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Gov't Database Errors Leading To Unconstitutional Searches?
Wired is running a story about a case the Supreme Court will be hearing on Tuesday that relates to searches based on erroneous information in government databases. In the case of Herring vs. US 07-513, the defendant was followed and pulled over based on a records indicating he had a warrant out for his arrest. Upon further review, the local county clerk found the records were in error, and the warrant notification should have been removed months prior. Unfortunately for Herring, he had already been arrested and his car searched. Police found a small amount of drugs and a firearm, for which Herring was subsequently prosecuted. Several friend-of-the-court briefs have been filed to argue this case, some calling for "an accuracy obligation on law enforcement agents [PDF] who rely on criminal justice information systems," and others defending such searches as good-faith exceptions [PDF].
I don't understand, shouldn't any evidence obtained under a false warrant be unusable?
I am against erroneous data. I don't think anyone would be for it (except to manufacture evidence).
So what's the big deal with it? I'll tell you.
The big deal is that if Mr. Herring wasn't an unlicensed gun-toting drug user, the detrimental effects of the bad data would be obvious. But since Mr. Herring is actually a "bad guy" and Americans love to see bad guys put away, it makes it hard for anyone to sympathize with him.
The ACLU couldn't have picked a worse poster child in this case.
IANAL but I'd that this was unwarranted because otherwise it could easily be exploited.
Having a recent warrant out for arrest, being already charged with a crime, out on bail, or already been convicted of a crime. Seems like reasonable suspicion of criminal activity to me.
It is not as if the police accidentally targeted an innocent person who hadn't had a warrant out for their arrest in a year.
The arrest wasn't wrongful due to the additional charges.
If the criminal had no drugs or weapons in his car, then it would be abuse by the authorities to arrest, but not abuse to search based on their reasonable suspicions.
Even though those suspicions had been based on some information that had turned out to be inaccurate.
The charges should stand.
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If I make a mistake on my taxes, there are penalties. Some of these may be severe, including jail time.
IANAL, so could someone provide to me the list of penalties or sanctions which could be assigned to the decision makers in this case?
It would make me feel better knowing we're all equal under the eyes of the law.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
"Database Errors"... is that what we call them now?
How about requiring that government web sites publish truth?
My brother-in-law works at Lowe's, and happened to take a weekday off one week, only to find out through a friend that some US Marshall's were there looking for him (w/ shotguns in tow). -- He sought legal counsel immediately (smart!). -- Turns out, there had been a clerical error when he paid a court fee on a rather mundane charge, they mispelled his name in the court system, and confused him with someone who was on the loose for murder charges! (his lawyer filed the necessary paperwork to get them to realize their mistake though). -- If he had been someone who didn't have the money to get a lawyer though, this could have ended much more badly!
isn't it customary for the courts to throw out illegally obtained evidence? it's my understanding that this is done so as to discourage prosecutors & law enforcement from doing illegal/warrantless searches.
if the courts routinely allowed illegally obtained evidence/testimony/etc. to be used, then it would encourage law enforcement professionals to encroach on the rights of individuals if they think it will get a conviction. if you don't throw out confessions obtained through torture, then law enforcement will start using torture to gain confessions--it's the same principle.
i know that many people hold personal prejudices against drug users, but a corruption of justice is a corruption of justice, regardless of who it happens to. it just happens to drug users and low income individuals more often because they can't defend themselves, and they have more run ins with the law.
one of my good friends in Chicago was a former heroin addict. he was a really friendly guy and a kind and honest person. however, he started using heroin at a very young age. this inevitably landed him in jail. he's in his late 20's now and has been through the system many times on drug possession charges (never for drug dealing or theft, or anything other than drug possession). and he's recounted to me several occasions where he's been wrongly imprisoned due to clerical error.
one time in particular he'd just finished serving time for a drug offense (i think it was something like a 6 month sentence), and the very weekend he got out he was picked up again and taken back to jail. he hadn't broken any laws, but the patrol vehicle computer showed that he had an outstanding warrant. apparently the warrant was issued while he was doing time for his last sentence. the warrant was for an offense registered in a different county, and so they didn't realize that he was already in prison. he knew that there'd been a mistake, but he couldn't make bail and ended up having to spend another few weeks in jail until it was shown that he'd been falsely imprisoned and the warrant shouldn't have been issued in the first place.
is my receipt for your receipt."
