Warrant Is As Good As Actually Having A Warrant When Searching A House
from the thoughts-and-affidavits dept
What do you give a DEA agent who has everything (but a warrant)? If you're the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, you give them the warrant -- the one agents obtained hours after they performed the search of someone's home. From the conclusion of the court's decision [PDF]:
All agree: the DEA entry team entered Huskisson’s house unlawfully. We do not condone this illegal behavior by law enforcement; the better practice is to obtain a warrant before entering a home. Ordinarily, the evidence found here would be excluded. But because the government had so much other evidence of probable cause, and had already planned to apply for a warrant before the illegal entry, the evidence is admissible.
It's not just the "better practice." It's a Constitutional requirement. Probable cause alone does not give the government permission to search a person's home. Probable cause simply gives the government what it needs to obtain a warrant to search a home. The home is given the utmost protection by the Fourth Amendment. Here's what the Supreme Court had to say about this issue in 1961:
At the very core stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.
Planning on getting a warrant is not -- and has never been -- the equivalent of obtaining a warrant.
The footnote under this conclusory paragraph is as useless as the Seventh Circuit's opinion, which gives the government a free pass to search first, affidavit later, so long as they have enough probable cause to support a warrant application.
See Order Den. Mot. to Suppress at 9–10, ECF No. 76; Order Den. Pretrial Mot. at 6, ECF No. 165 (denying defendant’s motion to reconsider denial of suppression motion); Trial Tr. vol. 2 at 298–99, ECF No. 211 (posttrial order again denying motion to suppress). Additionally, as noted above, at trial three DEA agents testified the plan was always to seek a warrant once Hardy had confirmed there were drugs in Huskisson’s home.
The beginning part says the lower court came to the same conclusion: a warrant in mind is as good as a warrant in hand. The second part just confirms the facts of the case: the DEA agents searched a house before obtaining a warrant.
The facts of the case don't help. They don't really explain two consecutive courts' decision to treat a warrantless search as a Constitutional search. The DEA was working with a cooperative drug dealer it had already arrested, using him to set up drug buys with its target, Paul Huskisson. DEA agents listened in on phone calls their informant made, building up plenty of probable cause to support the arrest of Huskisson and the search of his house. Agents listened in on nine calls over the course of a day discussing a drug purchase.
The DEA wanted corroboration Huskisson had illegal drugs inside his house. Agents sent their informant into the house to complete the purchase. The informant gave the drug task force team (DEA agents plus local drug warriors) the signal that he'd seen the methamphetamine inside the house. At that point, law enforcement entered the house and arrested everyone inside. Huskisson refused to consent to a search of his house, but the meth was out and plainly visible to officers.
A few hours after this search, the DEA finally applied for a search warrant.
[T]he warrant application contained the following two sentences that underlie this appeal: “The law enforcement officers observed an open cooler with ten saran wrapped packages that contained suspected methamphetamine. The suspected methamphetamine later field tested positive for the presence of methamphetamine.” The magistrate judge issued a search warrant for Huskisson’s house around 10:30 p.m. the night of Huskisson’s arrest, about four hours after the initial entry.
The lower court said this was fine. Even without the lines about the meth the warrant contained enough probable cause to support a search of the house. So does the appeals court. In both cases, the fact that a house was searched without a warrant is handwaved away by the existence of other probable cause and supporting evidence. But that still doesn't address the illegal entry in the first place.
Nothing in the opinion does. The entire discussion revolves on whether or not the meth seen in plain sight after the illegal entry influenced the obtaining of a warrant four hours after the search occurred.
The court carefully weighed the evidence from both sides; when faced with two inconsistent statements from the same witness, the court credited one based on the totality of the evidence. In so doing, the district court concluded that an errant statement by Detective Kinney did not outweigh the other evidence of the government’s plan to request a search warrant, regardless of what they found in the house.
Because the presence of drugs in plain sight apparently didn't nudge the needle on the warrant request (and despite the affidavit including the drugs in plain sight), the lack of a warrant doesn't affect anything. That appears to be the Seventh Circuit standard: as long as law enforcement has some probable cause and plans to seek a search warrant at some point, it can step inside someone's home and take a look around. Everything else explaining away the removal of a warrant requirement is nothing more than rights-damaging filler.
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Filed Under: 4th amendment, 7th circuit, dea, warrant
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Siri, define 'condone'...
