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Title: Supreme Court says police may search even if arrest invalid
Source:
SacBee
URL Source: http://www.sacbee.com/838/story/883860.html
Published: Apr 23, 2008
Author: PETE YOST
Post Date: 2008-04-23 16:16:41 by farmfriend
Ping List: *Jack-Booted Thugs* Subscribe to *Jack-Booted Thugs*
Keywords: None
Views: 134
Comments: 14
By PETE YOST - Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court affirmed Wednesday that police have the power to conduct searches and seize evidence, even when done during an arrest that turns out to have violated state law. The unanimous decision comes in a case from Portsmouth, Va., where city detectives seized crack cocaine from a motorist after arresting him for a traffic ticket offense. David Lee Moore was pulled over for driving on a suspended license. The violation is a minor crime in Virginia and calls for police to issue a court summons and let the driver go. Instead, city detectives arrested Moore and prosecutors say that drugs taken from him in a subsequent search can be used against him as evidence. "We reaffirm against a novel challenge what we have signaled for half a century," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote. Scalia said that when officers have probable cause to believe a person has committed a crime in their presence, the Fourth Amendment permits them to make an arrest and to search the suspect in order to safeguard evidence and ensure their own safety. Moore was convicted on a drug charge and sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled that police should have released Moore and could not lawfully conduct a search. State law, said the Virginia Supreme Court, restricted officers to issuing a ticket in exchange for a promise to appear later in court. Virginia courts dismissed the indictment against Moore. Moore argued that the Fourth Amendment permits a search only following a lawful state arrest. In a concurring opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she finds more support for Moore's position in previous court cases than the rest of the court does. But she said she agrees that the arrest and search of Moore was constitutional, even though it violated Virginia law. The Bush administration and attorneys general from 18 states lined up in support of Virginia prosecutors. The federal government said Moore's case had the potential to greatly increase the class of unconstitutional arrests, resulting in evidence seized during searches being excluded with increasing frequency. Looking to state laws to provide the basis for searches would introduce uncertainty into the legal system, the 18 states said in court papers.
Supreme Court says police may search even if arrest invalid
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#1. To: farmfriend (#0)
Boy I sure am glad we got us a conservative Supreme Court so that they can put a stop to these kind of rulngs. I mean, uh...nevermind. Kelo anyone? Has anyone noticed the SC trend over the last couple of decades? No longer do they consider what's best for the citizenry but instead what's best for the government.
One more hapless sap into the system. And another 'right' into the toilet.
I haven't gotten over Terry.
Like it or not it all stems from the "funny money" ... no real money = no rights and no constitution. You can have credit as long as you don't mind being searched, licensed, permitted, and corn-holed by the PTSD Cops returning from Iraq and soon Iran. It's gonna get worse before it gets worser.
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802)
Ain't that the truth?
That's why I have gone back to school to become a doctor. As soon as I'm done my family and I are out of here. I don't know where we're going but I'm getting the hell out of dodge before TSHTF. I am of the opinion that we are at that moment in time today that the Germans who fled Nazi Germany were at when they fled (if that makes any sense). I only hope that I can finish my training before the ball drops.
I'll just go down with the ship.
