Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Scotus Approves Warrantless Searches

Yep, as the article points out, 4th amendment protections against warrantless searches by police took a hit today iwth the Supreme Court deciding evidence of a crime can be seized even if it was found by means considered illegall... at least up until now: "
In a split 5-3 decision, the justices voted to reinstate the drug-related convictions of Joseph Edward Strieff. In the case of Strieff, he was illegally detained during a “concededly unconstitutional detention,” which eventually led to the discovery of drugs inside his vehicle.
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If memory serves me correct, this would seem to invalidate the old "fruits of the poisoned tree" protections we had previously. That meaning that if a search is begun under less than legal conditions, any evidencelater found as a result of that search is deemed inadmissible for prosecution purposes. Hard to determine just wha this means, alhough I suspect this will face judicial review again.

That's of little comfort to me. As I've wrote here before, the Supeme Court along with lesser ones, seem to rule against constitutional protections and in favor of government power just as often as not. And tha's often rgardless of who appointed the court.

2 Comments:

At 12:26 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ok Americans, let's all bend over say Baaaaaaaa....

 
At 12:08 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

They aren't law makers, they can only offer opinions.

 

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