"It's not my fault that Buttle's heart condition didn't appear on Tuttle's file!"
"I understand this concern on behalf of the taxpayers.
People want value for money. That's why we always
insist on the principal of Information Retrieval
charges. It's absolutely right and fair that those
found guilty should pay for their periods of detention
and the Information Retrieval procedures used in their
interrogations."
"Don't fight it son, confess quickly. If you hold out too long, you could jeopardize your credit rating."
"I assure you, Mrs. Buttle, the Ministry is very scrupulous about
following up and eradicating any error. If you have any
complaints which you'd like to make, I'd be more than happy to
send you the appropriate forms."
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
If they HADN'T found anything on Mr. Herring, what do you think would have happened? Maybe a cursory apology. Probably not. His inconvenience for arrest and search? I suppose he could in theory have cause for a civil action, but against who? The cops who arrested him in good faith they had good information? The county clerk who made a minor paperwork error that went undetected for months? Please. Who's going to bring that case? And how does it not get tossed before a court even cares about the question of whether the information was bad?
Like it or not, if there's going to be a test case on whether it's OK to conduct searches based on "oops!" information, it HAS to be someone who had something to lose--where the results of the bad search end up in court. So it has to be something where something illegal was found in the search.
What, you mean like drugs or an illegal firearm?
I hate printers.
Hypothetical Gettier scenario:
The officer phones the clerk to ask if there is a warrant for this person's arrest. The clerk wants to trick the officer, so she says there is a warrant when she doesn't think there is. But she is mistaken and there really is a warrant she doesn't know about! The officer makes the arrest in the belief there was a warrant, which there was. Was the officer justified in making the arrest?
er, BRAZILLLL!!!!
If you have enough money it is possible, if you are poor you are going to jail. Maybe it wasn't a database error and he was just targeted for personal reasons, either way he is probably going to jail.
When its intentional.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The root problem in this case really boils down to whether the officers should be allowed to treat someone's word that a warrant exists as if that were the actual warrant. The correct course of action would be to have kept him in sight until a copy of the actual warrant was in the officer's possession. This is especially so now that police vehicles are routinely equipped with computer and communications gear that can immediately transfer the warrant to the officer on the scene.
Basically, they jumped the gun (no pun intended) here and ended up executing a non-existent warrant.
1. The officer runs the persons name against NCIC or calls the dispatcher.
2. The a message is generated through NCIC that goes back the NCIC terminal for the orignating agency for the warrant.
3. The originating agency has 10 minutes to put there hands on the warrant. If the do not, then they have to let the person go.
4. If the make an arrest on the bad warrant. The offender gets to sue. If the search of the vehicle was based upon a bad warrant, then the evidence will be thrown out.
This doesn't seem like it is a big deal, unless you are the one that got arrested, but you do have a pay day coming.
Your post is an excellent argument for why those who claim more authority than the average citizen should never be allowed to use "good faith" alone to excuse a mistake. With the extra power must come extra responsibility to get things right, and the rule for such people must be "if in doubt, don't". The consequences of any system not biased strongly in that direction are far worse than any individual mistake. It's just like the fundamental principle that it is better to risk letting a guilty man go free, at least for now, than to risk sentencing an innocent man erroneously.
Thus in cases like this, I think it would be far better if there was an immediate presumption that no evidence or charges at all connected with the inappropriate search ever have legal standing. Moreover, the person or persons responsible for the mistake should by default be personally liable for their illegal actions just as anyone else would be. There may be some good faith defence in the latter case, but good faith should never take precedence over the safeguard that the former offers. Even in the latter case, one must be careful that the benefits of good faith remain proportionate to the mistake, to avoid the risk of authorities erring on the side of "shooting the innocent man" and escaping the penalty for it later.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Cops came to my house last weekend to break up a house party. Refused to let them enter the home, so in a desperate attempt to find something, they started running every person's ID to check for warrants. My friend had just ended his probation about a month earlier, and the officers, recognizing him, asked him if he had curfew or existing probation. He informed them he didn't.
