Posted on 05/07/2015 7:32:38 AM PDT by QT3.14
In my column today, I mention the dispute about whether the knife carried by Freddie Gray qualified as an illegal switchblade. Marilyn Mosby, the state's attorney for Baltimore, says it clearly did not, which means police did not have probable cause to arrest him for carrying the knife. Mosby cites "Maryland law," which defines a switchblade as a knife with "a blade that opens automatically by hand pressure applied to a button, spring, or other device in the handle of the knife."
But according to The Baltimore Sun, the police task force that investigated Gray's death "studied the knife and determined it was 'spring-assisted,' which does violate a Baltimore code." The relevant ordinance makes it illegal to possess "any knife with an automatic spring or other device for opening and/or closing the blade, commonly known as a switch-blade knife." Police described Gray's knife as "a spring-assisted, one-hand-operated knife," which does not fit the state's definition of switchblade but arguably fits the city's definition, depending on what "automatic spring" means.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
If they can’t figure it out, how is an avaerage citizen supposed to know?
if the switchblade fits.... you must acquits
This issue will get picked to death for a few years before any trial.
If the police can’t figure it out, normally the person is arrested and a court figures out the issue!
Press a button, it’s a switchblade. Otherwise it is spring assisted.
It was legal, and any law or local code that says otherwise is unconstitutional.
Cities should not be able to pass more restrictive weapons laws than the state’s laws. It’s absurd that I can legally carry a knife in Annapolis or other areas and then it’s a crime if I carry it to Baltimore.
However, it’s equally absurd to accuse the police of murder and kidnapping if the arrest was valid in accordance with the (silly) laws they are supposed to be enforcing.
Agreed (at least with respect to the kidnapping/false arrest charges - with respect to the murder/negligent homicide charges, let's see what the rest of the evidence says). It's an unconstitutional law, but if it's on the books and hasn't been ruled unconstitutional by the courts, it's hard to imagine convicting the officers for enforcing it.
All that matters is whether the arresting officers reasonably believed it was an illegal weapon under the statute cited for the arrest.
Except his 2nd rights were revoked as a result of his felony conviction. Too bad, so sad....
Here are some questions that might help the DA sort this out.
Has anyone else been arrested in, say, the last six years, for carrying a similar “spring assisted” knife in Baltimore? If so, what did the DA do with those charges? What about someone on probation or parole? Did the DA office pursue a revocation hearing?
If the DA dismissed all those charges, did they tell the police department why?
Knives do not fall under the 2nd amendment, correct?
I don’t think so. The officers chased him for no reason beyond him watching them. The knife was an after-the-fact excuse. But, regardless, having a knife was no justification for a deadly nickel ride. Arguing about the knife misses the bigger picture that these officers by their actions or in-actions, killed Freddie Gray.
Irrelevant to the law at issue. The law under which he was arrested does not state that felons may not carry a switchblade or assisted-opening knife. It states that no person may carry such a knife. His status as a felon did not play into his arrest, and it does not play into the unconstitutionality of the law.
You are joking, right? Of course they are arms-along with any other tool or technology one can use person to person to protect self, family and state ( Constitution).
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I'm not sure that I agree with you.
Cops are a necessary evil in society. Once you are in the custody of a cop or any entity of the state you should be protected from harm. Any cop that abuses any citizen should have the logic applied to child abusers who are in a position of authority over a child like teachers and parents. The penalty should be much higher because the child has a reasonable expectation to be able to trust the abuser when in their care.
In our society it is not illegal to run away from a cop just because our eyes meet. It is not legal for a cop to stop a person without reasonable expectation that the person being stopped committed a crime. We don't have random search and stop sites because we are supposed to be safe in our personal space. Certainly our pockets are part of our personal space.
It would have been wiser for Gray to say don't search me until you get a search warrent but that likely didn't happen and he had been stopped many times in the past. The fact that he had been unlawfully stopped and searched so many times in the past gives him a pretty good reason for running.
There has been much made about the number of arrests of Mr. Grey. I do not make so much of those arrests because nearly all of them were dismissed, in other words Mr. Grey was a victim of harassment by the cops.
In Mr. Gray's community it is not unusual to be busted for drugs. Being busted for drugs should really be a civil charge instead of criminal but the cops use what they have to harass citizens.
To me a cop who harasses any person should not be a cop. Public safety is the cops job not punishment for past offenses. I don't know all the facts in this case, I do know enough however that regardless of the circumstances Mr. Gray should not be dead, even if he had been carrying 20 guns. If Mr. Gray had taken a couple of swings at the cops or spit on them, once SAFELY in police custody he should be able to reasonably expect safety not revenge.
It is not up to the police to determine if the knife was illegal or not. That is up to a jury. The law seems poorly written, though, and gives police broad powers to arrest you if you have a spring assist knife.
People who believe the Baltimore City code is unconstitutional are missing two points.
The first is, the question is not whether this is a good law. It may very well be a bad law. The question is whether the police violated the law by effecting an arrest based on this law. It is difficult to argue that they did so commit a crime by enforcing this law, even if it is a bad law.
The second question is not whether people have a right to arms generally, but whether the courts have a right to prevent convicted felons from carrying weapons. Thus, was it illegal for Mr. Gray to carry any weapon, whether otherwise permitted by law or not? For many parties, that is at least an open question, and police acting upon such authority cannot be subject to prosecution for enforcement of such restrictions.
The fundamental basis of the initial criminal charges - false arrest and imprisonment - is vitiated. It is difficult to bootstrap the rest of the case without that missing premise.
We are not supposed to know as that keeps us beholding to the government. If a government employee doesn't like us, or doesn't like our politics or something we say they can have us charged and made poor paying a lawyer to fight the charges.
The proverbial boot on our necks.
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