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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Supreme Court OK of Arrests for Petty Offenses Violates Constitution |
Current rating: 0 |
by Ribert DeCarli via Progressive Review
Email: bob (nospam) austinlawyer.com (unverified!) |
30 May 2001
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Editor's Note: If we didn't need citizen's review boards for police before, we certainly need them now to supervise their vastly expanded powers. ML
[From a petition by attorney Robert DeCarli for a Supreme Court rehearing in the Atwater case, involving a woman arrested without a warrant for a minor traffic violation.]--Sam Smith |
The Court's holding is in part based on the assumption that there is no "epidemic" of incidents similar to the experience of petitioner Gail Atwater. A single deprivation of an individual's civil liberties is one too many. Nevertheless, existing data reveal an epidemic in progress. Ms. Atwater's experience was far from unique. In Oregon and California alone, 37,814 people were arrested in 1999 for minor traffic offenses. If similar practices exist in the remaining 48 states that do not collect this data, then nearly one quarter million motorists nationwide are arrested for minor traffic offenses each year.
The Court's holding will make these arrests even more commonplace. The lowest level police officer now has complete discretion to arrest without a warrant - and the accompanying power to conduct warrantless searches - with no limiting standards. This sort of unlimited power was what the Framers detested and sought to prevent by adopting the Fourth Amendment. It also comports with no societal understanding of the term "reasonable."
. . . Two hundred forty years ago, James Otis explained that the writs of assistance threatened liberty because they entrusted unlimited discretion to search and arrest in the hands of the lowest level law enforcement official. The writs of assistance were "the worst instance of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty, that ever was found in an English law book" because they placed "the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer." [John Adams] The Court has now returned Americans' liberty to the hands of every "petty officer," even while recognizing that some abuse their power . . . The Court noted that this case involved "a police officer who was (at best) exercising extremely poor judgment." By granting this police officer and officers of similar ilk unfettered discretion to arrest and search, the Court also immunizes and legitimizes their actions at their worst . . .
"Reasonable" now means that although a person cannot be jailed for certain offenses if ultimately convicted, the person can still be jailed for up to 48 hours even before a judicial officer determines there was probable cause to justify the arrest. The preference for warrants is lost along with the requirement of reasonableness. At least in the context of traffic stops, there is now absolutely no incentive to obtain a warrant to arrest, or to search a motor vehicle.
The Court's decision has placed the liberty of the over 187 million licensed drivers in this country in the hands of the "petty officer," which was the state of affairs prior to the American Revolution and prior to the Fourth Amendment's adoption . . . If the Fourth Amendment's protections lie dormant until there is an outbreak of abuses, then its protections have little meaning. |
See also:
http://prorev.com/indexa.htm
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