They ran his information over the radio, and proceeded to handcuff him and detain him in the squad car, informing him that he was still on probation, despite the fact that he had papers confirming the end of his probation IN HIS CAR, which they refused to allow him to get, or to go get themselves. Luckily, he did not resist arrest and calmly accepted their actions. An hour and a half later, they finally uncuffed him and released him.
I can't speak for the thinking of the officers that night, but I know they were visibly angered at me for my exercise of my 4th amendment rights, and were desperately looking for something to charge me or any of my friends with. This was not a check on the computer, it was over the radio. Did it really appear as if he was still under probation, or did the cops want to hassle him and try and get him to resist arrest? These officers knew my friend, and last time he resisted arrest (it was for underage drinking), and he was tasered multiple times. Perhaps they were just looking for a rise out of him so they didn't leave my home empty-handed?
This seems almost like the fruit of the poisonous tree logic in case law that throws out any evidence gained illegally. In a perfect world, there was not reasonable suspicion to pull over the car and search it without the existing warrant. The warrant was no longer valid, and hence the probable cause for the stop was false. The boundaries for probable cause are low enough as it is, this invites huge potential for abuse like the situation I encountered last week, and had my friend resisted AT ALL when he was in the right, he'd be in jail right now and being charged with resisting arrest, assault (probably, as long as he touched the officer at all), and whatever other charges they could find to tack on.
Just as in the OJ murder trial, the government should never be rewarded for bad behavior. For the record OJ was clearly guilty but there was planted evideance. Hence the correct (if wrong reason, per interviews afterward) verdict. Please no OJ flame war.
In this case, while the person is clearly guilty of said crimes. The government was rewarded from a mistake (bad behavior). The government should never be rewarded for a mistake, or bad faith, or an 'accident', or any kind of bad behavior.
I truly belive in letting 100 guilty free to save one innocent person from spending a day in jail.
Disclosure: I work in the correctional system and am a solid political conservative.
-- A computer without Windoze is like a choclate cake without mustard
If not for the error, there would not be probable cause to stop and search the guy. Therefore, it never happened, and by extension, nothing found was really found. Maintaining our moral standards are far more important than convicting one man. The ends most certainly do not justify the means.
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I have no problem (despite all the "stories" here) of this happening. If you weren't doing something illegal...you wouldn't have the issue. If Joe Blow hadn't had drugs in his car the police wouldn't have found it.
If I get pulled over for an incorrect warrant and searched, they wouldn't find drugs and guns in may care except if they were legally obtained. And once they figured out the warrant was bad there would be nothing else for them to do. And I wouldn't be in the news, and I would make even a worse ACLU poster child because nothing happened to me.
Now what would help is if I was falsely arrested due to a computer glitch then beaten to a pulp in jail while waiting for it to get sorted out. And if they held on to me long enough I'd lose my job too. But that wouldn't even be an ACLU issue, because no rights were really violated (unless it was happening often to the same people or to lots of people). They would have just screwed up and backed off when they fixed the fuck up. But the ancillary bits to the story would be a serious case in civil court.
Basically it seems the deeper shit you get yourself into, the more likely you'll end up in a situation where your rights are violated. This is one reason the ACLU has a hard time finding a "poster child" that is favorable.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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I'm surprised how many people are having difficulty with this. The 4th amendment unquestionably prohibits this behavior; the evidence was collected under a false warrant (either knowingly or not; the warrant has been accepted by all to be false) and so the evidence is inadmissable. End of story. Any judge finding otherwise is simply making a judgment in violation of the constitution (not like it would be the first).
This seems to be the very reason the 4th amendment is clearly spelled out: due to a "clerical error" a person was wrongly arrested and searched. We cannot, as a society that purports to be free, allow the proceeds of this violation to benefit the powers that be (especially today).
There will come another day when this "bad guy" will get his in the end, if he so deserves it. Today is not that day.
I'm sorry to godwin the thread, but I heard a quote yesterday that really opened my eyes:
Hitler lives in all of us.