Sure as shit sounds like they're condoning this illegal behavior by law enforcement.
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Who said judges cannot be creative.
Good faith exception based on purported intentions taken to the Nth degree with unqualified immunity applied. Judge made law to overcome Constitutional law on whims.
Let us hope this goes to the Supreme Court and that the current court has some integrity.
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Re: Who said judges cannot be creative.
Next step:
Remove the requirement for warrants entirely. After all, if a cop's intent is all that matters, then by both caselaw and the actual law, a cop has good faith intent by default.
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Re: Re: Who said judges cannot be creative.
Cops don't even need to know the fucking laws they are enforcing. They've been given a pass by leftist rulings for that in our once great country. I'm calling"Bullshit" to this leftist ruling as well.
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Leftist?
When I was in poli-sci, the leftwing judge would _fix your parking ticket for you. It was the rightwing judge that was tough on crime.
(And yes, Harris came out recently with the slogan Tough on crime, tough on Trump. Given tough on crime means tough on poor people or tough on minorities, it's not a good branding for Harris, especially since we expect our police state under a Harris Administration to get only policier.)
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Re: Leftist?
Its a by product of the Domestic Violence Industrial Complex, and the McKinnon-Dworkin war on porn (feminist theologian Catherine McKinnons father George helped create the FISA courts, for example).
So, in situations to "protect the children and te wimmins" the warrant requirement is tossed, in favor of faux-exigent circumstances.
So, doors are routinely kicked in all across America in domestic violence and child protection cases.
This is what the pseudo left meant by "militant feminism.”
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Re: Re: Leftist?
Fascinating spin. Completely wrong and moronic of course, but a fascinating attempt to redirect. This is DEA. These are drug laws. Why not look at the obvious relevant laws. You know. The ones where we disenfranchise millions of minority voters with trumped up charges and long prison stays. The record keeps them from 'taking jobs' from the white people. The police across many red states can impound your car because they 'suspect' you might have drugs. They can freeze your bank account and rob you of every penny as 'evidence' of your 'crimes' that they suspect. Crack and Cocaine HCL are the same drug. Crack has been put into an acidic solution (vinegar) and then pushed into a basic solution (baking soda that's been put in an oven on a cookie sheet) Yet prison time for crack is 10x that of white-people's drugs. The industrial prison complex is a huge cash cow for the right wing, and ya'll love authoritarianism. Don't bring your ignorance and misogyny in here and try to blame someone else for the sickness that is you. This is all you. Embrace the fruits of your disease!
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Re: Re: Re: Leftist?
...um, yeah, Blarbarella, you seem to know WaaaAAAAAY too much about crack. Ditch the pipe, honey, and rejoin the living, huh?
But the only thing spinning here is you, on a Harry Potter vibrating broom, that you never seem to learn how to fly, cuz, hasbara /NGO /racializing /ADLified/other distracting/derailing type trolling.
What you know about the law and the domecile or other private spaces could be written on a fingernail with a crayon.
And, the attack on the domecile, aka, the house /home /hearth /castle, whatever, while not new, was in fact, strengthened and MASSIVELY deployed in the DV sphere by the paternalistic/gendered/blatantly biased VAWA that was cheered on by the Andrea Dworkinites, and their cunty McKinnons.
And this only enabled the bullies with badges of whatever alphabet or gender to wage war on males, not females.
As for massage -a -vaginy or whatever you are on about, well, off the top, I can think of a few women who DESERVE well earned hate, just like I can think of a few men, but really, massage yer own vaginy, cuz I aint yer dildo, legally, metaphorically or otherwise.
And, in case you missed it, the agencies are chock full of "empowered women ” who, for whatever ideology they personally use to define themselves -all of these are working now for fascist /police state purposes. Go get 'em girls! Its for the childrins!
So, massa...miss OGS ...misssaggy .....whatever that distracting, divisive word is, has nothing to do with hatred of women, and EVERYTHING to do with distracting us from seeing how, "empowered " the modern surveillance state is; and, how ideologically feminist, by any rational reading.
Or, does actual equality stick in your craw, and make you cackle such off topic nonsense as you did above?
But the Domestic Violence Industrial Complex (DVIC ) IS what the DEA relies upon, every time it kills or invades; and it relies on the "safety of de wimmins,an der kinder "; and depending also on women for their electoral /congressional/judicial / extra -judicial/media narrative complicity.
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Re: Re: Re: Who said judges cannot be creative.
Not sure why you see left/right in this issue, perhaps if you pointed out exactly what it is that upset up so.
Do you always call court rulings you disagree with leftist?
Our once great country ... when was that exactly? Was that when women did not drive, vote or talk back? Was that when it was ok to own another human being? Is that when immigration was under control?
We have had problems with immigrants ever since we came to this country.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Who said judges cannot be creative.
Its a by-product of the marriage between neocon artists and militant gender lesbian feminism.
You know-Americas “other right wing”
These sliding scales of Constitutional interpretation started with VAWA in 1993, as pseudo-feminists began to craft Constitution-free zones in family courts, domestic violence, anonymous rape accusers etc.
Now, the marriage is complete, as we see that the attacks on the domicile itself is warrant-free, and the muscle bound, shrunken testicles of the men and women at the DEA and their comical task farces adopt DVIC reasoning.
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Re: Re: Who said judges cannot be creative.
Leftist ain't right. tHEY is the new world order.
Right on!
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Re: Re: Re: Who said judges cannot be creative.
Sorry. I had to make myself laugh there for a moment.. cuz there ain't nothing funny in this story or comments. Any nothing funny about losing our country to a fucking police state.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Who said judges cannot be creative.
A leftist police state no less!!1111
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I'll remember this next time I have to pay a speeding ticket or property taxes.
"I don't have the money now, but I'm planning on getting it later, so we're all good?
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Re: "Coogan" has 14 month gap in comment history.
Goes back nearly 5 years in the 20 on first page. Another ardent supporter of Techdirt. Just ODD.
You'd think Techdirt would at least be vaguely interested in why so many so seldom comment.
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Re: Re: "Coogan" has 14 month gap in comment history.
What's odd about it? Also, props for putting my handle in quotes, like I'm some kind of spy.
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Re: Re: "Coogan" has 14 month gap in comment history.
Cops who troll the internet, Israeli hasbara cockroaches, crisis PR trolls, and SJWs all keep multiple accounts, that exhibit this exact pattern.
Keen observation.
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Re: Re: Re: "Coogan" has 14 month gap in comment history.
I would think that those you mentioned would be advocating some position, not trying to make (allegedly) funny comments. Did the guy fail to see my somewhat sad attempts at making the Sunday Funniest cut while checking my profile?
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Re:
Don't even let the situation get that far.
'I swear, officer. I was planning on slowing down before I got in range of your radar.'
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Re: Re:
Within range of their vision you mean.
Those radar guns are never calibrated, maintained, generate traceable documentation or even turned on most of the time.
At least photo radar lies consistently.
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Re:
More I intended following the speed limit just down the road, so no need to issue a ticket.
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Re:
Nope. As always, you have to follow the letter of the law, while the government only has to do what they think the law should be.
See also: https://www.techdirt.com/search.php?tid=Legal%20Issues&search=Search
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Re: Re:
That could work, depending upon who you are and who you know.
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So, dead child in sight, would need a warrant?
HMM? Just anyone answer that.
The Constitution does NOT require law enforcement to be idiots. Period.
Techdirt has of course slanted this to the left until it's horizontal, but it's solid law. I endorse it.
Extreme loony "libertarian" Techdirt is silent on the harm to those using meth. Those persons don't matter compared to drug dealers.
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Re: So, dead child in sight, would need a warrant?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exigent_circumstance
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Re: Re: So, dead child in sight, would need a warrant?
Not relevant if the child is known to be dead, unless the cops are worried about the suspect destroying evidence or escaping. And really, is it going to be hard to get a warrant with a body on the ground?
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Re: So, dead child in sight, would need a warrant?
Except that the drugs were not in sight of law enforcement until they illegally entered the house. They only had someone else's word that there were drugs there.
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Come now, it's not like an informant would ever lie to the cops about what they saw, or the cops themselves would lie about what an informant said. Clearly if an informant said it it should be treated no differently than a cold-hard fact.
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Re: So, dead child in sight, would need a warrant?
No evidence present in the case suggests that exigent circumstances existed such that the few hours at most necessary to obtain a warrant would have affected the results of the search. Its why the exigent circumstances exception exists - to address situations that require immediate action without the formalities.
