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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."
Let's hear it for a sudden outbreak of common sense from the judiciary!
Now, of course, this judge is going to get pulled over every day, even if he walks to work.
A public employee's expectation of privacy? They are public servants and as such should never have an expectation of privacy while on duty. I'm happy about the decision. We need more like it....
"a police officer on a traffic stop", or "a non-uniformed police officer on a traffic stop using a non-labeled vehicle, not identifying himself as police before pointing a gun like a crazy man"?
What about the asshole cops and prosecutor that put this sick joke of a "wiretapping case" on the taxpayers tab?
Anyone losing their jobs? Suspensions?
If this isn't malicious prosecution, what the fuck on earth is?
If we all just walk away from this without going any further, expect another case just like it next week, and another the week after. The point is intimidation, after all. Plus eventually they'll get some idiot judge who agrees with them.
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He'll spend a lifetime in that county getting pulled over for crossing the yellow line and not signaling on lane changes.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
... that cameras are not allowed in many/most court rooms.
It's not ironic because there is an expectation of privacy in a courtroom. Hypothetical: I accuse you of being a pedophile, procure tons of evidence against you, which I display in court. Sure, the case gets thrown out (maybe I face charges myself, but I'm reckless that way), but someone videotapes the proceedings, edits out the juicy bits and puts it up on youtube without context. Pretty sure your life's ruined.
If my fate's being determined, that's between me, the lawyers, the defendant/plaintiff, and the judge/jury.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
You obviously don't know anything about Antonin Scalia apart from what Moveon.org and the DailKos tell you to "think". Go read the wikipedia page for Kyllo v. U.S. Then go read the full opinion and come back when you know a tiny sliver about the law instead of the Pavlovian emotional responses that are bred into you by your blogging "friends".
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
If their legal theory had held up, next thing we know we'd have had homeowners facing 10+ years in prison for "wiretapping" burglars' conversations on CCTV.
(Ooh, and the burglar was whistling "Happy Birthday", so you're liable for $160,000 in damages to the RIAA as well ...)
Rather than read about the judge's amazingly sane and rational decision, I would have preferred to see the video of him handing down the ruling, but I guess cameras are not allowed in the court room.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Idiot cowboy cop racks up tens of thousands of dollars in damages to be paid by taxpayers to issue a $125 traffic citation. Where do they even find inept morons like this?
I'm happy to hear the verdict, but it always strikes me as sad how we only seem to win the most obvious of court cases these days. I mean, who in their right mind would think it is not OK to videotape in public, or that we needed to "protect" the police from video cameras?!
From the stupid fucken judiciary that hasn't outlawed torture yet (despite it being on the books), who let the government get away with warrantless wiretapping, assassinations of american citizens, and who thinks its ok for an $80,000 per song downloaded verdict....
I'm happy with this verdict, but overall I'm still massively frustrated.
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
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.
If the device is out in the open, and you disclose this to the other party? Can the other party actually require that you turn the device off even if it's on your own property? What about in your own car. I think that at some point, "recorded" is going to become more and more fuzzy.
What if I write something down as you're saying it? What if a robot hears and transcribes it for me into text? What if I commit it to memory? What if my memory is enhanced? Where does the line get drawn? Or does it?
Majority on that forum wished this stop would've ended in a not so favorable manor for the motorcyclist. That forum seems to hate 'civilians' for some reason.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
Like rain on your wedding day?
Antonin Scalia is a constructionalist obstructionist who yet again applied Alice-in-Wonderland thinking in interpreting the Constitution to rule incorrectly as part of a lifetime of putting "individual" rights over "collective" rights, something that he doesn't use to protect you and me, but to protect the few "individuals" (i.e. corporations) who are attempting to turn this country into even more of a de facto fascist state than it already is.
Stevens schooled him in that opinion, even quoting from the case Scalia cited, Katz v. United States, a demurral showing that the deciders of Katz knew there would be exceptions, under which Kyllo eventually fell. Privacy ends where your emissions enter the public air, whether you are emitting noise, radio waves, the odor of a meth lab, photons bouncing off your naked body through an open window, or thermal radiation. The police or your neighbors can receive those emissions passively at a distance and act on the information as reasonable suspicion or probable cause.
The hitch in this case is that having a hot garage is evidence of nothing in particular and gave the police no cause to do anything. Even if the garage is being used as a hot-house, there's no evidence it's a hot-house for illegal plants. They must have had other evidence. The opinion suggests they did the thermal imaging because of a prior suspicion. At the end it says it's up to the original courts to figure out if that evidence is still sufficient to have justified the search. Likely it wasn't, or the cops wouldn't have done the thermal imaging. And whether coupling a hot garage to the other evidence is sufficient is unknowable without knowing what the other evidence is. I get the feeling I'd come down on the side of saying it isn't sufficient and the cops should have just done some more surveillance.