The energy that drives a state towards facism and eventual anarchy lives within each and every one of us and we must be vigilant. Just reading through the comments to this story, it is remarkable how many people are willing to throw away the foundation of a free society to punish one guy. The privilege to detain people without charge, to make "clerical errors" and search people illegally, and to cover up these violations will come from us, not the democrats or the republicans.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
There are multiple databases at the state level and, at the federal level, NCIC is the one that contains warrant information. Many times a request goes out from NCIC (and other similar systems at CJIS) and days or months go by without a state returning information to the system operators so they can update records. Requests go out to courts and DAs without timely responses. The accuracy of the federal databases are therefore held at the whim of the state agencies and their personnel. The feds make attempts to keep their databases up-to-date but without state support it isn't going to happen. There are many other federal databases however beyond NCIC which hold other types of data and whose personnel communicate with other federal level agencies to maintain accuracy (e.g. BATF) which do have their own problems.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Quite simply, the point of the second amendment is for self protection, both against bad guys and against a government which is literally out of control. Anyone who argues otherwise is quibbling over nothing because the truth scares them. The arms protected are exactly what a policeman or ordinary infantry soldier carries. Indeed, it is quite reasonable to allow cannon, since merchant ships of the time had cannon not owned by governments, and so did individuals for the common protection.
If gun haters want to argue whether it is still useful to think of an armed uprising against a government, or even whether it makes sense to allow guns in crowded cities, the solution is not to circumvent the constitution in sneaky ways, the solution is to *change* the constitution. There is even a procedure for that which has been used a couple dozen times.
If the restrictions put on the second amendment were applied to freedom of the press, the only press protected would be manually powered flat bed presses. No power presses, no rotary presses, no newspapers with circulation over a few thousand, no internet, no copy machines, no private printers on private computers. Is that what you want?
It works the other way too. If the degradations put on searches and habeas corpus were applied to guns, we'd have it worse than nowadays. You think magazine capacity is a problem? Wait until you can't even have a flintlock or cap gun or knives with sharp edges or points.
What really burns me up about those who wish to change the constitution thru backdoor sneaky underhanded methods is that they set a precedent for other sneaky backdoor amendments, such as the recent degrading of protection from search and seizure, habeas corpus, etc.
Dammit, there's a process for amending the constitution! If you don't like it the way it is, change it properly, have a proper discussion, but don't sneak around, because all you do is reduce respect for the process and make it easier for the other guys to do the same thing in ways you don't like.
Every time I hear Republicans defend the degradation of the constitution by the Bush regime, I always wonder what they would think of Hillary having the same power they want Bush to have now. Ditto for Democrats who hate guns -- how would you like it if Reagan / Bush / McCain limited your favorite rights exactly as you have limited the second amendment?
Infuriate left and right
Should 'misinformation' vitiate police search and seizure? How about common sense ? Let's agree that 'crime' should be prosecuted firmly to 'punish' the guilty discourage potential perpetrators.. Or does it ? If a serious felony crime is determined from an illegal search , and we all agree that's okay. What then ? It's a racing certainty that some police joker will break down a door, beat up the householders, smash and search a previously tranquil home and vindicate the violation with : 'Outstanding parking fines led us to believe that this was a den of iniquity, sure enough we found them smoking a reefer.....they appeared surprised and upset when SWAT entered [swiftly with flash bangs ] so reasonable force [ Mace and Tasers may be painful but we could have shot them !] was employed to subdue the parents and the screaming children.' One may be inclined to suspect that police will be less careful with their search and seizure procedures, leading to greater disaffection between the police and citizens.. [ hardly likely to get much worse when Youtube shows that even with video surveillance most cops are quite prepared to beat the crap out of the average citizen without much provocation ] So how do we satisfy the desire to prosecute an obvious crime -based on evidence obtained during a search based on 'misinformation'- and deter the police from smashing open every car trunk and front door in the city? Make it into a real money game. Their money . If the police break into a private home or office and find nothing then ALL of the stormtroopers involved, up to the station commander, lose a week's pay which is paid as immediate compensation to the innocent citizen, and the local authority pays for all the damages done and USD5,000 a day penalty until the property is fixed. If , god forbid, an innocent