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Re: Extreme loony "libertarian" Techdirt
If you haven't noticed, Techdirt is much less "libertarian" and much more "progressive" than it used to be, but that transformation might just be playing to the user base. Like Masnikc calling Steven Crowder an asshole a dozen times in a single article as if to virtue-signal which side of the culture war he firmly stands on (libertarians prefer free speech over "protecting vulnerable communities" as progressives demand) But like any sort of business, you've got to do whatever pays the bills and keeps you out of trouble, and maybe that's a reason why left-leaning libertarians, sadly, seem to be a rarity these days in this increasingly polarized society.
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Re: So, dead child in sight, would need a warrant?
Name one, just one dead child that you cocksuckers ever saved “in sight.”
Didnt think so...
But, in re: idiots in law enforcement, it appears the average IQ of you cocksuckers is around 100, or less, based on the Standford Binet.
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Re: Re: So, dead child in sight, would need a warrant?
It would be exceptionally difficult to "save" a dead child.
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Dead child
It happened in a movie once. Ah yes, Star Chamber 1983, action thriller about a Judge Hardin (Michael Douglas) frustrated with bad guys getting away on technicalities because of that darned old Fourth Amendment. (It was actually a bloody boy's shoe spotted in a van.)
Hardin is introduced to the Star Chamber, a secret cadre of judges who review cases of acquitted bad guys, and hire hit men to take them out when evidence indicates they're looking pretty guilty.
Eventually the Star Chamber decides a couple of men are guilty when it turns out they weren't and Hardin takes justice into his own hands (er... injustice? extrajudicial justice? checks on extrajudicial justice?) and tries to stop an execution the Star Chamber commissioned.
While the cases involved are very atypical in which the crimes are heinous, the inadmissible evidence is foolproof and the bad guys are 80's Hollywood heavies through and through, the story really tries to show the nuances of limits on police search and the dangers of exceeding the limits of law.
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Re: Dead child
It's an interesting story, but I don't think they save any dead children do they?
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Saving dead children.
We don't have the capability to do so, though we're approaching the capacity to clone a child from living cells. Depending on the age of the child that may be considered a suitable replacement.
No, I think I brought the movie up because it was a place where a police-officer spotting an implied dead child was part of a case, so I was speculating that may be where N. 'Flagrant' DeLicto pulled that specific scenario.
IRL the scary scenario is when a living child runs to police from her kidnappers, but their captors are able to successfully convince the officers they're her proper guardian. Back to the underground brothel for her.
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Re: Saving dead children.
Re: *but their captors are able to successfully convince the officers they're her proper guardian. Back to CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES underground brothel for her.
....there, fixed it for ya.
Yeah, even Edward Abee couldnt save the boy in Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf; or Tilden/s, in Sam Shepards Buried Child.
And I dont think all those cocksuckers with the universal pedophile symbol of spiraling triangles on their badges will do any better.
In fact, statistically, it looks like in their bizarro world argot language, saving kids IS pimping them, but only AFTER the state gets a fat million dollar bonus check for sticking a kid in foster care in the first place .
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Re: Saving dead children.
I was thinking more like the offshore servers that CIA /JTRIG and the rest of black ops that they run from Japan, Thailand, South Korea, and curiously, Malaysia.
And, how especially Britain and Sweden used targeted porn directed at so -called militants during that illegal Iraq war.
We get the slightest glimpse of this in the movie Zero Dark Thirty and news reports from that time detailing how the agencies found porn in bin Ladens lair, or how jihadis are alleged to use copious amounts of porn; but also, that female CIA /FBI are actively involved in underground, targeted porn distribution, all over the world.
Its not a virus, lil fappers, its a long term, persistent implant that tracks your porn habits, and then, uses redirection and code injection to introduce illegal porn into your “free ” porn supply.
Welcome to black ops meeting Andrea Dworkin.
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Re: Re: Re: So, dead child in sight, would need a warrant?
LOL....but numnutz up there cant catch the snark.
97 on the ASVAB
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Hmmm does this mean we can throw people in jail and then say "I was planning on getting a conviction"?
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Re:
Sure, that's called a "plea deal".
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Re:
Well, judge, I was planning to say "Police! Stop or I shoot"...
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I hope someone thinks to ask the question at the next appeal: If you were "planning" on getting a warrant, why didn't you get a warrant before entering the house?
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Seems like
It seems like the question is, would the judge have granted a warrant at the point just before the police entered the house illegally. They had recorded calls and a witness who said there were drugs inside.
