Free Republic

A three-judge panel in the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has delivered a critical decision affirming Fourth Amendment protections and the right to keep and bear arms.On November 12, 2018, Basel Soukaneh’s life was significantly disrupted. Soukaneh was looking for a house he was considering purchasing, but the GPS on his phone, held in a holder on the dash of his car, had frozen. He was unfamiliar with the area. Soukaneh pulled over to correct the problem, left the engine running, and had the interior lights on. A Waterbury police officer quickly knocked on his window and demanded...

That conduct, as alleged by Plaintiff-Appellee Basel Soukaneh, is that in the course of a routine traffic stop, Andrzejewski unlawfully and violently handcuffed and detained Soukaneh in the back of a police vehicle for over half an hour and conducted a warrantless search of Soukaneh’s vehicle after Soukaneh presented a facially valid firearms permit and disclosed that he possessed a firearm pursuant to the permit. On appeal, Andrzejewski argues we should reverse the district court’s denial of qualified immunity because the presence of the lawfully owned firearm in the vehicle gave him the requisite probable cause to detain Soukaneh, search...

A pair of Brooklyn-based far-left attorneys who firebombed the NYPD during last year’s deadly Black Lives Matter riots can still practice law in the State of New York, while former New York City Mayor and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani cannot, with his law license suspended for the crime of questioning the 2020 Presidential Election. Colinford Mattis, who works as a corporate lawyer, and his co-conspirator Urooj Rahman, a so-called human rights attorney, both face federal charges related to the firebombing of an NYPD police cruiser and could face sentences of at least 45 years in prison. Despite the extremely violent...

On June 5, 2020, we reported that Appeals Court Orders Molotov Cocktail Lawyers Back to Jail: Two Brooklyn-based lawyers facing federal charges for allegedly throwing Molotov cocktails into a NYPD cruiser during the riots are back in federal custody after an appeals court reversed the bail decision. That initial and temporary appeals court decision now has been reversed, with a panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, ordering the defendants released on bail and home confinement pending trial. ... ridiculous justification from the majority ... Judge Jon Newman wrote in Dissent: On the night of...