person is hurt , detained , abused , insulted or otherwise delayed from their ordinary business â" based on misinformation that fails to result in a crime [misdemeanors excepted] then a scale of severe financial punishments kick in, and or civil action court hears the case immediately with jury awards. Police should also participate in the 'three strikes and you're out' routine.. Next job , guards on a nuclear facility waste dump. The cash prize would make being a casual police victim reflect the 'star' value of what we see on Youtube; when police Taser, Mace, thrash or shoot hapless innocents, typically pulled over for a tail light violation [tap on the light with a night stick] on a racial profile stop and search action, followed by coffee and donuts. Give a person a gun, uniform and modest training then inculcate them with the idea that this empowers them to be arrogant , sarcastic, power crazed guardians of the law and a goodly number will become what we fear the most - COPS: 'criminals on patrol stupid'. Oh, best if all search warrants are carried out by naked police and on video to improve the prospects of real discovery of evidence, and not the kind that appears with the police in handy carry to the scene of the crime sizes. We all want police to be decent law abiding people, but why should they be any better than the average citizen who: lie, steal , cheat , do drugs, alcohol, porn, sleaze and generally screw up without much encouragement? Experience shows that the police enroll a significant proportion of morally decrepit types give them guns, and back them up in court, with politically appointed public prosecutors that operate a corrupt legal system that has little inclination to serve the truth. Is anyone concerned about this empowerment of the police without a few checks and balances ? Not me, I've started posting loads of 'misinformation' on the Internet and hope to feature in a non-fatal police brutality live action video on Youtube , real soon now. My lawyers are on stand by with the cameras. Ready to settle â" out of court. BSBD
What in the FUCK is this guy going on about? His post looks like damn script automated it and linked to a random picture, and yet some douche bags modded him informative and insightful?
If you wish to troll this thread you must first complete form 27B stoke 6.
I am not a crackpot.
What's open made to justice,
That justice seizes: what know the laws
That thieves do pass on thieves?
"Measure for Measure" act II scene 1 line 17
They are some poignant quotes from Brazil.
[insert witty comment here]
I don't understand, shouldn't any evidence obtained under a false warrant be unusable?
Sadly, not necessarily. The "good faith" doctrine says that evidence seized by officers relying on a facially valid warrant that turns out to later be invalid is still usable in court. The warrant must be issued by a neutral, third-party magistrate and the officers cannot have knowingly or recklessly (not negligently) given bad information for purposes of establishing probable cause, but the 4th Amendment is meant to shield against police misconduct and not simple error in the issuance of warrants.
See United States v. Leon , 468 U.S. 897 (1984) for the full, gory details. Additionally, the government in this case also relies on Arizona v. Evans, 514 U.S. 1 (1995) which states, basically, that the exclusionary rule did not require suppression of evidence obtained through a police officer's good-faith reliance on an error made by a clerk of the court that had issued a warrant for a person's arrest.
I'm sad to say it, but that latter case is *really* on point for this issue, and EPIC does a miserable job of trying to argue against it. The quality of legal writing between the two briefs is night and day. One takes a line of nearly eighty cases and rigorously applies the facts of the case to the rules found therein, and the other references two cases (one only in the concurrence) and makes a bunch of policy arguments about database systems completely unrelated to that used by the sheriff's office in the case at hand.
EPIC fail.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Well, a warrant that exists under conditions that it should not seems to be pretty much false in my book. It was invalid, and the conditions under which it was created were not longer valid (expired).
The problem with "good faith" in many of these cases is that it allows the rules to be stretched, which can lead to abuse. How many convenient "mistakes" would be needed before they start to seem "too convenient"
uh... you think that these things start with some regular kid with a degree, shiny car, and squeeky-clean record?
They start with those that society is more willing to throw to the dogs... then once they've set the ball rolling (and a few nice precedents to boot) things go onward from there.
"Unconstitutional Searches Leading to Government Database Errors" There, fixed it for ya! Feel free to tag it "duh" and mod it "Troll" at your convenience.
Um... You and many others must not have read the Patriot Act OR the new FISA bill. Your 4th Amendment rights are GONE! They took them away! So what they did yes being against the 4th Amendment (if we still had it) is wrong, but with the Patriot Act and the new FISA bill they can do whatever the hell they want in regards to search and seizeures and we can't do $h!t about it.
The Truth is a Virus!!!
.
In the moment of decision the cop makes do with what he has.
If you can say - with a straight face - that there are no errors in the massive database you maintain - then you have earned the right to demand perfection.