"The expanded independent source doctrine refers to situations where states invoke the independent source doctrine, and courts admit partially tainted warrants if the untainted information in the warrant is enough to establish probable cause."
Is the court in this case saying they had enough evidence before the entry to get a warrant?
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Re: Seems like
The fact that that question is even asked is a travesty. The question should be whether they actually got a warrant before entering the house.
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So an appeals court finally admits that the it is a forgone conclusion that if the police ask for a warrant that most, if not all, courts are going to approve one.
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Re:
Basically the appeals judges consider the warrant requirement an income perk for judges. They get percentages when the police break into houses. Whether they sign the warrant before or afterwards does not really change that they have a paper trail for their share.
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Siri, define 'condone'...
Sure as shit sounds like they're condoning this illegal behavior by law enforcement.
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Re: Siri, define 'condone'...
The courts conclusion was nothing more than a stern finger shaking at the police while winking that the judges don't mean it.
They definitely condoned the action.
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gives the government a free pass to search first, affidavit later, so long as they have enough probable cause to support a warrant application.
Or... claim to believe they had sufficient probable cause, wink wink.
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A free pass to search first.
How is the police force penalized if they don't find anything, and thus don't need a warrant?
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Re: A free pass to search first.
They get to keep all the "free stuff" they stole from the taxpayers in the process, presumedly...
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Re:
There is a reason judges are judges and cops are cops. Judges are suppose to make the call on whether there is sufficient probable cause or reasonable suspicion to sign a search warrant before the cops go rummaging around a man's castle, NOT COPS.This sounds like this judge is saying, "Go ahead Boys, we'll straighten it all out later. Just do what you feel you have to do." This is not America.
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"Go ahead Boys"
There are article's from Techdirt past about judges signalling to the police in court in order to secure the false conviction of a suspect.
It seems that even judges like the men in uniform.
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Re: Re:
Oh but this IS America.
The only change from the past is that more people are watching and willing to share on a large scale.
This is why they are trying at every opportunity to gain control of the internet with all their speech stifling new laws.
Until all involved in such shenanigans are held responsible and punished it will remain as it is and always was.
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Re: Re: Re:
Maybe its the America you were born in. The America I was born in had not yet been usurped so noticeably.
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Not noticeably but...
When I was a kid, I watched Nixon resign. And Carter was perhaps our last truly honest, well-intentioned President.
Reagan opened the big jar of lobbyists and soft money.
The thing is, we can trace the money-based pre-primary to the 19th century, so we have tried a true (uncorrupted) democracy about as well as the Soviet Union tried communism.
Also police brutality was a big issue for MLK and the civil rights movement before I was born. And already the dirty tactics used to make protestors sorry were in full use. They were also by then deep in the wars against mobs, from whence our shoot-first policies emerged.
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Re: Not noticeably but...
Who said something like democracy is a good system of government, and someone should try it? I couldn't find the quote.
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The worst form of government
Who said something like democracy is a good system of government, and someone should try it? I couldn't find the quote.
"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…" -- Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 1947-11-11
We haven't tried sortition and my argument was to say we haven't really tried democracy. And in the US effort to try Democracy we tried a variant that was too easy to game.
Were we not facing the looming likelihood the human species is going to crap itself to extinction, rendering the whole experiment moot, I would be optimistic that a future nation could try again or try something else with the awareness of human nature we have today (as opposed to many of the false presumptions we had in the 18th century).
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Re: The worst form of government
That's a good one too, but not the one I'm thinking of. Also possible I'm hallucinating it and nobody ever said that.
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Everyone here...
Do you understnad what a Warrant has to have ??
It must tell you what they are looking for, and any specifics as to its location. and a reason for the warrant.
Do you really want a DOG, at a traffic stop? to search your car after 20-30 minutes of Sitting their because the COP stopped you for a broken tail light(and there wasnt a broken tail light). And thent he cop says he saw Smoke form the car as it passed and decided to stop and check to see if you were OK, and then Smelled MJ/drugs int he car...And the Dog Hits' on something and they TEAR your car apart RIGHT THERE, to discover that the dog hit on 2 year old Baby Puke???
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Re: Everyone here...
Well, if the dog can smell the drugs in 2 year old baby puke, that must have been one heck of breastfeeding junkie in the car. Let's get childcare involved.
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Re: Re: Everyone here...
(Let's get childcare involved.)
Don't give them any ideas.. I mean Fuck!
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Don't get us started on the dogs.
