opinion noir
 

Supreme Court justice's literary effort:

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinio...df/07-1486.pdf

I like his style. "Tougher then a three dollar steak" Very nice. Not so nice the PA Supreme Court ruling that seems unbelievable. Under their interpretation a drug dealer could sell drugs unfettered as long as he packages the drugs in a box with a bow on top that doesnt look like drugs.

That was KY Oaks day 2001. I went to the Phila Park OTB in Center City to bet it.

Guess he didn't have Flute

I can see both sides and from a common sense perspective, Roberts has it right.

However, I can see the other side as well. How much power do we give our police officers? Do they have the right to randomly shakedown innocent citizens because something is handed over? It could have been anything.

You are going down a very slippery slope when you start putting too much power into the hands of police officers.

You also are going down a slippery slope by giving criminals the benefit of the doubt because cops dont have superpowers to see through things. It is impossible to perfectly balance the difference but in a drug infested area a "transaction" that looks like a drug deal and smells like a drug deal is usually a drug deal. If they "shakedown" innocent people, they do let them go no? At some point the citizen has to have some responsibility over their actions. If I carry a toy gun into a bank I would expect to encounter trouble.

The Rand Corporation did a recent study for the New York Police Department in which they examined over half a million pedestrian stops by the NYPD. The purpose of the study was to determine whether there was a racial disparity in the way the NYPD stops people on the street – there is – but the study provides some useful statistics regarding the accuracy of police suspicions. Of the blacks who were frisked or searched for suspected drug crimes (10% of all the blacks stopped), a little over 11% were found to actually have contraband. Of the whites who were frisked or searched for suspected drug crimes (15% of all the whites stopped), a little under 17% were found to actually have contraband.

That means that 89% of the blacks and 83% of the whites who were stopped, frisked or searched on suspicion of drug crimes didn’t have any drugs. You can see the results for yourself here (there’s a chart on page 11): http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_r...RAND_TR534.pdf

The real question in that Supreme Court case (as dalakhani notes in his post) is how willing we are as a society to let our citizens be detained because a cop is suspicious (and believe me, the cops are suspicious of everybody), especially if the cops are wrong most of the time, as the Rand study suggests. It’s not the rights of criminals that are at stake, it’s the rights of everyone, including the innocent citizens going about their business who are subjected to such police intrusions.

It might gall you to think that a drug buyer (such as the defendant in the opinion noir) or even a drug seller should get off scot free, but because it’s only the cases where someone gets arrested that we hear about, it’s only the cases where someone gets arrested that something can be done to reign in the absolute power exercised by the police on the streets. And you know what they say about absolute power.

but witnessing a cash transaction is one thing, random shakedown (presumably a transaction not being witnessed would bring about this randomness) is another. common sense, past experience, probable cause do not lead to randomness.
i absolutely believe the overriding factor is probable cause. it's why i disagree with random locker searches on kids at school-simply attending school does not indicate probable drug use. dui road blocks are also not enough imo for probable cause. of course the justices haven't always agreed, using safety as the excuse to invade and give powers where none are due. kids are not of age, but doesn't mean they have no search and seizure rights. choosing a certain route also in and of itself is not probable cause for search and seizure.

That is very well said. Thank you!

however we are not talking about a random search. When suspected criminal behavior is protected by the courts because of their activism we are in more trouble. When cops cant be trusted to use their experience and instincts to deter probable criminal behavior and the courts are going to overrule that ability how exactly are the police supposed to do their jobs? This police intrusion stuff is off the wall. Protecting citizens rights is a tremendous responsibility but not allowing the police to do their jobs and allow criminals to be prosecuted properly is a danger to public safety as well.

if it wasn't a supreme court justice writing the first paragraph, i'd call it turgid and derivative.

but he gets the same break politicians do when they try to tell a joke.

you just have to go "isn't that cute?" and move on.

But the issue in the case was exactly what you're assuming -- whether or not it was "probable criminal behavior." The exact legal issue was whether a hand to hand exchange of money for some small unidentified object in the proverbial "high crime area," when coupled with a cop's testimony that he, personally, believed it was a drug transaction, gives rise to probable cause to arrest. The question at the heart of this issue is where do you draw the line? Even putting aside the dilemma of whether it's appropriate to have different standards for a "high crime area," which is usually a poor, inner-city neighborhood, as opposed to a more affluent suburban setting, do you let a cop decide that he's got probable cause to arrest or do you let the courts decide?

