Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

I took a class in college from a lawyer who said he started as a cop but wanted to understand the law better so he went to law school at night. When he graduated the chief (or whatever) told him he couldn’t practice law and be a cop, and even though he had no intention of actually being an attorney, they let him go.

We all have to go to law school.

How could you live in the world without breaking the law if you didn't know what the law was?

They're supposed to be trained on it, and they probably get a week maybe, depending on the academy. The rest is how to beat your ass.

PDs have attorneys on call and prior to that they can call their sergeant if they are unsure. Even real lawyers don't know every aspect of every law on the books.

What baffles me is the hypocrisy in the political party that wants more government and regulation is the same one that hates the men who enforce it.

> The general rule is that the police cannot promise you anything in return for a confession.

Yet plea bargaining is basically a promise in exchange for a confession (guilty plea), and that's why it's not allowed basically anywhere except the US.

To add to this: it is the police's job to positively identify those who commit crimes. If they are questioning you, it is because 1) they are investigating a crime and you are a suspect (maybe not the prime suspect but a suspect) and 2) they do not have evidence that reasonably proves that you committed whatever crime (or lack thereof) they are investigating. (Simple game theory for 2: if they had the evidence, they'd use it to obtain an arrest warrant and then prosecute the case; no need for more investigation.)

This isn't good advice only for people who have possibly committed a crime but also (and especially) for those who are confident that they have not. The police are asking you questions to "get to the bottom of it" and they encounter people every day who do think they can lie to get out of a crime; they think you might try to lie to get out of a crime. They won't trust your words but they will verify your words. If your words turn out to be false, then they'll tell the judge/jury that you lied to them, not that you were mistaken; in the absence of stronger evidence (against someone else) they might claim you were possibly even intending to direct their investigation toward a red herring with your falsehoods.

The only revision to this advice I've heard in the past decade-and-a-bit: tell the police your real first and last name if they ask. It's not always a requirement but some states have "stop and ID" laws, which means you have to identify yourself to law enforcement during a "lawful detention" (other states instead require it after an arrest).

Corollary: if talking to the cops helped you then the police wouldn't be so eager to talk to you

Im sorry but Ive got to talk to them to take the fucking piss out of them.

My interview tapes are hilarious.

Because someone, somewhere needs to see this today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

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The assumption, as I understand it is that a guilty person is more likely to confess if they believe the evidence against them is strong, but an innocent person will not believe the lie because they know they didn't commit the crime and generate the purported evidence.

I fear like many other old assumptions about criminal justice that isn't a close match to reality.

Tax payers don't care enough to force the congress critters to change the laws in <your home state>.

Instead, you get human beings who are shielded by a thin piece of paper who can summarily execute you, then say "whoops, my bad".

Police are nothing more than State-sponsored gang members.

I imagine a lot of it is tradition, AFAICT it was never really banned in the US (or Britain), although in the US it was codified in 1969. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frazier_v._Cupp

Simple answer?

Because there is nothing prohibiting it.

No. In 2020 the police went to a magistrate judge to ask for a warrant. The judge issued the warrant. Five years later, another judge has determined that the warrant should not have been issued in the first place.

That is not the fault of the police, and there is no reason to punish them for it.

This is not responsive. The police did not commit a crime here.

Also note that there are good-faith defenses to all sorts of crimes, because (for example) there is a difference between knowingly defrauding a customer and just making a mistake.

> If I believe, in good faith, I have not broken the law. I should not be convicted

How often does this actually happen in criminal matters?

This is a weird concept to people in stem fields, but in law intent matters a lot. It's the difference between manslaughter and murder.

If you can cite previous court cases in your favour, you probably won't.

If you believe in good faith that you have not broken the law, and can reasonably convince a jury of that, you almost certainly will receive a lighter sentence than you would have otherwise and in some cases also be acquitted.

So this isn’t really a good argument even if we ignore the fact that it’s a non sequitur.

A better argument is that the good faith exception, while making sense in principle, can easily be abused by the police to make illegally obtained evidence look like it was done in good faith, and therefore the exception itself should be removed because of how difficult it is to actually gauge and enforce.

Learn to tell the difference between "I don't like it" and "horseshit".

The legal precedent for this goes back decades, and it's been argued by many people better-informed than you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good-faith_exception

Not OP, but have you heard the craziness of Indian Creek Village in Miami? [1].

Their police force is 15 for a community of 41 homes[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Creek,_Florida [2] https://www.indiancreekvillagefl.gov/police/police-staff-dir...

The whole thing is intertwined. Podunk cops often get put on 3 letter task forces and work in a mutual arrangement with each other. They often have a really clever scam going on where they kick seizures up to federal agencies, since it is so much harder to block/contest federal forfeitures than local ones, and then the federal agencies kick back a fraction of it.

Maybe their paychecks don't come from the federal government nominally but in practice it's highly intermixed.

They all get paid from my pay check. They work for the government. Level doesn’t matter. They protect their own.

There's no point in protecting one individual against an unconstitutional search that proves him guilty. The constitutional issue is the ability to have conducted the search in the first place. The only reason we suppress accurate, but unconstitutionally obtained evidence is to disincentivize the action in the future. This "good-faith exception" strikes that balance pretty ideally.

The defendants rights were violated, but there is no doubt about the legitimacy of the data, and what it implies. Police now know they cannot use this method in the future, so suppressing the evidence in this particular case does not disincentivize anything, as long as its made clear that it cannot be done in the future.

'Your constitutional rights were violated but tough luck, nothing can be done about it because the court is extending special 'good faith' courtesy to the police that you don't get (some animals are more equal than others in court decisions/considerations when minor laws (the fourth amendment) are broken)'.

And people wonder why American's are apathetic to it all. A judge can just wave away constitutional violations all day/every day because 'good faith'.