FOLKS, THIS IS REALLY SCARY. THE POLICE CAN NOW PULL YOU NOT USING A TURN SIGNAL OR HAVING A REAR LIGHT OUT, AND HANDCUFF YOU, ARREST YOU, TAKE YOU TO THE STATION, FINGERPRINT YOU, AND OTHERWISE HARRASS YOU.

THIS IS THE END OF LIBERTY AND THE BEGINNING OF TYRANNY.

PROTEST! WRITE LETTERS TO YOUR EDITOR! DO SOMETHING!

April 25, 2001

Divided Justices Back Full Arrests on Minor Charges

By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON, April 24 — A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled today that a police officer who observes someone breaking a law, even a minor infraction for which the maximum penalty is a small fine, can make a full custodial arrest without violating the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable seizure.

The 5-to-4 decision rejected a lawsuit against a Texas city that was brought by a woman who was stopped for driving without a seat belt. The woman, Gail Atwater, was placed under arrest, taken in handcuffs to the police station and held in a jail cell until she posted $310 bond. The maximum fine for the offense, a misdemeanor under Texas law, was $50.

Justice David H. Souter said that although Ms. Atwater had been subjected to "gratuitous humiliations" and "pointless indignity," what happened to her did not violate the Fourth Amendment. He said that to "mint a new rule of constitutional law" would be to turn many ordinary arrests into occasions for constitutional litigation.

The case fractured the court's usual alliances, provoking a dissenting opinion by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who warned that "such unbounded discretion" for the police "carries with it grave potential for abuse."

Justice O'Connor added that "as the recent debate over racial profiling demonstrates all too clearly, a relatively minor traffic infraction may serve as an excuse for stopping and harassing an individual."

Ms. Atwater is white, and race was not an element in the case, Atwater v. City of Lago Vista, No. 99-1408. That made the dissent's reference to racial profiling particularly striking; five years ago, before the police practice of focusing on black motorists for traffic stops became the subject of widespread discussion and official concern, the court ruled unanimously in a case called Whren v. United States that as long as a police officer had an objective reason for stopping a driver, the officer's subjective motive was irrelevant.

Referring to that decision today, Justice O'Connor said that "it is precisely because these motivations are beyond our purview that we must vigilantly ensure that officers' post- stop actions — which are properly within our reach — comport with the Fourth Amendment's guarantee of reasonableness."

The incident that led to the ruling today took place in 1997. Ms. Atwater was bringing her two young children home from soccer practice, driving her pickup truck at about 15 miles an hour on the local streets near her home. None of the three was wearing a seat belt. The officer who ordered her out of the car refused to let her take her crying children to a neighbor's house and said he would take them into custody as well, but a neighbor came along in time to take the children.

The officer searched the truck, finding two tricycles, a bicycle, an Igloo cooler, a bag of charcoal, toys, food and two pairs of children's shoes. After Ms. Atwater was released from jail, she found that the truck had been towed.

The lawsuit that she and her husband brought against Lago Vista, its police chief, and the officer who arrested her was dismissed by the federal district court in Austin. A three- judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, reinstated the suit, but the full appeals court vacated that decision and ruled against the Atwaters by a vote of 11 to 5.

In writing the majority opinion today, Justice Souter was joined by the four most conservative justices, with whom he is almost always at odds in divided cases: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony M. Kennedy.

Justice O'Connor, who is most often allied with that group, was joined in her dissent this time by Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

There was no obvious explanation for the voting pattern beyond the frank and quite personal responses that both Justice O'Connor and Justice Souter offered when the case was argued in early December.

"You've got the perfect case!" Justice O'Connor exclaimed then to Ms. Atwater's lawyer, and she indicated that she saw little difficulty in drafting a rule that would make custodial arrests for minor offenses the exception rather than the rule.

On the other hand, Justice Souter, a former attorney general of New Hampshire, pressed Ms. Atwater's lawyer, Robert C. DeCarli, for information about how widespread a problem such arrests were, and appeared unpersuaded that there was a problem for the Supreme Court to fix. In his opinion today, he said "there simply is no evidence of widespread abuse of minor-offense arrest authority."

He noted that some states had passed laws to limit police authority to make arrests for minor offenses, and said that this trend, as well as the "good sense" and "political accountability" of local officials, should take care of any problem.

A spokesman for the New York City Police Department said it was too early to comment about how the court's decision might affect the department, which since the election of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has focused intensely on so-called quality of life offenses, like smoking on the subways and urinating in public. For such offenses, as well as for motor vehicle violations, the police will issue summonses rather than make arrests.

For more serious misdemeanors like shoplifting or property damage, New York police typically bring suspects back to the stationhouse, where they are fingerprinted and checked for outstanding warrants.

"We have to review it, then we'll go from there," said Lt. Elias Nikas, a police spokesman, said of the ruling. "The New York City police department will continue to adhere to department policies, and our legal bureau will review the Supreme Court decision."

Susan N. Herman, a law professor at Brooklyn Law School who filed a brief in the case for the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups, said today that the majority's assumption that a substantial problem did not exist was naïve.

"The reported cases are just the tip of the iceberg," she said, explaining that police officers who make an arrest and then conduct a search without finding anything incriminating often let the person go with a citation. The major purpose served by abusive arrests for minor offenses was to authorize the "search incident to arrest," essentially fishing expeditions, she said.