They have the ability to make your life difficult. Not even spiteful things like "I'll throw out your traffic tickets." They know they law, they know when you are breaking it and with what you can be charged. Further, they have connections and sway with the prosecutors. They also make rather credible witnesses. If the cops decided to wage a campaign against a judge, good bet they'd wind up on the wrong side of criminal charges. While they may be used to people taking their word of a defendant, wouldn't be the case with a judge. Of course the judge in that case would probably also be sympathetic to their colleague and so on.
Going after a judge would be just about the worst thing the cops could do.
You obviously don't know anything about Antonin Scalia apart from what Moveon.org and the DailKos tell you to "think".
Ah yes, good form old chap. Someone says something you disagree with on the internet, and you respond first with "you're ignorant and influenced by news/propaganda sources I personally don't agree with." Allow me to respond in kind.
(ahem)
You're just brainwashed by faux-news!
In this scenario, I'd be happy to see the turn-about, because I'm against the whole concept of cops issuing speeding tickets as it's currently done. The REAL point to the whole exercise is SUPPOSED to be about improving motorist safety. (At least, that's sure what the cops are constantly heard to claim, whenever someone protests the high cost of a ticket.) IF this were really true, the right way to approach the problem would be handling out tickets for unsafe driving practices, period. That means, for example, treating all speed limit signs as "recommendations". Stop the nonsense of automatically ticketing any driver exceeding that posted limit by X miles per hour at the second they went by a radar or laser speed gun! Instead, observe how people are driving. Give out tickets to the people who swerve into a lane of traffic without signaling, or the idiot who slams on his/her brakes on the interstate suddenly, without good reason. And yes, occasionally issue a ticket for driving excessively slow or fast too -- but not JUST because of the sign. If everyone is driving approximately the same speed, whether it exceeds the "speed limit" or not, look for the odd one out who won't drive with the flow of traffic. He or she presents much more of a danger or impedance to the traffic than anyone else in that group! For that matter, it wouldn't hurt to take the type of vehicle into account! (You can't take turns safely at as high of a speed in a large truck or SUV as you can in a sports car. So for one, the speed might be perfectly "safe" while it's not for the other.)
The fact is though, speeding tickets are a big revenue generator (AKA. tax), thinly veiled with the lie about it being for "your safety".
I'm more inclined to like Scalia than not, based on general principles, but in the area of interactions with the police my touchstone is Hudson v. Michigan, in which he gutted the Fourth Amendment protections against violations of knock-and-announce while praising the "increasing professionalism" of police forces. Increasingly militarized, yes. Professional? Nope.
I hear conspiracy theories like this but I've never seen any evidence of it happening. Reason is that the cops would get in trouble.
Uh, no. I was born and raised in a small town in central Kentucky. My mother was the city attorney. One police officer failed to get an oil change or routine maintenance on his cruiser for 20,000 miles (they are allowed to take their cruisers home, but get free maintenance at the city garage). The engine on his cruiser then failed and had to be replaced. As a result, my mom set in motion the proceedings to have the officer fired. The city was unable to fire him, and from there on out he would, whenever he saw me driving around town, follow me and pull me over for minor offenses such as speeding less than 5 mph over the posted limits. Eventually, his wife got a job in another city and they moved.
The fact of the matter is that it is VERY difficult to have police fired. It used to be commonplace for mayors to come in and fire most of the police department and repopulate it with his cronies, now there are all sorts of laws protecting police officers.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
One of the more amusing camera issues has been red light cameras photographing cops running red lights. The processing of the images is usually outsourced and automated, and the company doing the work handles the process. The cops have to either pay up or go to court. There is much whining about this.
Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw writes to other police departments: "Please advise your members if they are captured on camera in their vehicles running the red light at these intersections, they will be cited. The only remedy for relief will be through the traffic court system. All law enforcement personnel must understand the high standard of conduct is applied to them in order for the public to have confidence in their departments and the officers."
Somebody gets it.
Something you find out if you look in to it is that there are a lot of different police forces in the US. Cities have their own, counties have their, states have theirs, the federal government has multiple ones.
So if a city police force refused to arrest and turn over a police officer for a lawful warrant, well then another police force would be called in to intervene. It isn't as though everyone would just sit back and say "Oh, well I guess they can just ignore us and do what they want." In that case it would be more than just the officer they were originally after who'd get arrested.
My point was that was an ad hominem attack. I expect better from slashdotters.
You must be new
My SIG is a P226
whenever he saw me driving around town, follow me and pull me over for minor offenses such as speeding less than 5 mph over the posted limits.
While I see what you're saying, he was an asshole, all you have to do is not give him an opportunity to BE an asshole by following traffic laws. They aren't that hard to follow and, as a pet peeve of mine, not signaling, on a lane change or otherwise, is one of the most asshole things you can DO on a road. Nobody can read your mind so use the fucking signal.
Thanks.