Otherwise, I would have to ask how your organization can hope to continue to do its job without making decisions based on "good faith" reliance on its records.
This story sounds quite remarkably like the beginning of the movie "Brazil".
Fruit of a poisoned tree - evidence is inadmissible, the guy can't be charged. Why is this even a question?
"Ooopsie! Sorry, Judge. That shouldn't read 'child porn,' that should read 'parking ticket.' I'll talk to the data entry clerks again."
"Never mind, prosecutor. Just lock 'em up for not having the receipts for the music on their hard drives."
"But . . . your Honor, we bought those at Wal Mart!"
"Lock 'em up for being stupid, too."
Any sufficiently advanced technology is insufficiently documented.
Can't they let him off on the basis that the initial evidence was found illegally, and then on the basis that a cop saw him with illegal stuff, get a legal warrant, search him a second time, and arrest him for the second results?
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Idiot. Why don't you read what I wrote? I clearly said that encroaching on the constitution for one reason encourages others to encroach for their own reasons, and that the proper way to change the constitution is to actually go thru the amendment process.
And all you want to argue about is one of the encroachments? Feh.
Infuriate left and right
See my response to the first idiot. You too would rather argue the details of one particular encroachment rather than actually follow the right process of amending the constitution, as if your particular encroachment is perfectly proper and not a sneaky endrun, but I doubt very much you approve of others and their particular endruns.
Infuriate left and right
You can't sign away the 4th amendment by passing a bill - you have to pass an amendment.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
No, you need to quote Brazil whenever stories about paper-shuffling bureaucratic errors that result in improper police action come up. Then you'll be insightful.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
This is exactly why historically an illegal search that nets evidence of other real crimes invalidates the evidence. Historically the courts have reasoned that the "oops" power would be abused and thus lead to problems. Now if they would only do so with drug laws and seizure we'd be better off.
If you don't have the warrant in hand, don't go chasing after people. Simple. He had the right idea, "fax it over", but he had the wrong idea when he went off without retrieving the fax first.
"Samuel Gross, a law professor at the University of Michigan, has found the rate of wrongful conviction in death row cases to be somewhere between 2.3 and 5 percent." You'll have to ask him about his methodology.
While this is for only death row persons, it should be easily extrapolated to other crimes. You should also, watch the video, "Why I'll never talk to the Police" (or something like that). It does wonders to explain the American "justice" system. Police might do whatever they need to do get an indictment or prosecution. American law isn't about what's right or wrong anymore, but about who can tell the best, most convincing story.
I have no doubt there are many, many innocent people in jail for things they didn't do and also many guilty people in jail for crimes they didn't commit, but had gotten away with others just as bad or worse. Not to mention all the guilty people who got away with doing crimes who are living in your and my neighborhoods right now.
if he still had illegal stuff. If they found a murdered corpse in his car would he get away with it?
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
If there is no penalty for errors in government databases, there will be no incentive to clean them. The evidence should be thrown out, and if it happens again, it should always be thrown out. This will mean that unless the government has absolutely clean data in their databases their evidence will be suppressed as a result. The police will have no choice but to ensure their databases are regularly cleaned of error. They essentially have no civil liability (sovereign immunity) for their errors now, if I'm not mistaken, if they are not forced to fix errors or suffer the consequences for their failure to do so, they will not do so.
Cops screamed bloody murder saying police would be destroyed by Miranda , and other cases whose names shine as beacons protecting us from the darkness of oppression ( Gideon, Escobedo, Mapp, Seibert ) and others, as bright-line standards. And you know what? Police adapted. They became professional. They did their jobs better when they were forced to behave within constitutional limits. I have a quote from a book I'm writing:
— Judge Edward 4 in Paul Robinson's Instrument of God
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
So they thought they had a reason to search his car, then it turned out they didn't, then it turned out they did?
Yeah, as rights violations go, this sure compares with protesters being tasered and stuff.
Unless they planted the stuff there, but I'm not yet ready to believe that.
Call me... DROP DATABASE *
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
I remember a similar situation, roughly paraphrased: "On my honour as a English gentleman, Napolean Bonaparte is dead."
Age old question, "Do the ends justify the means?".
