SCOTUS Says Cops Can Use Evidence Found After Illegal Stops

I made the mistake of trying to talk to this guy on another thread, don’t waste your time.

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Warrant for what? I forgot to pay a expired tag ticket. I did take care of it, but had I waited any longer for action I would have had a bench warrant. Would that then be ok for me to be illegally stopped and be searched and have anything in my car, knowingly there or not used against me? I made an honest mistake.
I still say, slippery slope.

Look, I get that most cops are cool. The guy who gave me the ticket, was actually pretty cool, despite my long hippy hair. But that doesn’t give the right for another cop to stop me, illegally search me and “find” something I may or may not have had. Even if I had the bench warrant. It was for an illegal tag, I was later able to prove that I was compliant. I just missed the date. That was my bad, but illegally searched because of that? I think not.

Hey if he outwitted you, that’s your bad, not his.

What SHOULD a warrant permit an officer to do?

If by outwitted, you mean he said that anybody with an addiction problem like Prince is weak and should have just kicked it…then Pat, take a deep breath and stop typing.

If the guy had been driving, with the meth locked in his trunk, everything would have been different.

He was walking around with the meth in his pocket. So its kind of a weird situation. The headline is super misleading.

If they took him to jail, and searched him there, he would have been charged with bringing contraband into the jail. That’s a way more serious crime.

The lesson is:
The best place for drugs is in your body.

USMC sees that it’s such a beautiful day outside that he decides to go shooting. He spends several hours at the range enjoying the fuck out of shooting his hand guns, rifles, and shotguns.

When USMC is finished enjoying his freedom, he heads home and hastily unpacks his car so that his family can go enjoy a nice BBQ to celebrate the 4th of July.

The following day, USMC is stopped illegally on his way to work. The police officer runs his license and finds that he has a $50 bench warrant for an unpaid parking ticket. USMC is cuffed, his car is search, and the officer finds his 1911. USMC had mistakely left his 1911 in the car having thought he had taken everything inside.

USMC now faces:

Smell all that liberty…

why was your car searched?

I was being arrested for my outstanding warrant.

Edit: ____________________(insert probable cause reason here)

You can challenge the probable cause used to search the car. You most likely won’t be able to successfully challenge the fact that you were arrested on a valid arrest warrant.

Oppose laws that you see as unjust, but don’t look at the Constitution as some libertine(that’s the word I mean to use) document meant to make it impossible for the government to discover and prosecute crimes. It’s not that and never was.

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That is not how I am looking at it. I am all for punishing crime (I think I’m one of the few still in favor of the death penalty actually).

My problem is that this ruling seems to give the police the authority to break the law first (illegal stop), but the only person being punished is the civilian. The police already have too much leeway as it is and I don’t really care how narrow this ruling is. It’s a slippery slope.

I mean, what’s the logical next step? Police illegally search your person or property and they find a gun or drugs or whatever. Well, the Constitution was never meant to make it impossible for the government to discover and prosecute crimes. Bye bye 4th.

“It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away others men’s liberty will soon care little for their own.”

-James Otis

Take a little here, take a little there, and eventually we end up at “papers Comrade”.

I’m gonna pass on that.

Absolutely, however we can’t lose sight of the very fact, many of the amendments (if not all) were put in place to eliminate the all too powerful control the governments the Founders had just left, had over people.

Due process is very important. Give it too narrow a definition and you end up with nothing.

The ruling specifically states that there was no flagrant rights violation. There was a detention that was later deemed not to meet the probable cause standard. The discovery of the warrant justified the arrest and subsequent search. I believe the only thing sought was suppression of the prohibited drugs-I don’t believe the warranted arrest was even challenged.

Sure, by part of the SCOTUS. It wasn’t unanimous and it’s not like the SCOTUS hasn’t been wrong before…

I’m done defending positions on here that I have not taken. I never said anything about the arrest warrant being challenged or invalid.

My problem is with the illegal stop and the court basically saying it’s perfectly okay to make an illegal stop as long as you get lucky and the person has a warrant out.

You think this is a narrow decision that doesn’t set a precedent. I don’t. It is what it is I guess.

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I really get hung up on it too, if it makes you feel any better.