In the case addressed by the opinion noir, the cop simply said that he believed that he saw a drug transaction without telling the reviewing court exactly why he believed that. That's like having a bunch of armed judges running around on the streets (a la Judge Dredd) who not only make the arrest but also make the legal determination as to whether the arrest passes constitutional muster. Here in Pennsylvania, the cops are not hamstrung by this decision. A cop can still demonstrate to a reviewing court that he had probable cause if he relates what he saw as well as telling the court why, in his experience, he believed that he was observing a drug transaction. In that way, the court decides whether there was enough, not the cop.

Even if a cop is unsure about what he saw, or if he can't verbalize why his "instincts" tell him that drugs were involved, he could probably, under the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision, conduct a temporary stop for further investigation. If the person runs, or does something else to add to the level of suspicion, he could be arrested. If the person is innocent, and the cop's instincts are dead wrong, then an innocent person isn't subjected to the intrusion of being arrested and all that entails (e.g., public humiliation at the least, maybe handcuffing, maybe fingerprinting, getting locked up and given a body cavity search if it goes further). Or, a cop could just watch to see if there are other transactions without immediately conducting a stop, which, if there were other transactions, would probably kick it to the level of probable cause and thus permit an arrest.

Despite the Chief Justice's prose, I think the Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck the appropriate balance between protecting the public's safety and protecting the public's civil rights.

Personally i feel a lot safer with cops making these decisions than courts especially since much of the information used by the cops is twisted by defense attorneys and cant be used by the court. The whole "high crime area" is picked on crap is just that. There is a reason that it is a high crime area, a lot of crimes are committed there. This everything in the world is equal crap is just that. You talk a big game here but if you were walking down the street alone at night in a "high crime area" would the nervousness that you felt be considered racist? The rights of citizens in this country are well protected without this activism and the insinuations that somehow the cops are the issue here. The general tone in your posts suggests that you feel that police 'overagressiveness' is a greater danger than drug dealers. You must be a defense attorney.

The war on drugs is an absolute joke. White people scared of walking in the ghetto are sissies.

Hmmm. No one ever accused me of being shy to take a side but these cases are so tough.

I do find it interesting that you feel safer with cops making judicial decisions than judges. That is indeed dangerous thinking. The notion that cops aren't at times just as dangerous or more dangerous than the criminals suggests a bit of naivete. Come to DC (to tony and joes on the waterfront) on a friday or saturday night and you tell me if you feel the same way. I digress.

Again, there is a fine line between keeping us free from crime while keeping us free from harassment.

I didnt say that they make the decisions as opposed to judges. I just think narrowing the operational ability for arresting probable criminals is a bad way to go. They still have to be right and produce evidence. In this case they were right and the reason that the criminal was let off was because the court failed to see how they came to the conclusion a drug deal was taking place because they just saw something being passed as opposed to seeing "drugs" being passd and the fact that the criminals didnt run. So my contention is that if upheld couldnt drug dealers simply wrap the drugs in nice little bags and stand still when the police arrest them? No one wants to see civil rights eroded but by keep making the polices job 'technically' harder, you are moving the bar to favor those who break the law. If the police are not trusted to make these decisions as to who is engaging in criminal behavior than who is?

You make a good point. As shadow roll said, if a guy is standing there passing out these nice little bags, it is more than just one occurence. That would make it probable cause.

One isolated transaction? In my opinion, it could have been anything.

Ah, it's come to this, an ad hominem attack.

Okay, since you want to get personal, here's some personal info. You're right, I am a defense attorney. But guess what, I've walked down quite a few streets in North Philly alone at night. In fact, I lived there for a year. And, yes, of course I felt nervous. Being a defense attorney isn't synonymous with loving crime. I also believe that most of the cops I deal with are decent men and women. But just because I'm as scared of crime as most people, and just because I don't believe that most cops are "overaggressive", doesn't mean that I blindly trust cops to not abuse their power. In any system without adequate checks and balances, abuse of power is inevitable. It's human nature. Crime and cops abusing their power -- I've seen both. Personally.

As to defense attorney's "twisting" information, you'll be gratified to know that there are attorneys on the other side (they're called prosecutors) who went to the same law schools and learned the same things as I and my fellow defense attorneys. They're not just potted plants sitting dumbly in court while us clever defense attorneys take advantage of them. In fact, the biggest difference between us and them is that they've got an army of professional investigators (they're called police) and relatively unlimited money. Like it or not, this is how it works -- it's an adversarial system.

Now you'll have to excuse me. I've got to go twist some information. McCain's people just called. They want me to convince the American people that his economic plan will work.

A trial lawyer that is a democrat, stunner....:eek:

The most interesting thing that you said was pointing out the adversarial system that puts you on the opposite side of the police which makes it easier to understand your position.

Sissies stay alive.

Will the real Chris Darden please rise.