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SCOTUS: Amply Serving Law Enforcement’s Interests versus Society’s

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U.S. Supreme Court building.
U.S. Supreme Court building. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On June 23 the US Supreme Court ruled, in Birchfield v. North Dakota, that police officers may require suspected drunk drivers to take breathalyzer tests without warrants as required by the US Constitution’s Fourth Amendment and under criminal penalty should they refuse. The court did go so far as to leave the constitutional warrant requirement intact for blood tests. Associate Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, lays out the chilling logic for differentiating between the two:

“Because breath tests are significantly less intrusive than blood tests and in most cases amply serve law enforcement interests, a breath test, but not a blood test, may be administered as a search incident to a lawful arrest for drunk driving. No warrant is needed in this situation. ”

Searching the shed behind my house would certainly be “significantly less intrusive” than searching my closet or requiring me to open the lock box in which I keep important personal documents. Does this mean that the police should be free to poke around in my shed without procuring  a warrant based on probable cause to believe I’ve committed a crime, if doing so happens to “amply serve their interests?” No, it doesn’t. The Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures isn’t there for the convenience of law enforcement. It’s there to protect everyone else’s rights from abuses BY law enforcement.

And the thing is, it’s never been easier for the cop on the street to get a warrant within minutes, or to prove that the warrant application is (or was) justified. Most jurisdictions have  judges  “on call” to handle warrant applications 24/7. Between radios and cell phones, police officers are almost never unable to communicate with their departments or with those judges. Cell phone video, dash camera video and, more and more lately, body camera video are all available for reference to establish that probable cause exists (or, in retrospect, existed).

Laws requiring drivers to acquiesce in breathalyzer tests absent warrants — as well as other unconstitutional excesses such as random “DUI checkpoints” where drivers are stopped and interrogated absent any reason at all to believe they’ve committed crimes — aren’t about fighting drunk driving or making the roads safe.

These laws are about making law enforcement’s job easier. Which sounds nice, but gets things backward. A peace officer’s job is to keep the peace by the rules, easy or not. Absent those rules, cops become the public’s enemies rather than its servants.

These laws are about greasing the squeaky wheel. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), a tired special interest group that has long since fulfilled its founder’s purpose, is now mostly interested in keeping its revenues (more than $30 million per year as of 2013) coming by lobbying against the rights of those Americans who aren’t among its 400-plus employees.

And yes, these laws are at least a little bit about reminding the serfs just who’s in charge.

What these laws are not is constitutional. And that should be the only thing the Supreme Court considers in its deliberations.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

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Jim Crow is Alive and Well and Attending the University of Texas

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English: The inscription Equal Justice Under L...
English: The inscription Equal Justice Under Law as seen on the frieze of the United States Supreme Court building (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On June 23, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of  “race-conscious admissions” at America’s state-operated colleges and universities. Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, holds that the form of racial discrimination known as “affirmative action” is lawful under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

Yes, you read that correctly. No, it doesn’t make any sense at all. The whole idea of equal protection is, um, EQUAL protection. That means neither special privilege nor special punishment based on non-essentials like skin color.

When the expression “race-conscious” crosses my field of view, it’s usually a safe bet that the person using it is a “white supremacist” or “white separatist” chiding those of similar skin tone for not joining him in his dislike of those of darker hue. And usually the vast majority of us see that for what it is and reject it, as we should.

Usually. But not when racial quotas and set-asides come up for consideration in the courts. Then racism suddenly becomes not just acceptable but mandatory,  or at least de rigueur, in stark contrast to Dr. Martin Luther King’s call for a society where we are judged on the content of our characters rather than on the color of our skins.

Does “structural” or “institutional” racism still exist, functioning so as to deprive people of color of their fair share of opportunities in our shared society? I’m not among those who dismiss the idea out of hand. In fact, I think it quite likely to be true.

Can structural/institutional racism be repaired or eliminated by adding more layers of structural/institutional racism atop the original ugly substrate? No. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Nor do three, four or five.

Color-blindness in college and university admissions is neither the first nor the last step in eliminating racism as a factor in the availability of post-secondary education opportunities. But it is certainly a necessary step, to be taken along with, rather than after, rooting out racial bias in curriculum, teaching and testing.

It’s demoralizing in this day and age to find Jim Crow alive and well in the form of state institutions demanding (and basing decisions on) disclosure of individuals’ racial and ethnic backgrounds.

It’s even more demoralizing — indeed, it’s beyond disgusting — to see the US Supreme Court affirming and supporting that racial discrimination in the name of “equal protection.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Utah v. Strieff: SCOTUS Fuels a Dangerous Fire

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United States Supreme Court building.
United States Supreme Court building. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The US Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Utah v. Strieff, issued on June 20, is the latest in a long line of rulings expanding the powers of police at the expense of everyone else. Such expansions represent a clear and present danger to the public … and when resistance to the abuses they encourage explodes into open violence, as it surely will sooner or later, to police themselves.

Edward Strieff was detained in what the state of Utah’s attorneys openly admit was an illegal stop — a stop completely absent probable cause to believe that he had committed a crime — by Salt Lake City detective Douglas Fackrell. But the illegal stop and an illegal demand for identification enabled Fackrell to discover an outstanding traffic warrant. That discovery, the court holds, was an “attenuating” event which made Fackrell’s subsequent search of Strieff (and use of the drugs discovered on Strieff’s person in that search as evidence against him) perfectly legal.

In the opening to her dissent,  Justice Sonia Sotomayor explains the ruling’s essential evil. “This case allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your identification, and check it for outstanding traffic warrants — even if you are doing nothing wrong,” writes Sotomayor. “If the officer discovers a warrant for a fine you forgot to pay, courts will now excuse his illegal stop and will admit into evidence anything he happens to find by searching you after arresting you on the warrant.”

My late friend Aaron Russo (you may remember him as the award-winning producer of such motion pictures as “The Rose” and “Trading Places”) defined a police state in terms of fear. You know you’re living in a police state, Aaron said, if merely noticing a patrol car behind you in traffic makes you nervous.

I suspect the street sign marking that point is likewise in the rearview mirror for most of us. “No-knock” raids, “Terry stop” aka “stop and frisk” policies, and numerous violent police assaults and even murders caught on camera but often committed with impunity, make those fears eminently reasonable. This ruling can only add to the power of those fears and to the number of Americans living daily with them.

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible,” said president John F. Kennedy, “will make violent revolution inevitable.” With its ruling in Utah v. Strieff, the US Supreme Court continues a long and sorry record of answering to Kennedy’s description.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY