Texas court rules that police may introduce illegally gathered evidence at trial

Coach is Right ^ | 3/15/14 | Doug Book

[Oldpuppymax]

Texas prosecutors are applauding a decision by the State Court of Criminal Appeals which provides police officers a second chance to present evidence which has been gathered contrary to Texas law and the 4th Amendment. The ruling literally offers law enforcement a “do-over;” an opportunity to secure a search warrant AFTER a home has been illegally searched and AFTER evidence has been improperly obtained.

In 2010, police in Parker County, Texas received a call from a confidential informant (CI) who claimed that Fred Wehrenberg and a number of associates “were fixin’” to cook meth. Hours after the call–at 12:30 A.M the following day–police entered the Wehrenberg home without a warrant and against the wishes of Wehrenberg. Police handcuffed all of the occupants, held them in the front yard and proceeded to perform what the officers described as a “protective sweep” of the residence. An hour and a half later, after finding no meth being made on the premises, police prepared a...

[dragnet2]

You’re going to need some dancing shoes here...

[Colonel_Flagg]

Superintendent: Oh sorry! Right, here we go. You are hereby charged. One, that you did, on or about 1126, conspire to publicize a London Borough in the course of a BBC saga; two, that you were wilfully and persistently a foreigner; three, that you conspired to do things not normally considered illegal; four, that you were caught in possession of an offensive weapon, viz, the big brown table down at the police station.

Judge: The big brown table down at the police station?

Superintendent: It's the best we could find, m'lud ...

[unread]

"Texas shows the way to fight criminals."

Fighting crime is easy.... Deciding what constitutes a crime....now THATS the tricky part....

The people should be the ONLY ones to decide what crime IS and what is NOT crime..!! Not some stinking COMMIE judge...!

"the jury has a right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy....John Jay, 1789.

"The law itself is on trial quite as much as the case which is to be decided"...Harlan F. Stone, 1941.

"The pages of history shine on instances of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to DISRERGARD instructions of the judge"... U.S. vs. Dougherty, 1972.

The fate of our nation could very well be in the hands of the jury..! That's one place we can still fight back...

[Wuli]

“That Exclusionary Rule exists because the Framers quite properly understood that allowing law enforcement to torture confessions from the accused could never be mitigated by holding the police responsible, post conviction, for their own criminality”

searches of property, requiring a warrant and/or not requiring a warrant is NOT a confession by torture, and the extension from that to all else the courts have dreamed up on the issue is their invention, not whatthem we the people made or asked for;

THAT IS the issue, and I am sure if we the people wrote a law concerning prosecuting, making criminal, acts of illegal searches, we would do so in a manner that REQUIRED them AND did not demand any evidence be kept from a court, a jury because of them

[Defiant]

I fear you are casting pearls before swine, but a very good post nonetheless.

[RedHeeler]

“Again, Texas shows how to fight criminals.”...That’s fighting criminals? Perhaps, it’s another circumventing of the basic tenets of Our US Constitution. You have any idea, why that would be popular, amongst the police state types? If I have been redundant, please allow that I am extremely stupid.

[RedHeeler]

These days- Texas and California are sisters in limiting natural born, God given Freedom. Yet, North Carolina is hard scrabble on such matters, even still, long past the great disregard of human nature.

[FredZarguna]

No dancing required. Your post is irrelevant. Regulations are typically not repealed. The authorizing provisions of law can be removed, mooting them. Absent that, they do not even require legislative action. Reagan reduced the size of the Federal Register — the “official catalog” of Federal regulations — by about half, purely on executive authority. Neither legislative action nor jury nullification were required.

[dragnet2]

Reagan?? I am talking about modern history...Gezzz

You say we have all these known procedures and checks and balances in place to repeal bad punitive, anti-Constitutional laws. Law which are now forced onto the American public by an ever growing, controlling government...They affect everything you buy, the water you drink and everything else. Why have they not been repealed?

For example thousands of laws affecting the 2nd amendment, and Nazi like punitive EPA laws and regulations?

Why are you evading the questions?

[FredZarguna]

You are not paying attention, so it's pretty much pointless to post to you.

THE FIFTH Amendment IS AN EXCLUSIONARY RULE, governing a very specific kind of evidence.

The point of talking about the Exclusionary nature of The FIFTH Amendment, was to point out to you that because of law enforcement abuses under the Common Law, the Framers correctly understood that the most efficacious way to forbid torture was to moot its exercise, and not to take the same route that the Common Law took with respect to other types of evidence illegally obtained.

The Founders did not do everything correctly. The General Welfare Clause should have been written in a way that made Madison's understanding of it more explicit: that it was intended as an additional limitation on the the already limited authority of Congress, and not as a blank check for legislative adventurism.

We now know, in hindsight, that the Necessary and Proper Clause should have been worded in such a way that no idiot could misconstrue its meaning to suggest that Congress had a plenary power to tax, provided only that the taxation was required to fund legislation; that was not its intent.

The version of the Second Amendment advanced by Jefferson is the one that should have been used: "No Freeman Shall Ever Be Debarred the Use of Arms." Accepting that version would have short-circuited a great deal of liberal mischief and outright deliberately destructive malfeasance.

It's very clear that the Founders also made a mess of the process of selecting the President, which they quickly attempted to rectify.

They should also have explicitly limited judicial review to administrative remedy only, and not given the power to create Federal law to John Marshall and his ideological descendants.

And there are several other examples...

That all said, I agree with you that the Exclusionary Rule for all types of evidence should have entered Federal law via a Constitutional Amendment, and not case law [read: a majority of Justices' whims.] But I don't accept the claim that the status quo ante was a better remedy. Even if it once was, [it wasn't] it's clear that our police and secret police forces are now doing things which would absolutely have horrified the Framers, and their law-breaking cannot be tolerated.

So, YES, The Federal judiciary erred in 1914, and erred again in 1961. But the remedy was superior to the one that existed in the Common Law, and should have been in the Constitution to begin with.

[FredZarguna]

EPA doesn’t make laws. I don’t know where you got the idea that it does. Go back to grade school civics.

[dragnet2]

Why are you evading the questions?

[dragnet2]

Tell me about all the government produced EPA laws that have been repealed. How is it possible government is creating all these controlling punitive laws, yet few if any are ever repealed?

Why are you evading the questions?

[dragnet2]

EPA doesn’t make laws.

Nice evasion....Is this your weak attempt to support or defend the EPA, while pretending their government bosses are completely isolated from this agency?

[dragnet2]

EPA doesn’t make laws.

Are you suggesting the EPA is not supported and protected by those in government who support, fund and defend this agency?

Lets hear it MR. Zarguna.

[Wuli]

“So, YES, The Federal judiciary erred in 1914, and erred again in 1961. But the remedy was superior to the one that existed in the Common Law, and should have been in the Constitution to begin with.”

NO, it wasn’t; it has been part & parcell with denying the Constitution “we the people” adopted, and creating the tyranny of a judicial oligarchy that DENIES that our Constitution is, according to the Constitution, to be authored by “we the people”, not the judges. The slippery slope of that is WORSE than any supposed benevolence the judges think they are providing when they abrogate their Constitutional limits. The ends do not justify the means.

[FredZarguna]

Here’s the remedy: elect a President. He runs the bureaucracy. EPA regulations are not laws. They can come and go at the Executives’ direction.

[dragnet2]

Oh...I was waiting for that...So you’re blaming the American public for 30 or so years of out of control government?

Ya think the electoral process hasn’t been undermined and compromised by this same government?

[FredZarguna]

Oh...I was waiting for that...So you’re blaming the American public for 30 or so years of out of control government?

You need to learn some history as well as civics. The US government has been out of control since 1935. That's eighty years. And yes indeed, I do blame the American People. Roosevelt won by landslides; it was in all the papers. And Conservatives warned about what he was doing, and what he intended, and he was still reelected in landslides.

You think our problem is Barack 0bama? Barack 0bama is nothing. Our problem is that 66 million people voted for him -- AFTER he had already proven himself an inept Commie boob.

In the entire Twentieth Century we elected exactly ONE libertarian and ONE conservative. The Republican Party itself only nominated conservatives twice, and one of them was absolutely buried.

Yes, I blame the American people. We have the government we asked for, and deserve.

[dragnet2]

Yes, I blame the American people.

Of course you do...Never mind Americans have been voting for, pleading, begging, protesting, petitioning and demanding basic things like border protection and control for many decades...

Say, isn't securing and protecting our borders one of the few things govenrment is supposed to do?

You think your elections are legitimate?