And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness. - T. S. Eliot
[FULL DECISION AT THE LINK] VIRGINIA v MOORE 06-1082 April 23 2008 caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/sc...=US&vol=000&invol=06-1082 VIRGINIA v. MOORE certiorari to the supreme court virginia No. 06-1082. Argued January 14, 2008--Decided April 23, 2008 Rather than issuing the summons required by Virginia law, police arrested respondent Moore for the misdemeanor of driving on a suspended license. A search incident to the arrest yielded crack cocaine, and Moore was tried on drug charges. The trial court declined to suppress the evidence on Fourth Amendment grounds. Moore was convicted. Ultimately, the Virginia Supreme Court reversed, reasoning that the search violated the Fourth Amendment because the arresting officers should have issued a citation under state law, and the Fourth Amendment does not permit search incident to citation. Held: The police did not violate the Fourth Amendment when they made an arrest that was based on probable cause but prohibited by state law, or when they performed a search incident to the arrest. Pp. 3-13. (a) Because the founding era's statutes and common law do not support Moore's view that the Fourth Amendment was intended to incorporate statutes, this is "not a case in which the claimant can point to a 'clear answer [that] existed in 1791 and has been generally adhered to by the traditions of our society ever since,' " Atwater v. Lago Vista, 532 U. S. 318, 345. Pp. 3-5. (b) Where history provides no conclusive answer, this Court has analyzed a search or seizure in light of traditional reasonableness standards "by assessing, on the one hand, the degree to which it intrudes upon an individual's privacy and, on the other, the degree to which it is needed for the promotion of legitimate governmental interests." Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U. S. 295, 300. Applying that methodology, this Court has held that when an officer has probable cause to believe a person committed even a minor crime, the arrest is constitutionally reasonable. Atwater, supra, at 354. This Court's decisions counsel against changing the calculus when a State chooses to protect privacy beyond the level required by the Fourth Amendment. See, e.g., Whren v. United States, 517 U. S. 35. United States v. Di Re, 332 U. S. 581, distinguished. Pp. 6-8. (c) The Court adheres to this approach because an arrest based on probable cause serves interests that justify seizure. Arrest ensures that a suspect appears to answer charges and does not continue a crime, and it safeguards evidence and enables officers to conduct an in-custody investigation. A State's choice of a more restrictive search-and-seizure policy does not render less restrictive ones unreasonable, and hence unconstitutional. While States are free to require their officers to engage in nuanced determinations of the need for arrest as a matter of their own law, the Fourth Amendment should reflect administrable bright-line rules. Incorporating state arrest rules into the Constitution would make Fourth Amendment protections as complex as the underlying state law, and variable from place to place and time to time. Pp. 8-11. (d) The Court rejects Moore's argument that even if the Constitution allowed his arrest, it did not allow the arresting officers to search him. Officers may perform searches incident to constitutionally permissible arrests in order to ensure their safety and safeguard evidence. United States v. Robinson, 414 U. S. 218. While officers issuing citations do not face the same danger, and thus do not have the same authority to search, Knowles v. Iowa, 525 U. S. 113, the officers arrested Moore, and therefore faced the risks that are "an adequate basis for treating all custodial arrests alike for purposes of search justification," Robinson, supra, at 235. Pp. 11-13. 272 Va. 717, 636 S. E. 2d 395, reversed and remanded. Scalia, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, Breyer, and Alito, JJ., joined. Ginsburg, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment.
Why was this litigated under federal law provisions and not the state constitution? There would be no appeal from a state constitution ruling by the state supreme court.
The U.S. Constitution is no impediment to our form of government.--PJ O'Rourke
Excuse me, just when were they supposed to have been ruling based upon what's best for the people?
The U.S. Constitution is no impediment to our form of government.--PJ O'Rourke
