Once upon a time, in the land that would one day become the United States of America, law enforcement officers of the King of England were allowed by the King to stop and search citizens of the land without the need for specific warrants.
By the time you finish reading this, you will know everything you need to know in order to testify, in court, as a gang cop.
I have had a difficult time trying to decide what title to give this post. This is not one of my “normal” posts. Not by a long shot.
A fellow criminal defense attorney, a woman I consider to be a very close and dear friend, lost her three youngest daughters this weekend.
Officially, the basic rule in the United States of America is still that “searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment — subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.” (Arizona v. Gant, 129 S.Ct. 1710, 1716, 2009 Daily Journal D.A.R. 5611 (2009).)
In 1968, the United States Supreme Court said,
This inestimable right of personal security belongs as much to the citizen on the streets of our cities as to the homeowner closeted in his study to dispose of his secret affairs. For, as this Court has always recognized,
No right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded, by the common law, than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others, unless by clear and unquestionable authority of law.
(Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 8-9, 88 S.Ct. 1868 (1968), quoting Union Pac. R. Co. v. Botsford, 141 U.S. 250, 251, 11 S.Ct. 1000, 1001, 35 L.Ed. 734 (1891).)
But as Bill O’Reilly would say, “That’s what the people who are paid for hating America want you to think.”
Over on my other blog — I maintain FresnoCriminalDefense.com as my website and blog relating to more regional issues specific to my Fresno criminal defense office — I had the chance to respond to one of my readers who complained, among other things, that I was not being fair to law enforcement officers because I made allusions to the similarities between them and the enforcers of totalitarianism in Nazi Germany.
The timing could not have been more perfect.
A large number — no doubt many people — arrested by the police are guilty. Often enough, they’re even actually guilty of the crime for which they have been arrested. No matter how much of a true believer one might be as a criminal defense attorney, this much has to be admitted.
I thought I’d mentioned the town of Tenaha, Texas before, so this story looked familiar to me. A link sent by Bunny Chafowitz, however, makes the story look fresh so maybe it’s just my imagination.
Police in Tenaha are accused of committing — quite literally — highway robbery.
Nearly fifty years ago, the United States Supreme Court held that all people — even poor people — are entitled to be defended by competent counsel. Anyone who watches television knows that “if you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to represent you.”
What they don’t tell you on television is that, increasingly, the attorney appointed to represent you will also be representing possibly as many as 200 other people at the same time.
Meanwhile, Fresno County continues to decrease the number of Public Defenders and necessarily therefore increases the caseload of those poor souls remaining.
Albert Einstein once said:
A theory can be proved by experiment; but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.
Experiments help us find the answers to problems. Experiments help us find the Truth, or the closest thing to it. Without experiments, the world so many of us take for granted today would not exist.
But what does this mean? What is an experiment? And why am I, an attorney, writing about it on a legal blog?
The first and most obvious way to avoid a drunk driving arrest is not to drive after drinking. (Notice I didn’t say, “don’t drive drunk.” It stands to reason that you shouldn’t drive drunk, but if you want to avoid a DUI arrest, you also should not drive after drinking even if you are not drunk.)
The reality is that a number of people are going to feel that they are unimpaired and will get behind the wheel after having imbibed.
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