Posted on 12/18/2013 1:15:11 PM PST by driftdiver
Police in Parker County had been watching Michael Fred Wehrenberg's home for a month when, late in the summer of 2010, they received a tip from a confidential informant that Wehrenberg and several others were "fixing to" cook meth. Hours later, after midnight, officers walked through the front door, rounded up the people inside, and kept them in handcuffs in the front yard for an hour and a half.
The only potential problem, at least from a constitutional standpoint, was that the cops didn't have a search warrant. They got one later, before they seized the boxes of pseudoephedrine, stripped lithium batteries, and other meth-making materials, while the alleged meth cooks waited around in handcuffs, but by then they'd already waltzed through the home uninvited. They neglected to mention this on their warrant application, identifying a confidential informant as their only source of information.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.dallasobserver.com ...
TX has 10 x more Ted Cruz's then Sheila Jackson Lee's. But, there are corrupt little fiefdoms, sometimes in small towns, sometimes large ones.
Merry Christmas!!!
Spoken like a stealth libtard. What a ridiculous comment.
There are exceptions.
You are correct. But you need to understand that each state has its liberal cesspools, even Texas. I know, I pause as well when I see this stuff in Texas. But look at the dam capital. Even Dallas.
if true, not good for texas.
Bank robbers (assuming it was obvious they were about to rob a bank- masks, guns, etc.) would constitute a longstanding exception to the warrant requirement, EXIGENT CIRCUMSTANCES!
This is not the case here. I saw a case (I’m a defense attorney in TX and former prosecutor) recently where the cops took a suspect’s DNA them applied for a warrant afterwards.
The judge (who is hard core pro prosecution) suppressed the evidence as being a crystal clear violation of the Constitution of the US and TX.
You do realize the issue is not just about criminals. The entire concept of personal dignity is in danger.
Or do you think the founders were motivated to protect criminals, or to protect dignity?
The 4th or any other righ is not only for when LE finds them convenient.
For too long “conservatives” have thought of the 4th & 5th as just for “liberals”. Hopefully, they are waking up now, but I doubt we’ll see this love of liberty next time a Republican gets into the White House.
The police taking short cuts,bypassing standing laws does not serve in the publics best interest.
First off, it's actually a little bit amusing watching the FReepertarians and Info-Wars refugees getting all worked up over an article in a free, Village Voice owned paper. I generally don't believe much of what I read in the MSM, let alone an "alternative" source like this, so I suspected that this story might, just maybe, have been spun a tiny bit away from the actual case.
Which, if you do a little bit of Googling, turns out, IMHO, to be the case. My exegesis: the cops in Parker County, Texas had been watching a particular house full of tweakers for a couple of weeks, when they got a tip from a previously reliable informant that he had been inside the house, and had seen a bunch of the stuff you need if you're going to "shake and bake" meth. He listed those items specifically, i'm just sparing you the boring list.
Anway, the detective on the scene decided to act on the "exigent circumstances" and enter the house to secure it to prevent the destruction of evidence. Now, the FReepertarians at this point will object that this should never be allowed, ever, and that anyone who disagrees is a vile "statist" of the lowest rank. Well, whatever, that's not the law and never has been. Once that task had been accomplished, the detective then asked for, and obtained, a warrant to search the residence, wherein he found all of the stuff that the informant had told him was there.
On appeal the defendant objected that exigent circumstanced didn't really exist, and that therefore the initial entry was illegal and that the evidence collected by the subsequent search warrant should not be protected from exclusion under the independent source doctrine argued by the state.
The legal wrangling boiled down to that: the court was asked to rule, basically, on whether the evidence seized pursuant to the warrant had to be excluded if the initial 'exigent circumstances' entry was later ruled invalid, and they effectively said, "no, the independent source doctrine is still fine, and we don't think that we need to apply the exclusionary rule in this case".
What the court did NOT say was any of the nonsense reported in the Village-voice owned rag linked here about "pre-crime", or "crimes that were about to occur": the warrant was based on the statements about specific drug precursors and lab equipment which were in fact found as described inside the house after the search authorized by the warrant.
Now, one could question the judgement of the detective regarding the exigency of the circumstances, and in hindsight it would probably have been wiser to have first obtained the warrant, but that's a far cry from the breathless claims of a police state run amok from the Alex Jones bedwetters.
Bingo.
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