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
TITLE 10 > Subtitle A > PART I > CHAPTER 13 first appears in the US code in 1916.
As such, it has no bearing on what the framers meant to say by the word "militia".
Your lame attempt at "it's illegal now!" is ex post facto and therefore bullshit.
This whole thing disgusts me.
I was arrested for a dui coming on 5 years ago(I know it is wrong, but it happened). I have a lawyer and I am fighting it.
So about 3 years ago I got ran into by some stupid high school kid. I called the cops there, while the kid was calling his daddy. So the cops did the whole insurance thing and took my license. They came back told me I was under arrest for an outstanding warrant. I knew that the dui was the only thing that it could have been for. So I asked the cops if I could move my vehicle to my house since it was only about 2 blocks down. They told me no, but the cop from the passengers seat would do it. I was shocked at first to hear that a cop would actually do something descent, but once the cop got into the vehicle I saw what his agenda was. His head was flying around like a mad man searching my vehicle hoping to find something(POS.) Never did. But anyway I got taken to jail. The police would not let me bail myself out, they told be I had to use a bail bondsmen. So I did. I think it was $75, but that is money I will never get back. So I also missed half of a day of work that day. So I called my lawyer and after doing his thing he said the courthouse had made a clerical error. I asked my lawyer if I had to go to court or if the courthouse would call the other court house and get things squared away. Of course not, they wouldn't take care of their mistake. So I had to go to court a couple more times, and find all kinds of documents saying that it was wrong.
So instead of:
A) The court house taking care of the their mistake.
B) I tried to get the prosecuting attorney to just call the other court house, but he wouldn't because that would have been too fucking easy for the arrogant motherfucker.
I had lost a couple of days of pay, the bondsmen fee and small lawyer fee(Lawyer fees are never small, but the fact if the lawyer would have had to come to the location that I got hit in it would have cost thousands.) All because one stupid fucking cunt didn't do her job and the judicial system is a joke. Sorry got a little angry, but that is a lot of money that I will not be getting returned and am sure that they won't take into consideration during sentencing.
So the whole dui is going on 5 years and 2 years ago this March I lost my case in the state supreme and was told that I would be waiting on a sentencing date. Does it really take this long? I can only assume that they are waitng till the laws are stiffer to really stick it to me. My lawyer tells me they can wait as long as they want, I don't think he is a very good lawyer.
The other problem I have is why aren't judges biased and consistent? Everytime I have been in a court room they seem to have some prejudice against the person standing in front of them.
In the US of A, we are now, and have always been, guilty until proven innocent. Just ask the guy who gets accused of [insert_disgusting_crime_here]: with all the news coverage to follow said accusation, the guy may as well forget about living in his community thereafter. People view him with a suspicious eye, and attribute his later acquittal to a hole in the system. Am I cynical? Yes. Do I have reason to be? Let's see -- I was once arrested and spent a day in a holding pen on a warrant that did not exist! With lawyer fees, court costs, and the fee for removing the arrest from my record, I spent > $3,000 in one day. And for what?
with the Patriot Act and the new FISA bill they can do whatever the hell they want in regards to search and seizeures and we can't do $h!t about it.
Citation needed.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Read the Patriot Act and the FISA bill for your self and see:
Patriot Act:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act
http://epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html
http://www.rense.com/general34/takeover.htm
FISA bill:
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FISA_Amendments_Act_of_2008
http://www.politico.com/static/PPM104_080619_fisapromise.htm
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Um, they do this kinfd of $h!t all the time. See my reply to this post and read the Patriot Act and FISA amendments bill your self and see. They authorized law enforcment to do warentless searches and seizures. That violates the 4th amendment does it not? Yet here we are they passed BOTH these bastardizations of the Constitution and they didn't do it via an amendment...
The Truth is a Virus!!!
And the law is illegal; you just have to show standing and challenge it. Sort of a problem with our legal system, but it's not like the laws can just sit around forever.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Thank you very much for the citations. I stayed up all night reading, and I could not find anything that supported your assertion:
with the Patriot Act and the new FISA bill they can do whatever the hell they want in regards to search and seizeures and we can't do $h!t about it.
I'm therefore going to have to conclude that you are simply wrong.
Have a nice day.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock