US Supreme Court’s reasoning in Utah v Strieff is bone headed — goodbye much of the Fourth Amendment’s (already marginal) protection against police harassment

© 2016 Peter Free

23 June 2016

 

The US Supreme Court seems to be a refuge for privileged dopes

Street realists must be cynically laughing at this Ivy League crew’s most recent blessing of totalitarian excess.

 

In Utah v. Strieff

The Court opines that it is okay for police to ignorantly or intentionally stop anyone, without legal cause, provided there subsequently turns out to be a warrant for his or her arrest.

Anything discovered during the search subsequent to that warrant-based arrest is admissible in court.

 

The facts in this case are simple — which makes the majority’s inability to reason in accord with Constitutional precedent and common sense even more obvious

South Salt Lake City Police got a tip that drugs were being dealt from a certain house. A detective watched the house.

He stopped Edward Strieff (who is Caucasian) when the latter came outside. Despite the fact that Mr. Strieff had not done nothing visibly wrong.

Nor did the officer know how long the detainee had been in the house. Which dissolved the potential (but weak) reasonable suspcion argument that a drug buy typically takes only a short time.

The police department later admitted in court that their officer’s stop of Mr. Strieff was unreasonable and therefore illegal.

Ordinarily Big Daddy cannot use illegally obtained evidence in a prosecution. So Mr. Strieff should have skated.

Not so?

 

Enter the Court of “ivy” fascists

Even after (majority opinion writer) Justice Clarence Thomas acknowledged that the Utah cop should just have asked to talk to Mr. Strieff, rather than stopping him, his Conservative Judicial Majesty went on to reason as follows.

The existence of even a minor arrest warrant “attenuated” the illegality of the initial stop. Even though the officer did not know about the warrant. And because the warrant provided a preexisting lawful basis for Mr. Streiff’s arrest, the drugs found in his car afterward could be admitted into evidence against him.

 

Thus — according to the Court’s exquisitely inane reasoning

The hidden existence of the warrant miraculously translated a blatantly illegal stop into a lawful one.

Gestapo enthusiasts rejoice.

 

So much for the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of suspicion-lacking stops

As dissenting Justice Sonia Sotomayor put it:

 

[This decision] says that your body is subject to invasion while courts excuse the violation of your rights. It implies that you are not a citizen of a democracy but the subject of a carceral state, just waiting to be cataloged.

Utah v. Strieff, No. 14-1373, decided 20 June 2016 [579 U. S. ____ (2016)] (at slip opinion, Sotomayor, J., dissenting, page 12)

 

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Elena Kagan also rebuked the majority.

 

Democracy becomes shabbier with each judicial step

This decision ranks with the majority’s contention in Citizens United that money in politics does not negatively impact democracy.

And with its opinion in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, which ludicrously opined that black voters no longer need statutory protection against vote deprivation.

 

The moral? — The Supreme Court is, for the most part, an enemy of the People

It is difficult to argue persuasively that this quasi-cabal of elitist-thinking, power-grasping, mob-fearing, plutocrat-oriented — nearly always male — Bubble People contributes much to the nation. Societal change leads it on almost every issue.

Without the Supreme Court, we might push for freedom more than we do.

In the meantime, you will have noticed that it was the Court’s women who reasoned Strieff correctly. No magically divine “attenuation” for them. Perhaps women have suffered enough oppressive patriarchy to recognize street reality when they see it.