You mean the trick pony dogs that are now hated by the police detection dog sector. Trick pony dogs alert whenever the handling officer directs her to, which makes an easy justification of searches. The Chicago report of 97% false positives when dogs were used to search latins came from trick pony dogs.
In the meantime, that trick pony dogs exist at all raises challenges to the legitimacy of actual detection dogs. When you're searching thousands of pieces of luggage for the one with a bomb (say at an airport) then a trick pony dog that signals at every other piece isn't going to help much. But there's no secret record keeping at the kennel regarding which dog's legitimately trained to sniff out drugs, and which ones are trained to signal whenever the handler wants.
If a dog signaled on baby puke, then it was probably a trick-pony dog who wouldn't pass a detection test.
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Re: Don't get us started on the dogs.
Even if it was an open book test?
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I don't want to see the bad guy get away, and that's the reason that all of these exceptions exist - if we exclude evidence because of (mistake), the bad guy will get away; but if the government did what they were supposed to, they would have gotten the evidence, so it's admissible.
If a court is always going to apply the perfect fantasy world of 'they would have got him if they did everything right' then there's a lot of legal "protections" in place that won't actually protect anything, because they apply to misconduct that will never have occurred in perfect fantasy world.
However, the government didn't do what it was supposed to. It did make a mistake. There needs to be consequences for that mistake, so that the government is encouraged to do its job correctly.
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Re:
Will you say the same thing when the cops turn over your property on w whim and find nothing?
If the evidence exists, usually a small delay will not cause it to go away, specially if the suspect has not been warned. All exceptions do is allow the cops to make a search, and justify the the search on what they find, rather than predict what they will find in a warrant,
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Re: Re:
Yes, because they're statements of fact. I don't want to see the bad guy get away. That "don't let the bad guy get away" reasoning is why courts have created the exceptions.
However, the rest of my post should indicate that while I don't want to see the bad guy get away, I don't agree with the exceptions.
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Re: Re: Re:
Our constitution is built on this tenet, among others.
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Re: Re:
So a police informant can drop drugs in an innocent persons home and the police can show up and then document what they're looking for after the fact. This is how Stalin operated to throw the book at political enemies of the state.
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Re: Re:
They are supposed to have already collected sufficient evidence for a warrant legally, not be predicting what evidence they will find searching a house to obtain the evidence to obtain a warrant. WTF?
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Re:
I don't want to see the bad guy get away, and that's the reason that all of these exceptions exist - if we exclude evidence because of (mistake), the bad guy will get away; but if the government did what they were supposed to, they would have gotten the evidence, so it's admissible.
One word: Tough.
There's a reason the limits are in place, and it's to avoid the government just searching anything they care to on a whim because they're sure that the other party is guilty. If the price of the government having limits meant to protect everyone, innocent and guilty alike, is that occasionally a guilty person walks free because the government couldn't be bothered to follow the laws that they expect everyone else to follow that's just too bad, and maybe having what would have been a solid win tossed will encourage them to follow the law the next time.
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Re: Re:
Glad to see that we agree :)
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Re: Re:
The other word is, "tyranny."
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Re: Re:
Back when they did supposedly toss the evidence because of that the perpetrator still didn't get severely punished enough for the crime so that they could try try again.
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Re:
"if we exclude evidence because of (mistake), the bad guy will get away"
But it's ok when the bad guys are cops, they are allowed to get away so they can do it again.
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The courts are part of the justice system
And the courts define (by oft-fanciful interpretation) the rules of engagement by law enforcement against the public.
Since justices, prosecutors and law enforcement officers are rated by the number of convictions, there is a conflict of interest.
No one is protecting the rights of the public, and as such they are getting dismantled, one exception at a time.
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Wait, this is a bad decision in terms of constitutional rights, but it isn't exactly a new problem. Isn't Inevitable Discovery in play here? Nix v. Williams hasn't been overturned to my knowledge.
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Re:
In the case of Nix v Williams, the defendant revealed the location of the body without having been given access to his lawyer, however the location of the body was independently verifiable from separate evidence, and could have been found without questioning the defendant. That is the inevitable discovery doctrine: evidence obtained from an illegal search can still be admissible if it could have been obtained independently from that search.
If the incriminating evidence would have inevitably been discovered even in the absence of a search of the house, then that exception would apply. But since the evidence was inside of the house, it couldn't have been obtained in the absence of the search and therefore could not have inevitably been discovered independently.