The 1968 Gun Control Act mirrors the Nazi gun laws of 1938. WASHINGTON, D.C. (May20) -- Last fall I reported to you about a new book from Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership which charges that the 1968 Gun Control Act (GCA) was a direct copy of the Nazi gun laws of 1938, except for the registration provisions and the flat prohibition against Jews being allowed to buy or possess guns. The authors of "Gun Control: Gateway to Tyranny", Jay Simkin and Aaron Zelman (2872 Wentworth, Milwaukee. Wis. 53207; $19.95 + $2.95 S&H), had obtained and translated the German 1928 and 1938 laws, and laid them out side-by-side with GCA '68. The similarities are astounding. I was particularly struck by the sameness of the German provisions to parts of the original Dodd bills which were later changed or eliminated. For instance, the first Dodd bill -- like the German law - defined as antiques guns made before 1870 (the approximate era of non-cartridge guns). However, a reasonable person could argue that the methods used to regulate transfers of sales in both laws could easily be devised independently -- So I wrote last October: "Did the authors of the 1968 Act dig out a dusty, brittle copy of the Nazi law and translate it into Amendment 90 of S.1? Not likely." Well, it appears I was wrong, Senator Tom Dodd (D-Conn.), author of the 1968 Gun Control Act and its predecessor bills, did have a copy of the German law. According to a letter dated July 12, 1968 -- shortly after passage of the Omnibus Crime Act, which contained most of GCA '68, but four months before enactment of the full law -- the Library of Congress provided Senator Dodd a requested translation of the 1938 German Law on Weapons and returned "the Xerox copy of the original German text which you supplied." Where did Tom Dodd get the German law? When did he get it? Zelman and Simkin, in an article in the May 1993 "Guns & Ammo" magazine, make the reasonable guess that Dodd acquired a copy during 1946 when he was a senior member of the U.S. prosecution team during the Nurnberg Trials of Nazi war criminals. Why did he want it translated in June, 1968, when he had long been pushing virtually the same law -- indicating that he had a translation years before? Dodd's papers might answer that perplexing question, but they are at the Connecticut State Library under limited access controlled by his son, Chris Dodd, the present Senator from Connecticut. The hearings of June and July 1968 concerned not just the Gun Control Act but two gun registration bills -- both of which Dodd opposed. I don't know whether Dodd's opposition came from true conviction or because he had continuously denied that the "Dodd Bill" was a "first step" toward gun registration, and was made a liar when President Johnson and Senator Joe Tydings (D-Md.) tried to push through gun registration immediately after passage of the Omnibus Crime Act. But a person close to Dodd -- who must remain nameless even today -- told me at the time that Dodd was very upset by the registration bills and had told him: "That's a Nazi bill." Dodd's unusual comment, which had banged around my brain for 25 years, took on a new meaning when I learned that Simkin had found evidence that Dodd possessed a copy of the Nazi Weapons Law, and wasn't being rhetorical, but was stating a fact. Represenative John Dingell testified during the hearings that the Nazis had used registration laws to disarm "unreliable" Germans and citizens of invaded countries. He was upbraided by Tydings -- who was chairing Dodd's committee - for using "scare tactics." "Are you inferring that our system here, gun registration or licensing, would in any way be comparable to the Nazi regime in Germany...?" Tydings then said he was inserting items in the hearings record concerning the German gun laws and confiscations. Many months later, after registration had failed and GCA '68 had passed, the hearing record was published. No one noticed that Tydings' Exhibit 62, the translation of the Nazi gun laws, showed that he and President Johnson were, indeed, trying to emulate the Nazi registration laws -- and that with the Omnibus Crime Act and Gun Control Act Dodd had copied the rest.
The U.S. Constitution is no impediment to our form of government.--PJ O'Rourke
There can be no serious informed disagreement with that POV.
"Satan / Cheney in "08"
#2. To: farmfriend (#0)
#3. To: Hayek Fan (#1)
Kelo anyone?
#4. To: Hayek Fan (#1)
Has anyone noticed the SC trend over the last couple of decades? No longer do they consider what's best for the citizenry but instead what's best for the government.
#5. To: noone222, Hayek Fan (#4)
It's gonna get worse before it gets worser.
Thought for the day:
Calling an illegal alien an 'undocumented immigrant' is like calling a drug dealer an 'unlicensed pharmacist'
#6. To: noone222, farmfriend (#4)
It's gonna get worse before it gets worser.
#7. To: Hayek Fan (#6)
Thought for the day:
Calling an illegal alien an 'undocumented immigrant' is like calling a drug dealer an 'unlicensed pharmacist'
#8. To: farmfriend (#0)
#9. To: farmfriend (#0)
#10. To: farmfriend (#0)
#11. To: Hayek Fan (#1)
Has anyone noticed the SC trend over the last couple of decades? No longer do they consider what's best for the citizenry but instead what's best for the government.
#12. To: Hayek Fan (#6)
I am of the opinion that we are at that moment in time today that the Germans who fled Nazi Germany were at when they fled (if that makes any sense). I only hope that I can finish my training before the ball drops.
#13. To: farmfriend (#0)
#14. To: Hayek Fan (#1)
Has anyone noticed the SC trend over the last couple of decades? No longer do they consider what's best for the citizenry but instead what's best for the government.
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