You have the audacity to insult other’s reading capability?
from **findlaw**which was in my post, or bother to read Who_Me?'s post either…
I said the language of the Constituion is
but to give you some limited credit, this is one of the more clearly worded amendments. But are you honestly trying to tell me that the founding fathers envisioned every occasion of search to be thought of in the next 250 years? That they didn’t imagine that things might change over time? So why was it you think they codified the Supreme Court, then? Just for giggles, if the Constitution is the Bible of our land to be literally interpreted in all things, I guess.
Try again, and maybe this time stick to the original point? Or is the OP so obviously and ridiculously flawed that even you have dropped it?
Oh really. Well, for all your effort providing a cite stating that items not listed on a search warrant may be seized, seizing an illegal item is not, nor has ever been, at issue. I originially wrote:
Yep. The authorities aren’t allowed to just go onto someone’s private property and look for “illegal stuff”. They have to have have a warrant specifying where and what.
However, the amendment protects against “unreasonable searches and seizures”. The seizing of contraband not specified by a warrant (so long as the search itself is legal) is not unreasonable. In fact, it would be unreasonable not to seize said contraband. “Well boys, we were looking for marijuana, and all we found was a meth lab and a bunch of dead bodies, so I guess we’ll have to leave empty-handed. Sorry for the intrusion, Mr. Murdering Drug Dealer. Have a nice day.”
Now, in a scenerio similar to that you have just described, would the police not be required to just secure the area and contact the District Attorney’s office?
In actuality, the finding of the illegal items constitute probable cause. Contrary to what you may think, the police arrest a lot of people without an arrest warrant.
For example, a police officer pulls over a speeder, he asks to search the vehicle. Many times the speeder agrees to the search (for some reason) and drugs are found. The car’s occupants are arrested. The police do not call and ask for a warrant to be issued, they just arrest them.
It’s the same in your scenario, once the illegal items are found, probable cause exists and the subjects are arrested. The attorney for the arrested party will undoubtedly question the manner under which the items are found, and if found lacking, the judge will rule the evidence unadmissible in court. If the judge rules that the police were acting in good faith and that the evidence was discovered under circumstances that would be consistant with the letter of the search warrant, then the evidence would be admissible.
For the record, I am not a lawyer but I have had these laws drilled into me as a corporate security supervisor.
Of course it’s a living document! It was designed that way! Why the fuck else would there be options built in within the document itself to change it! You are incredible in your ability to believe in a flat earth!
And you’ve done a masterful job of completely moving the discussion away from your asinine premise… again!
If you can’t prove your damn point, don’t change the subject, just shut the hell up!
“Plain view” is a term of art that refers to a policeman’s ability to seize illegal items he sees when he is someplace that he has a legal right to be or looking someplace that he has a legal right to be looking. If the police are executing a search warrant and in the course of scope of it’s proper execution find contraband or evidence unlisted in the warrant, they may properly seize it. So yes, if they are validly looking in a drawer for a firearm and unexpectedly come across property which is a crime to possess, like child pornography, they may seize it and use it in a subsequent prosecution. SCOTUS explains it like this:
I would disagree with that particular analogy in Saddam’s case, at any rate. It’s more like Saddam was arrested on already outstanding warrants for mass murder in the course of executing a weapons search. Just because the search was a bust doesn’t mean he gets off the hook for previous war crimes and crimes against humanity.
So, are you going to back this statement up or just admit that it was a lie? Do one or the other, don’t just ignore it. Step up, be a man.
And furthermore, the “options built in within the document itself to change it” (the amending process), is not what Gore meant when he referred to the Constitution as a “living document”.
A lot of the Framers were lawyers, Razorsharp. They understood perfectly well that any written law is a “living document” because it is impossible to draft it in enough detail to cover all possible situations to which it might apply, even in the decade when it is written, let alone in later generations living under drastically different circumstances. That’s why we have judges and why they have leeway in interpreting the law.
So, the phrase, “… and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” doesn’t really have any standing? Those words are just decorations on that “living document”.
Except it was kinda like there were warrants, just not really.
No, the courts take the particularity requirement seriously, but it’s not offended under the circumstances you describe. If the police are walking down the street past your home and see you in possession of child pornography on your front porch, they can seize it immediately. Your 4th Amendment right to privacy is not implicated because you’re out in public with the item in plain view, and the can see you from someplace they have every right to be.
When a warrant is issued, the police have a right to be someplace and search for an item or items that they wouldn’t ordinarily search for, like somebody’s home. The warrant gives them the right to search not only by walking through the house and making a cursory inspection, but by looking places that the item or items might reasonably be expected to be, which may or may not include shelves, drawers, or the like (as was said, you can’t look for a stinger missle in a breadbox). If in the course of properly conducting that search other contraband comes into plain view, the police may seize it the same as if they saw you walking down the street with it, since they had a legal right to be where there where and to look where they were looking.
Now, if they were looking for a firearm, opened up an opaque pill bottle in a drawer and found a hit of ecstasy, that would be a different matter and you’d have a reasonable argument that it should be suppressed. Or, say that during the course of looking for a firearm thy found some unmarked and unsuspicious video tapes; they wouldn’t be entitled to watch them to see if they contained anything illegal. The courts won’t let thjem make a general search through your house for anything they can use against you, but they won’t require police to ignore legitimately identified contraband, either.
Maybe, but I don’t think anyone seriously disagrees there’s some significant evidence that, even without the weapons, Saddam may have engaged in some “impropriety.”
Supposed by whom? Not me. By you? If so, then justify. That might be a bit hard to do, given that even Cheney has said there’s no link between Saddam and OBL.
See the SCOTUS cases that have already been referenced or find your own or shut the fuck up. Per the “non-living” document that you hold so dear their power extends to “all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution”, so the Constitution means what they say it means.
The great thing about beating your head against the wall is that feels so good when you stop.
I’ve completely lost track of what this thread has to do with the OP. Or why the OP was posted in the first place. Why would anybody ask John Kerry, “If you were president, would you order Hussein’s release?” He would have no authority to order Hussein’s release, and no reason to, and except for a few hardcore Ba’athists in Iraq I doubt there’s a single person on Earth who wants Hussein to be free ever again. Is there any debate here, or is this OP yet another of Razorsharp’s irritable mental gestures resembling thought?
And 1,000+ American troops would still be alive. What you don’t seem to understand is that the capture of Saddam came at a price many of us consider to be way too high.