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When your words are undercut by your actions
All agree: the DEA entry team entered Huskisson’s house unlawfully. We do not condone this illegal behavior by law enforcement; the better practice is to obtain a warrant before entering a home.
So two things here. One is that the 'we don't condone this behavior' line is a flat out lie, given they are about to give it a pass as acceptable. Another that I didn't catch in the first read, is that they apparently consider getting a warrant a 'better practice', rather than what it is, a constitutional requirement , and given we're talking not about some random judge but a federal court of appeals, that it just all sorts of bad.
Ordinarily, the evidence found here would be excluded. But because the government had so much other evidence of probable cause, and had already planned to apply for a warrant before the illegal entry, the evidence is admissible.
And here's where the above lie is made crystal clear. If they really objected to what the police did, and really didn't condone it, they would punish the police for it, in this case ruling that evidence gained by the unconstitutional search was inadmissible. That they in fact cleared it as good to use in the court makes clear that they do in fact condone the actions, and are making it very clear that at least in that area of the country warrants are nice to have, but not actually needed, because fuck the constitution.
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Re: When your words are undercut by your actions
From the decision:
This is the flawed premise by which the Court justifies the exception. The unspoken next sentence of that premise is "So we'll let them profit anyway."
Really though, the government should absolutely be placed in a worse position as a result of its bad behavior. What would you expect your kids to do if you show them that nothing bad happens when they break the rules?
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Re: Re: When your words are undercut by your actions
The kicker of course is even the court wouldn't accept it's own argument if a defendant without a badge tried it.
If someone was charged with breaking and entering/trespassing because they broke into a for-sale house and lived there until they were arrested, and they tried to claim that because they had been filing the paperwork to buy it and were planning on paying later they shouldn't be punished for their actions there is no chance any court, including this one, would buy that excuse and give them a pass.
Soon as someone puts on a uniform and badge though suddenly the rules go out the window and just about every judge in the country becomes circus-level contortionists, able and willing to bend however much they need to to avoid having to rule against anyone with a badge.
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Re: Re: Re: When your words are undercut by your actions
The micromanagement of citizens is getting worse and worse. More ridiculous laws being put on the books and seems like everyone or anyone nowadays are making these laws. Its meat and potatoes for these law whores. Its turning this country into the police nation. We should be piuring out beyond our nation's borders to escape thus tyranny. Why aren't we? These leftist usurpers of our nation's government are letting people pour into our country. Every prison is getting a gillotine so those who deal in body parts get the murdered inmates' untainted organs. Something very sick and twisted going on in this country. How they have packaged our whole nation's industry and are trading it away to clear debt with China? Vatican, England? They have stolen TRILLIONS of our nation's wealth and stored it underground. I mean, "Fuck." WTF?
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Re: Re: Re: When your words are undercut by your actions
Imo this comment is a bit of a stretch but I don't want to say anything that would discourage a brave soul to shy away from a debate on this constitutionally savvy forum. In fact I'll go to war to protect your right to speak your mind and grow!
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Re: When your words are undercut by your actions
Everyone associated with this condonement ruling needs to be looking for another country to live and rule in. "GET OUT."
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Re: Re: When your words are undercut by your actions
You mad Bro?
Thisis equality, your equal with the President, you cheer when it happens to "Bad Orange Man" but bitch when it happens to you.
Now your "equal"
equally fucked by the judiciary. It's what yall screamed for, why don't you like it??
why would anyone think they are above the president of the United States?
It happens to him or COURSE it's going to happen to you, so why you mad bro??
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Re: Re: Re: When your words are undercut by your actions
Did I miss something? When did Trump's residence get raided by law enforcement without a warrant?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: When your words are undercut by your actions
Please, show me where I said that??
or it's only bad when it affects you?
does bad judiciary decisions only work in that way?
do bad state judgements, mean bad federal judgements are ok??
Nice strawman you tried to create, My statment still stands
it's "equality" from the Judiciary, why you mad?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: When your words are undercut by your actions
The post to which you initially responded said "Everyone associated with this condonement ruling"
Then you said:
Since your original response was to a comment about this ruling regarding a warrantless search (which, indeed, is what the entire post is about), and your response is that if "it" can happen to the President then "it" can happen to anyone, that leads to the conclusion that the "it" you're talking about is a warrantless search. Which leads back to my question of "when was Trump subject to a warrantless search?"