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I didn’t say I agree with him on everything. And not to highjack, but you certainly cannot ‘just kick’ an opiate addiction but I know usmcccds to be a good guy. So maybe it’s your approach? I have been able to disagree with him and not get into a bitch fight with him.
I am certain, if I explained the science and biology behind opiate addiction, how people get into it, how it’s a major issue in the armed forces with soldiers who have been injured in battle and had long recoveries; I am certain we could have come to an understanding with out issue. He’s not an unreasonable guy, but if you insult him or are trite and dismissive, you will get what you give. I do not know him to give it first. That’s all I am saying.

Maybe you should give him another try, but be reasonable in your approach.

And for my part, I apologize for being trite with you. I protect my ‘friends’, even my internet ones. Even if they do not need protecting. It’s a fault.

That’s a good question. Somebody presented the caveat that and illegal stop can result in search, and the search be valid, if the person in question has a warrant for their arrest. Well, if you forget to pay a speeding ticket, even if it was an honest mistake, they put a bench warrant out on you. Which is the same as any other type of warrant save for they are not actively searching for you. But if you get pulled over, they take your ass to jail, or can and probably will.

And shit happens. You take your mom somewhere and she throws her pain killers into your glove box and forgets to grab them when you drop her off and you get pulled over and searched, you can go to jail for possession. Or f your friend does it, or mother-in-law, etc. And becuse of the court ruling, you can get illegally pulled over, have a bench warrant for something you may not even remember you did, have your car searched illegally and get busted for somebody elses pills being in your car, get convicted and have a record all because you had a menial ticket for something so small you forgot in you busy ass life.

Let’s say you rolled through a stop sign in a neighborhood and a cop was waiting their. He gives you a ticket, you forget about it. You’re fiance just left you. you messed up a project at work, and your dishwasher quit and you don’t have the money to pay for it. You are really busy, you forget about the ticket you shouldn’t have even gotten. Then you have a bench warrant out for your arrest. Somewhere in that time, you take your friend or family member somewhere and they forget their prescription in your car. You are on your way back to return it to them because they need it and some cop pulls you over for nothing, you when 47 in a 45, he didn’t like the way you looked, whatever. You have a bench warrant for that silly ticket and he searches your car and finds the prescription. So now the cop arrests you for the bench warrent and charges you will illegal possession of drugs.
And now, because of this court ruling, you can get convicted of possession from the illegal stop and search, all the while your only real crime is getting caught in some very common, but unfortunate life circumstances and you could go to jail, lose your job and your life and have a record, for nothing. Very minor offenses that deserve nothing more than a fine for a late ticket. That’s what this judgement has opened the door to. Making people going through a bad stretch in their lives, criminals.

Hell, this happened to a friend of mine who worked at a car dealership. He was driving a dealership car on their request, wearing their uniform and he got pulled over. The cop arrested him for stealing the car! It took about an hour before the cop finally called the dealership who verified his story. Then the cop finally let him go, but it could have turned out much worse if the cop actually took him to jail without verifying his story and he could have. He had that power.

This ruling is bad no matter what. It take innocent mistakes and makes them life changing events and that’s not right. People make innocent mistakes. This ruling can turn those mistakes into horrible events that affect the rest of your life and it’s totally at the discretion of the officer.

I know most cops are pretty cool and wouldn’t do that. But it only takes one dick to ruin your life and now they have a supreme court ruling siding with dick cops.

Yeah, you have to give the officer consent, but the officer does not have to tell you that. And the officer can threaten you with jail, even if it’s a lie. They are allowed to lie.

‘Probable cause’ can simply be his word against yours. All he has to do is say he ‘smelled marijuana’ or something like that.

Officer believes search is necessary for his protection? His word against yours, again.

Or it could have been as simple as a DUI.

If you get the rare asshole cop, he can do anything he wants and there is nothing you can do about it. And this ruling made such a thing even worse.

Again, most cops would not do such a thing. Most are cool people. But it only take one asshole to ruin your life. And I have been harassed by that kind of cop before. Stopped and detained for NOTHING. Held there for over an hour or more because he claimed I was running over mailboxes, which I didn’t do and was extremely evident since the car I was driving had a brand new paint job. If I hit anything it would have been completely obvious. And that’s only one of my experiences and I am white! At least I look white. Technically I am hispanic.

Just a couple of things: 47 in a 45 zone is probable cause to make a traffic stop; an officer can’t legally take someone to jail just for driving a car that is not in that person’s name(unless you left something out, it seems like that is what you are saying).

It may be that we need to reconsider the massive web of rules we have created in this country(or at least allow each state to run itself).

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Take an extraordinarily deep breath Pat…of course usmccds is a good guy. I was talking about the guy he quoted…Verne

Easy there big fella.