Emily Whitfield, a spokeswoman for the New York office of the A.C.L.U., raised concerns about the consequences of the decision on minorities. "There is a real fear that this new authority will be used by the police in a racially discriminatory fashion," she said. "Now we have a situation where the government, even if they can't put you in jail after you're convicted, can put you in jail before you're tried."

Ms. Atwater's lawyer had argued that under early English law, ordinary misdemeanors were not seen as justifying arrest in the absence of some other element, like a breach of the peace. Justice Souter rejected this argument as a basis for finding that the Constitution's framers would have regarded such arrests as constitutionally unreasonable, saying that the historical evidence was ambiguous.

-- We're Screwed (this@it.com), April 25, 2001

Answers

Just for reference, the Fourth Amendment reads:

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.

-- No Longer Valid (Fourth@trashed.com), April 25, 2001.

I keep thinking somebodys gonna come on the news and admit this was all a joke. What in the HELL is this country coming too? I can guarantee you right now that if some punk ass tries to arrest me for speeding or not wearing my seatbelt they will get the opportunity to add assualting a police officer to the charges.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), April 25, 2001.

Certain States have laws that disallow citizens from being arrested for misdemeanors. So In the battle of State vs. Federal law, who will ultimately take precedence? As we've seen with California's marijuana legalization initiative, the Feds will ignore the State's mandate and do whatl they damn well please. This, however, would put Bush in a precarious position since his Election Campaign promises ensured the State's to have the final authority.

But let's face it - when it comes to da' gummint, somebody, somewhere is gonna' screw us. If one won't the other will. Does it really make any difference which one it is?

-- sidelines (commentator@Cynical.com), April 25, 2001.

This is the approval that the NWO totalitarian regime needed to develop "The Database". Police will routinely begin to arrest people for the slightest misdemeanor in order to get them photographed and fingerprinted. Image recognition technology can then be used to monitor these "criminals" even within a large crowd, identifying them as "resistors" if they are associated with any undesirable activities. Eventually, the Big Brother database can be used to destroy the lives of any citizen who does not conform to the role of the perfect corporate slave. Since it is still too soon to implement genetic manipulation, information will be used as a weapon to accomplish the same objective, weeding out the "undesirables" from our species in order to guarantee the survival of those who best conform to oppression by government and total corporate domination over our society.

-- (big brother is here @ gattaca. by information), April 25, 2001.

Small children in a car without a seatbelt? Ya gotta be kidding, she should get life.

-- rocketman (badmom@home.net), April 26, 2001.

Rocketman, is that you J? You should call the jack-booted thugs to take her away and execute her. We should also set up roadblocks to execute anyone who uses a cell phone in their car and everyone whose tires are not properly inflated. Toxic poisons coming from the exhaust is good though, it makes oil corporations rich.

-- (welcome to @ Dumbya's. world), April 26, 2001.

This, however, would put Bush in a precarious position since his Election Campaign promises ensured the State's to have the final authority.

Except when it comes to deciding the election results in Florida.

-- (Hyp@o.crite), April 26, 2001.

I keep thinking somebodys gonna come on the news and admit this was all a joke. What in the HELL is this country coming too?

But Nikoli, this is what happens when you have a conservative so- called "constructionist" interpretation of the Constitution. Isn't that what you wanted? Just think, you'll only be seeing more of these types of decisions coming when Bush appoints new justices. Enjoy!!

-- (hooray@for.bush), April 26, 2001.

"What in the HELL is this country coming too?"

Hey Nikoli, that's what we asked for! We let these hard right loonies in the Supreme Court subvert our democracy. They installed our new fascist dictator.

Wake up Nikoli! Your man Bush is now planning to pack the court with even more fascists and we'll lose more freedoms!

Bush was never honorably elected. This is what happens when elections don't work and pretenders are installed by common thugs in black robes.

Welcome to your new police state!

-- More Fascism to Come (stop@supremecourt.com), April 26, 2001.

"I can guarantee you right now that if some punk ass tries to arrest me for speeding or not wearing my seatbelt they will get the opportunity to add assualting a police officer to the charges."

Nikoli - I have to believe you're just a tad smarter than this. You start beating up on a cop, for whatever reason, and you will soon be dealing with several cops who would take great joy in kicking the living shit out of you.

Deano

-- Deano (deano@luvthebeach.com), April 26, 2001.

It's about time too! These jerks have been getting away with this stuff for far too long, and the sooner we can get the populace tattooed the better.

-- Seriously (You'll@be.better.off), April 26, 2001.

Glad to see we have so many 2nd Amendment backers here!!!!!

Government sucks and it's time people woke up to the fact that the Fed is taking away our rights, stealing our property, and taxing us illegally. Worse yet, they have created a dependent class that will never raise themselves out of poverty.

-- (guns@are.good), April 27, 2001.

If you wanna see something REALLY scary - try reading selected Executive Orders over the past few decades. The ones dealing with "State of Emergency" are really something! Complete and TOTAL (as in totalitarian) control over the ENTIRE USA economy lock-stock- and barrel...PLUS the control ultimately resides at (you probably guessed it!) FEMA!

-- WannaSeeSomething (Really@Scary?.com), April 27, 2001.