If the "it" you are referring to is not a warrantless search (which is the "it" that everyone else was talking about), then you should define exactly what your "it" is before using pronouns in order to avoid confusion.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: When your words are undercut by your act
Yeah, but....who are “they”....?
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Well, I hope this goes up to the higher courts and gets completely thrown out. At this point, I don't give a crap about this suppose drug dealer. I care far more about the police stepping all over our rights. The slippery slope continues. It needs to end. We need to fight these tyrants that think they're above us. Clearly, that's the case with their own disgusting Blue Line Flag.
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This is what the War On Drugs was DESIGNED to do. They just have to insert the thin end of the wedge, and slowly, slowly push harder, slowly tighten the noose (I wouldn't say 'softly, softly' as anyone who's been abused by LE will attest to, it's not a relaxed experience).
People are ignoring the slow removal of Habeas Corpus and insitution of Fascism that the War On Terror, following the success of the War on Drugs - IS DESIGNED TO BRING-ABOUT.
It's not like we have tens of millions of WWII dead and millions of War on Drugs/Terror dead to remind us to learn from the mistakes, or anything... no, poor innocent us didn't know any better.
Which is what the scum DEA and other LE lie to themselves and their families about. With the exception of those heartwarming L.E.A.P. decent human beings.
Much love and respect to anyone refusing to be a doublethink-infected, two-faced sociopath for money, be it federal salary or any other form.
The REAL war is against this - the destruction of the innocent human being! RESIST!
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Good Enough for Gov't Work?
Claiming to have thought about doing something legal excuses breaking the law...for cop-folk. And some wonder what produces actions such as Timothy McVeigh's.
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Re: Good Enough for Gov't Work?
McVeigh would have gotten away with that if GOD hadn't loosened the license plate screw on his vehicle.
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Warrant Application
It's called a warrant "application." You can "plan" to get a warrant all day, they are skipping over the part where someone has to "approve" the application.
And if this is now the standard, then planning on going to jury duty is the same as going to jury duty therefore I don't need to show up for jury duty.
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Re: Warrant Application
Don't pass up an opportunity to participate in the last check and balance we the people have on the government. They'll intimidate us demanding we adhere to the law and pay us $5/day, but you rule on the facts of the case AND whether you believe in the laws applicable for that case. They know that and for that reason get most cases plead out before a jury gets their hands on case.
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yeah, but....
If you think weve made a laughing stock out of the warrant requirement in drug cases, you would shit in your bong and smoke it if you saw what we do with our world wide child porn distribution program.
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To be expected after the Playpen debacle
Where the FBI took over the Playpen darknet site, upgraded it so that it worked right, served child porn for two weeks during which the user base multiplied, sent out malware to track people, and then refused to prosecute when doing so involved revealing the malware an investigatory secret to a judge.
In the meantime, the 1990s and aughts were the pinnacle of Russian porn which has become the replacement stereotype for Swedish porn circa 1960s-1980s. Their trick was the same as regards UK porn models who are 16 or 17: tell the stupid Americans that all those Russian girls are 18+. They don't even ask for proof.
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Re: To be expected after the Playpen debacle
OOPS....this was sposed to go here, srry fer de repost:
....
Uriel, I was thinking more like the offshore servers that CIA /JTRIG and the rest of black ops that they run from Japan, Thailand, South Korea, and curiously, Malaysia.
And, how especially Britain and Sweden used targeted porn directed at so -called militants during that illegal Iraq war.
We get the slightest glimpse of this in the movie Zero Dark Thirty and news reports from that time detailing how the agencies found porn in bin Ladens lair, or how jihadis are alleged to use copious amounts of porn; but also, that female CIA /FBI are actively involved in underground, targeted porn distribution, all over the world.
Its not a virus, lil fappers, its a long term, persistent implant that tracks your porn habits, and then, uses redirection and code injection to introduce illegal porn into your “free ” porn supply.
Welcome to black ops meeting Andrea Dworkin.
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This shall be a wonderful case to cite for everyone who insists on a link to a court decision, which is always right and is the final word.
No warrant required unless something turns up that may require one. Everyone got that?
Who do you think will be next after the nazis, racists and drug dealers?
Gun owners is my guess.
Should we start a pool? We can have two regarding this as we can have a separate pool as to who is going to scream the loudest that that will never happen as it is written in the constitution protecting those gun rights, like the warrant requirement.
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