If Justice Thomas wrote the majority opinion, than I’ll go with it. The perp had a warrant out for him when he was stopped. I imagine that legitimized the stop and negated any constitutional concerns.
I would like to know the reasoning of Justice Thomas, who is a strong Constitutionalist. I would wager his opinion is narrow, and this headline is a bit of hype.
Typical libtard scare-mongering. If the CONSERVATIVE justices like Thomas is for it, it is GOOD. Don’t follow libtards.
a. What is an unconstitutional stop?
2. If Sotomayer doesn’t like the ruling, I tend to like it, pending more information.
It doesn’t affect them, so what do they care?
Sounds like just more penumbras and emanations" to me.
SCOTUS.
Legitimate question to those here with related legal background -
Could this SCOTUS ruling make it easier execute warrantless - delayed notification searches against individuals and later “cook up” arrest charges based on initial evidence of data seized?
Know Your Rights | Electronic Frontier Foundation
https://www.eff.org/issues/know-your-rights Proxy Highlight
Oct 29, 2014 ... This sensitive data is worth protecting from prying eyes, including those of the ... If you consent to a search, the police don’t need a warrant. ... Police can search your computer or portable devices at the border without a warrant.
Searching and Seizing Computers and Obtaining Electronic ...
https://www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/docs/ssma... Proxy Highlight
Seeking Authorization for Delayed Notification Search Warrants ...83. 6. Multiple ..... on the warrantless search and seizure of computers and computer data.
“The discovery of that warrant broke the causal chain between the unconstitutional stop and the discovery of evidence by compelling Officer Douglas Fackrell to arrest Strieff,” Thomas wrote. “And, it is especially significant that there is no evidence that Officer Fackrell’s illegal stop reflected flagrantly unlawful police misconduct.”
The Fourth Amendment protects against UNREASONABLE searches and seizures. Thomas is saying that regardless of the unreasonable stop, the police had a duty to arrest the guy based on an outstanding warrant which adds up to a reasonable search in the arrest. That seems like a reasonable conclusion. Sometimes it helps who is for and who is against. Thomas usually hits the nail on the head and the Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan dissent gives the decision more credibility IMO.
“The decision was a reversal of the Utah Supreme Court’s decision tossing out the evidence under the Fourth Amendment’s so-called “exclusionary rule,” which holds that evidence obtained illegally cannot be admitted at trial.”
Uh, no, this does NOT reverse that decision. It was the court’s opinion that the “exclusionary rule” was not applicable because of the facts IN THIS CASE.
Writers should stick to writing about things they understand and/or have no prejudice against.
The “exclusionary rule” in many cases, disallows evidence that was simply not presented properly or logged in and/or described wrong. Crazy reasons, many of them, which is how we get guys running around with 43 arrests, 4 felony convictions and who knows how many other acts of thuggery that were unable to be prosecuted because someone didn’t dot an I or cross a t.
They really didn’t weaken it. What it boils down to is if you’ve got an outstanding warrant why they initially stopped you becomes immaterial. Which makes sense really, technically once you’ve got a warrant out for your arrest all cops are supposed to be looking for you and can stop you merely because you’re you and you’ve got a warrant.
But why was he stopped? No one has said. Was his driving erratic, was something about his vehicle suspicious? It’s not too difficult to come up with a pretense if you have a good cop’s instinct that the subject just seems a little hinky.
I’ve had very few tickets in over 50 years of driving and I chock that up to being able to spot police cars. They have an “aura” that I can’t explain but nine times out of ten I’m right. I expect a cop develops that same sense about certain cars that he believes may be driven by bad actors, and I’d bet he has a pretty high percentage of being right.
Clarence Thomas didn’t make up new law out of whole cloth. Rather, he applied existing precedents, which is what we expect reasoned, reasonable constitutional conservative judges to do, right?
The case turned on the fact that the defendant, Streiff, had a valid arrest warrant hanging over his head. So, even though the police officer may not have had sufficient probable cause to stop and question Streiff, once the officer learned that there was a valid arrest warrant for Streiff, he then had the right to arrest and search him. This principle is established in prior judicial precedents.
The precedent which Thomas applied in the majority decision was Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U. S. 586 (2006).
So, this case is limited by its facts to criminal suspects who have valid arrest warrants outstanding. If you have a warrant outstanding for, say, not appearing in court for a speeding ticket, and a cop who suspects you of drug dealing stops you and phones your ID into police dispatch for a computer run, you are screwed. I think that this is a just result. A liberal wackist such as Sonia Sotomayor, the not-so-wise latina, would disagree.