Welcome to Future Felons of America

claire wolfe ^ | Claire Wolfe

[Porterville]

Don't forget down loading music and calling a fat 23 year old cop a porker.

[metesky]

How it works in Massachusetts:

Cop: May I search your car?

Annoyed motorist: What is your probable cause?

Cop: Wait a few minutes, sir.

(Cop walks back to cruiser and calls for backup).

[only1percent]

Saying "no" to a consent search won't keep the cop from searching it if he wants. It will make anything he finds while so doing inadmissable in court. If he >doesn't< find anything, well, you may have just gotten a lottery ticket, since you can sue for civil rights violations.

[brianl703]

You know there's something seriously wrong with a state that keeps re-electing Ted Kennedy and Barney Fwank.

[brianl703]

That's why cops who are just going on fishing expeditions won't search if consent isn't given (if they're smart and realize that going forward increases their chances of having to find a new career when the department learns he just cost them a big chunk of change...)

[only1percent]

This is not entirely true. If confronting a sketchy looking dude, and in a jurisdiction where federal juries are not quick to award big civil rights awards to people caught with cocaine and who skated jail anyway, they can go ahead and search. Most people caught with a lot of drugs or weapons on an illegal search will go ahead and take a possession plea and do 18 months or 2 years, waiving all of their civil rights plaintiff claims, rather than rolling the dice on doing 10-20 years on the trafficking charges.

[brianl703]

If the person has no drugs, weapons or any other contraband in their vehicle, seems to me that's a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Not all sketchy looking dudes are trafficking.

[Restorer]

when you are dragged into court, how are you going to prove the negative?

Your only defense will be your character and reputation. Which has to be good enough to cause the jury to see reasonable doubt that you were a conspirator. Which means that if you hang out with thieves and drug dealers, they probably won't see reasonable doubt.

The stupid thing about this article is that it implies that the conspiracy laws are some new federal invention. In truth, they go back many centuries into the old common law.

[MontanaBeth]

I'm pretty sure it's against the law to read it.