While taking a walk one day, legally open carrying a firearm, Christopher Proescher was stopped by police, questioned and arrested. The local prosecutor, seeing the Mr. Proeshcer committed no crime dropped all charges. In response to the false arrest Proescher reasonably filed a lawsuit against the officers. Fast forward to Federal judge William S. Duffey Jr. who made the inane decision that while the arresting officers were wrong in arresting Proescher (you know, because he didn’t break any laws) that carrying a pistol openly constitutes reasonable suspicion of a crime, which authorizes officers to detain the person who is carrying and as such the officers acted properly.
Allow me to rephrase: By exercising your legal right, you have forfeited your 4th Amendment Rights and as such will be subject to detention and false arrest with no recourse.
That is what Judge Duffey has ruled.
I think of other Rights that this could impact, such as having a conversation with someone and the police assuming that you are talking about committing a crime and demanding you tell them what you are talking about or just recording you without a warrant.
But then, what is the NSA been doing these past years?
Or the Fifth Amendment where invoking your right to silence will somehow be taken as a confession of guilt. Judge Duffey all but came out and said so in his ruling:
“Carrying a gun out in the open,” near a playground, combined with a refusal to answer questions and produce identification, “provided more than a sufficient basis constitutionally to detain plaintiff.”
In Georgia, the only way he could come up with that ruling is by bastardizing Georgia code 16-11-36 dealing with loitering and prowling which states:
(a) A person commits the offense of loitering or prowling when he is in a place at a time or in a manner not usual for law-abiding individuals under circumstances that warrant a justifiable and reasonable alarm or immediate concern for the safety of persons or property in the vicinity.
While the judge might focus on the “concern for the safety of persons” he applies it falsely since Mr. Proescher was not in a place or at a time unusual for law-abiding individuals to be. It’s a park, in the daytime where Mr. Proescher was taking a walk. If we must fear over zealous jack-booted thugs arresting us for legally taking a walk this country has more shades of 1938 Germany than I feared.
Once again a Judge fails liberty. How much longer before “show me your papers” is an everyday occurrence just to leave the house?