Slashdot Mirror
Motorcyclist Wins Taping Case Against State Police
stevegee58 writes "Slashdot readers may recall the case of a Maryland motorcyclist (Anthony Graber) arrested and charged with wiretapping violations (a felony) when he recorded his interaction with a Maryland State Trooper. Today, Judge Emory A. Pitt threw out the wiretapping charges against Graber, leaving only his traffic violations to be decided on his October 12 trial date. 'The judge ruled that Maryland's wire tap law allows recording of both voice and sound in areas where privacy cannot be expected. He ruled that a police officer on a traffic stop has no expectation of privacy.' A happy day for freedom-loving Marylanders and Americans in general."
No, there's no expectation of privacy in a courtroom (in the US) except in certain circumstances, usually involving a minor. The proceedings are open, anyone may attend, and transcripts are public record. The ban on cameras in most circumstances has more to do with maintaining decorum -- so people aren't playing to the cameras -- than with preserving non-existent expectations of privacy.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
there is an expectation of privacy in a courtroom.
No, there isn't.
Exactly the opposite, in fact.
Everything that transpires in a courtroom is public knowledge. It's against the law for the public to be excluded completely*. Reporters, sketch artists, and members of the general public can all sit in the gallery during a trial.
Technological means of recording are a tiny fraction of the age of the legal system, so the legal system does not yet (and probably never will) consider them necessary implements to be used in informing the public, so the use of them is at the court's discretion.
* - there are exceptions where there are statutory claims of privacy, such as when the evidence is classified or the defendant is a minor.
I hate to pick on Sonia Sotomayor, but she's the first example that springs to mind. Some firefighters took a test in order to achieve a higher-level promotion. Some of the white guys passed, but none of the black guys so the black guys sued, claiming the test was racist.
That's not what happened. The city decided on its own to discard the test because they feared that it was culturally biased, since many of the minorities who failed that test had easily passed similar tests previously. It was the "white guys" who sued to get the existing test results to stand.
Current Law says the test must be demonstrated to have a bias, due to its content. Mrs. Sotomayor decided to ignore that law and made her own determination that "because no black guys passed" that must prove the test is racist, despite no evidence in the written pages.
Again, that's not what happened. It was actually a lower court that determined that the city was within its rights to not certify the test. Sotomayor and two other judges merely upheld that ruling through a Summary Order, which essentially means that they simply agreed that the lower court did not make any legal errors in reaching their conclusion, and they had no further opinion to contribute to the case. Of course, ultimately, the Supreme Court disagreed, and the lower court ruling was overturned.