Posted on 07/30/2011 6:29:50 AM PDT by MizSterious
I understand they had a warrant because of probable cause. The group has a history and so far that has been substantiated by the verdicts handed down by juries.
The Constitution is not meant to protect criminals and is abused by attempts to do so. There’s hardly a case where a crime is committed where in the course of an investigation someone can’t accuse the authorities of violating someone’s Constitutional rights.
What do you do when you bring in a suspect in a crime for questioning? Could he not claim his Constitutional rights are being violated as they didn’t have enough evidence? And how are they to collect evidence from a crime scene without *violating* someone’s Constitutional rights?
Some of the objections to the way this was handled simply end up hogtying the authorities in dealing with crime. That isn’t good either. The Constitution isn’t a guarantee against never being accused of anything or being inconvenienced in any way. It’s designed to limit the authority and power of the government for the maximum freedom of the citizens while still protecting them.
Honestly, I don’t remember the problems that were discussed when the raids happened. I seem to recall something about the original girl who spoke to the police going missing, and that the FLDS lawyers wanted to claim that there was no basis for a warrant because of that.
As to why women would go back to that, or go in the first place, there was a good article in National Review back in the early ‘90s (before the internet) on polygamy versus monogamy. The point was that polygamy was good for high-status males and low-status females, but the egalitarian tendency of monogamy led to more stable and prosperous cultures. Primitive tribes at constant war would always have an imbalance in population with fewer men than women, leaving women at risk for matelessness. Polygamy in these cultures is a natural choice. Polygamy in modern culture is problematic for the opposite reason: equal numbers of men and women mean that men are at risk for matelessness.
The article ended there, with point proved. As far as implications for today, for men to join means that they consider themselves high-status. For women, to return does not necessarily mean that they consider themselves low-status, but that the outside world is too difficult to join. Oh, and as far as the Constitution is concerned, I don’t see how the high Court can strike down anti-sodomy laws and not strike down anti-polygamy laws, too.
I don’t really remember the issues either, and never knew if the Constitutional issues we were discussing were real or just lousy reporting on the part of the media as to what was taking place.
The main issue I had at the time was some people seemed to think if the Constitution was being overlooked it was fine because these were terrible people. Most don’t seem to realize if we stand by and ignore the Constitution for one person or group it is easier to do it later to another and another. I hate that evil people have Constitutional rights, but if they don’t then none of us do either.
Thanks—thoughtful commentary. The original raid became a problem when it came out that whoever called was not actually on the compound. Since the call was made on a cell phone, there was no way to tell at the 911 center, especially back then. But some think that even if the caller had been someone being harmed on the compound, the raid wasn’t legal.
Now my memory must be bad, because I don't recall anyone saying that. Most of the pro-raid arguments I read at the time were that the raid was lawful, and conducted as best they could under very difficult circumstances (uncooperative people, lying about whose children were whose, ages, names, everything).
That’s right, I remember the lousy reporting now. I was disturbed by the attitude of some commenters on FR and elsewhere that any concern for the Constitution was support for child abuse, too.
It reminds me of the complaint that some critic had against Tolkien: he was not interested in evil, and did not paint his evil characters with any depth. Of course not! The conflict between different good goals and disagreement between good people is where the best drama lies. It is possible to be concerned about bad people’s rights and still oppose bad people. Thanks for pointing it out.
Thanks for laying out the point so clearly. Now I remember why I dismissed the story. The raid was conducted according to the information available, and no evidence suggested that the police had manufactured the call. With no wrongdoing on the part of the authorities, the warrant should have been good. (Anonymous tip lines work the same way.)
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