The Fourth Amendment

Hmmm, the fourth amendment.  One that can be misused, misconstrued, turned around, and showed in the face of searchers and others, but oh wait they don't care or like it anyways.  The fact that there is a provision in the Constitution preventing the use of illegal activity to procure evidence is awesome.  The fact that there are so many different legal ways to misuse and get around it is horrifying.  As many TV shows and other media explicitly show the fourth amendment requires a warrant to search property, yet on cops there is no warrant when searching a car for anything.  Does this amendment really protect us as citizenry, or does it just give us that false hope that if need be, there is something that law can maybe fall back on to exonerate us of some potential misdeed or wrong doing.

Court Case!!

http://supreme.justia.com/us/433/1/case.html

Way to big to post the whole thing in the blog, but really an interesting read about unlawful seizure of vehicles and on the Framers intent in history and the drafting of the amendments.

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In the court case mentioned above three defendants were charged more or less with trafficking marijuana.  The officers seized control of the contraband in a footlocker which was doubly locked and then broke the locks to open the footlocker without a warrant. The entrance into the footlocker was based on the vehicle exemption clause in which vehicles are not privy to the search and seizure parts of the fourth amendment.  In review the supreme court ruled that the warrant could have been obtained, and should have since the footlocker and vehicle were in possession of the agents and in no danger of flight or risk to the public.  The vehicle clause notes the flight risk from jurisdictions as being the reason for exclusion.  Regardless the defendants won the case based on this technicality in law, but they were still trafficking marijuana as plainly observed and the evidence attested to.  Why should this not count??

A video, health official & trooper vs. homeowner




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In all cases this man is correct in his assumptions about the laws of the country and of the state, and as the woman states in the later half of the video the sheriff is there as a means of protection to her from the homeowner who she is trespassing against.  The fact that the sheriff is doing nothing when the man is saying that she is trespassing is amazing, and then later another sheriff shows up at the end.  The area that the woman is photographing is not in plain view or sight as she has to walk to it, and has no court order to do so.  I believe that the man should have been fully justified if the law allowed to subdue the woman by any means, pepper spray, etc since he informed her in front of law enforcement of her actions being illegal.