Posted on 05/28/2019 9:22:03 AM PDT by SMGFan
Follow the processes to change the statutes/laws.
I’m not sure why Justice Alito is worried that the might write a “citation for driving 30 miles an hour in a 20-25 mile an hour zone.” In the example case, the person is clearly breaking the law, so the police have every right to ticket him.
And yes, I would be annoyed for being pulled over for just 5 mph over the limit.
Journo would still have been speeding.
The 9th Circus gets overruled, again.
Maybe the two new Trump judges will right their sorry record.
5.56mm
In my neck of the woods, they don’t even twitch a whisker if you’re 5 over or under. Unless you’re in a school zone.
But don’t wanna be annoyed...don’t speed, don’t litter, feed the dang meter, etc.
Jeez, what is with some people. Just obey the dang laws.
I agree with you there.
“I am sorry, but the courts should rule in favor of citizens, always.”
If that was how it worked, we wouldn’t actually need a court, since there would be nothing to decide.
A good quote from his dissent...
The parties approach their dispute from some common ground. Both sides accept that an officer violates the First Amendment when he arrests an individual in retaliation for his protected speech. They seem to agree, too, that the presence of probable cause does not undo that violation or erase its significance. And for good reason. History shows that governments sometimes seek to regulate our lives finely, acutely, thoroughly, and exhaustively. In our own time and place, criminal laws have grown so exuberantly and come to cover so much previously innocent conduct that almost anyone can be arrested for something. If the state could use these laws not for their intended purposes but to silence those who voice unpopular ideas, little would be left of our First Amendment liberties, and little would separate us from the tyrannies of the past or the malig- nant fiefdoms of our own age. The freedom to speak with- out risking arrest is "one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation." Houston v. Hill, 482 U. S. 451, 463 (1987).
Regardless as to whether or not the driver would be breaking the law by going 30 in a 25 MPH zone (and the law is not as clear as you might think*), the point is whether or not fear of police reprisals could intimidate free speech. If there are 100 people speeding, and the police ticket only one of them, it doesn’t matter much whether 99% of 100% of the people get away with breaking the law; it matters far more whether than 1% opens himself up to selective prosecution. Also consider that stopping someone for a speeding infraction can serve as justifications for all sorts of other “discovery.”
* In some states, you can be ticketed for driving below the speed of the flow of the traffic, even if you are going at the speed limit. In other states, you can be ticketed for driving in the left lane if you are not passing a car in the right lane and the fact that you are driving no faster than the speed limit is grounds for saying you had no intention of passing of the car in the left lane is not going substantially below the speed limit.
Understood. But making that case could be difficult, especially if the police ticket a few more people that day for the same offense, just for CYA.
Right... well, that’s the thing: if that case can be effectively made, the police abuse must be pretty apparent; it’s a high burden of proof, but still one the court found worth allowing for.
re: “I am sorry, but the courts should rule in favor of citizens, always.”
So, Seattle dies. Good choice. We should each await our turn then.
Exactly! RIGHT and WRONG are not written. THEY SIMPLY ARE!
Later, Bartlett filed a lawsuit against Nieves and Weight in the Alaska District Court. Among Bartlett’s charges were that he was falsely arrested and imprisoned, claiming that after Nieves had apprehended him, he told him that “Bet you wish you would have talked to me now.” However, evidence from partial body cameras worn by the troopers did not include the aforementioned statement. The District Court made summary judgement against all of Bartlett’s claims and closed the case with prejudice, concluding that Nieves had probable cause to make the arrest, and thus disallowing for Bartlett to make a retaliatory arrest claim, as established in 42 U.S.C. § 1983 related to civil action for deprivation of rights.
Bartlett took the case to the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court. There, the three-judge panel agreed with the District Court’s ruling except on the false arrest charge.[1] The judges argued that Bartlett’s claimed quote from Nieves could be read that Nieves had arrested him for not willingly speaking to him earlier, putting into question the probable cause.[1] The Ninth Circuit thus ruled that even if Nieves had probably cause, Bartlett could seek a retaliatory arrest claim based on his First Amendment rights.[2]
This created a split decision in the Circuit Courts. The Supreme Court had heard the case of Lozman v. Riviera Beach (Docket 17-21), which had been brought up through the Eleventh Circuit, which found that the existence of probable cause in one’s arrest voided any retaliatory arrest claims that could be made. While the Supreme Court reversed this decision, it was primarily due to the Riveria Beach’s specific laws in question that appeared to be designed harass the civilian, and not on the broader question of how probable cause and retaliatory arrest claims interacted. Prior, the Supreme Court had ruled in Hartman v. Moore that to be able to claim on retaliatory prosecution, the onus was on the petitioner to prove that there was no probable causes that could be assigned by the prosecutors, judges and juries.[3] The Nieves case is recognized as a different situation than Hartman as instead of having to question the results from prolonged legal evaluation, Nieves asks the question related to the on-the-spot judgement call made by an officer.[2]
Nieves and Weight petitioned for writ of certaorari to the Supreme Court in February 2018, and the Court accepted the case, with oral hearings given on November 26, 2018. Observers to the oral hearing found the Justices concerned on how to develop a proper standard to determine when an arrest can be considered retaliatory; Justice Samuel Alito considered that it would be difficult to set a metric between two extreme cases: that of a man yelling at an officer in a heated setting, and that of a person critical of their local government being arrested on a minor traffic violation.[4]
The Court issued its decision on May 28, 2019, reversing and remanding the Ninth Circuit’s decision. The 8-1 decision, with only Justice Sotomayor fullly dissenting, determined that in general, the presence of a probably cause for an arrest defeats a First Amendment retaliatory arrest claim.[5] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nieves_v._Bartlett
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