An excerpt from a 911 call Gridley made contains this gem:
[QUOTE=Gridley]
I’m a reverend and a psychic. Souls and spirits talked to me an there 32 of them that told me they think the kids are there.
[/QUOTE]
…so, to sum this up:
[ol][li]Gridley called 911, announced she was a psychic, and shared the revelation of a mass grave she knows about because “souls ans spirits” told her[]The police dutifully followed up on this tip by holding various press conferences and tearing apart the home of Joe Bankston and Gena Charlton (apparently turning them into social pariahs in the process)[]Nothing is discovered[]Bankston and Charlton file suit against the police and Gridley[]The case against the police is dismissed and Gridley is on the hook for a $7M payout that she will never, ever make good on[/ol][/li] Points for debate:
First, it is appalling that the police acted on Gridley’s tip at all because there is no such thing as a psychic. And, while people from all walks may experience the divine in deeply personal and subjective manners, “spirits” don’t go around pointing out mass graves to “psychics.” Maybe they assumed she was a crazy person with a thread of truth in there somewhere- who knows- but the notion that they ought to follow every lead (as suggested by members of the department in the video above) is mind-boggling.
Second, hanging Gridley out to dry for making a(n obviously) false statement to the police is just sad. The statement that, “the spirits told me about a mass grave”, is not even true enough to be false. I could give them the benefit of the doubt if she hadn’t tossed that stuff out about being a psychic and spirits; if she’d just said, “Psstt… there are bodies buried all over that guy’s yard”, that might have been worth a look-see.
Third, if the sanity of the defamer doesn’t enter into defamation hearings, there’s something really wrong in the legal system. Clearly, Gridley got it with both barrels because she didn’t deign to appear in court… but if a guy wearing a traffic cone on his head accuses me of being a Moon Lizard, I’m not sure I’m entitled to damages.
…and just to editorialize: That nobody in the Liberty County Sheriff’s Department got tagged for this is simply shocking to me.
No argument there. And even if there were such a thing as an actual psychic, that wouldn’t mean that everyone claiming to be a psychic is telling the truth, or that all “visions” or spiritual revelations accurately reflect reality.
Didn’t they need a search warrant to tear up the couple’s home? And doesn’t a search warrant require more in the way of probable cause than a phone call from a self-described psychic?
That’s what I was wondering too. Because if the call from the psychic was the principal evidence that the police based their search warrant on, then you’d think they’d be the ones on the hook.
For now, I’m betting that the police had some real evidence to search the property in this manner that isn’t in the linked stories.
…well that’s what I’m hoping, anyway. In the meantime, here’s another story which certainly implies that they were mostly just taking Gridley’s word for it:
[QUOTE=news.discovery.com]
Deputies from the Liberty County Sheriff’s office went to investigate but didn’t see anything amiss. After a second call the following day, dozens of officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety, the FBI and the Texas Rangers were on the scene—not to mention cadaver dogs, news helicopters and gawkers.
<snip/>
Though the incident became a national embarrassment, the police refused to apologize, saying that procedures were followed and that the severity of the claims warranted an investigation. Whether a tip comes from an ordinary citizen, an anonymous informant or a self-proclaimed psychic, information about mass murders cannot be ignored.
[/QUOTE]
…bolding mine; I wonder if that’s just a statement of opinion or if “mass murder” has some legal standard of scrutiny behind it?
I really can’t comprehend a world in which the police summon the FBI to investigate every single crazy call they get. I’m willing to allow that they had some marvelous reason to do so in this case- apart from Gridley- that simply hasn’t filtered into the media coverage yet, but the most recent link I posted seems to indicate that deputies went there, saw nothing suspicious, and then called in the FBI anyway. And they don’t even try to defend it.
Funny aside: Googling for “Bankston Charlton Gridley warrant” yields this thread as the top result!
Hmmm… and now I see a big part of the problem is that the people talking about this story now (me included!) are just doing a really crappy job with the details.
It turns out that the deputies did find blood on the porch at the house and this was the basis for the warrant.
Sure you can, but as Czarcasm says, it was possible that the “psychic” was an accomplice who was involved in the crimes. And was really, really bad at coming up with cover stories.
I wonder how these 32 souls and spirits knew they were buried in the same place. It seems like it must have been a coincidence. I picture a couple of them hanging out in a bar and chatting…
“So. where ya buried?”
“Some guy’s backyard in Texas.”
“No shit! Me too. Which county?”
Gold star for you: This is one of the two prongs of the erstwhile Spinelli test for establishing probable cause on the basis of an anonymous informant’s report.
While this report is not anonymous, and while Spinelli has been replaced by a “totality of the circumstances” test (the elegant phrasing the Court uses to state “We don’t really have a rule for this”) after Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213 (1983), even in Illinois v. Gates, the Court acknowledged that the Spinelli factors remain crucial, even if they would no longer be evaluated on a point-by-point basis.
The Spinelli test required a showing of (1) why the informant’s report should be considered credible and reliable, and (2) what the circumstances are that allowed the informant to become knowledgeable of the fact that evidence of a crime will be found in the place sought to be searched.
So even if we accepted the existence of clairvoyance, merely asserting that the informant has psychic powers will only satisfy the second prong. It remains to be shown that we have reason to suppose that the psychic is truthfully reporting his or her premonitions.
Good work, Thudlow, that’s thinking like a lawyer.
“Who’s that lady over there, you have any idea?”
“Oh, don’t go near her. She’s a psychic, and I swear, she must be either high or deaf. I talked to her earlier but she kept on mishearing me and telling me to go into the light.”
That would be a tough one. When someone gives a tip, based on crap. Can you really afford to do nothing? Maybe she is just trying to protect an old poker buddy who got drunk and said where they were. Or maybe she overheard it on a bus and delusions made her think it was spirits. I think they do have to “act” on it to some extent.
However, “A ghost told you? Well boys bring out the backhoes!” is not an appropriate “action”.
Did the police get a warrant? Maybe the owners just caved to public pressure and “voluntarily” agreed to allow the search in order to prove there were no bodies on their property.
If so, that might explain why the police went public with the tip. They wanted to create the public pressure.
As noted above, one only needs a warrant to search the home and the curtilage (the envelope of open space immediately surrounding the home). Merely having title to some unimproved land does not require the police to obtain a warrant before searching it.
Warrants are required to search homes, not real property generally. This is the “open fields” doctrine. (Recall that the language of the Fourth Amendment is “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”)
Even if they don’t require a warrant, surely entering and digging on private farmland without the landowner’s permission is some kind of trespass? Aren’t the police liable for that?
No, the authority to enter onto private land to investigate and enforce criminal law is an essential attribute of sovereignty. It is, quite literally, the police power which the Constitution’s main purpose is to delineate and expressly confine. Confinements not expressed by the Constitution, therefore, do not exist at all.
In other words, no, there is no trespass. The government cannot “trespass” in any meaningful sense. The limitations on the sovereign right to enter land within its jurisdiction are (1) the search and seizure protections of the Fourth Amendment, and (2) the Takings Clause restrictions of the Fifth Amendment. Neither have been violated here (under the facts as we are understanding them to be).
I think the police have a duty to do nothing when the substance of the tip is, “An invisible ghost told me to tell you…”. The appropriate response is, “Well, tell that ghost to come to the station and tell me himself, and we’ll get a warrant.” Since when is hearsay probable cause?
Crazy people witness crimes too. In fact, crazy people sometimes commit crimes. So when somebody calls the police and tells them a vampire killed five people and hid their bodies in his cellar, they go check the guy’s cellar. Even if vampires aren’t real, you might still find the bodies there.
If the police had found the bodies where Gridley said they’d be, I’m sure the police would have been interrogating Gridley at least as much as they would have been Bankston and Charlton.