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PERRIN LOVETT

~ Deo Vindice

PERRIN LOVETT

Tag Archives: innocence

Swabbing The Fourth Amendment

04 Tuesday Jun 2013

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Alito, Amerika, Antonin Scalia, Breyer, Constitution, crime, DNA, evidence, Fifith Amendment, Founders, Fourth Amendment, Ginsburg, government, Hagan, innocence, justice, Kennedy, King George, law, Liberty, Maryland, police state, Roberts, searches, slippery slope, Sotomayor, Supreme Court, The People, Thomas, Virginia Declaration of Rights

Yesterday, June 3, 2013, the Supreme Court neatly planted new, green sod over the grave of the late Fourth Amendment.  In Maryland v. King, 569 U.S. ___, Slip Op. No. 12-207 (June 3, 2013), the Court held, 5 – 4, obtaining DNA samples from criminal suspects via oral swabbing in permissible under the Fourth Amendment.  The high priests of the Temple of “Justice” divined the procedure analogous to fingerprinting and photographing.

The growth of government power knows no bounds; the ruling itself was not a surprise.  The nature of the close vote was, itself, of slight interest.  The opinion was penned by Justice Anthony “Swing Man” Kennedy.  Joining him were the arch-“conservative” trio of Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Alito, and Justice Thomas.  “Liberal” milk toast Justice Breyer joined in for grins and giggles.

Standing firm for the Constitution and Liberty were the Court’s three Divas, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan.  The ladies backed the dissent of Antonin Scalia, the originalists’ originalist and the only Justice usually worth reading or quoting.  Scalia read his dissent aloud in Court.  I’ll examine that dissent in a second.

antonin_scalia-photograph1

(Putting the “justice” in Justice.  Google.)

First, in all fairness, let me paraphrase the majority opinion for you: The government can (as always) do whatever the hell it wants.  Good enough?  Good.

Scalia began: “The Fourth Amendment forbids searching a person for evidence of a crime when there is no basis for believing the person is guilty of the crime or is in possession of incriminating evidence.”  Maryland v. King, supra, at Slip. Op. Scalia Dissent 1.  Citing the Virgina Declaration of Rights, § 10 (1776), Scalia recalled the Founder’s distrust and hatred for “general warrants” whereby persons were searched by the King’s agents without regard to evidence or suspicion.  These warrants were, rightly, considered “grievous and oppressive…”  Id, at Scalia 2.

Like most of the Bill or Rights, the Fourth Amendment has been under continual assault from an ever-growing list of “exceptions.”  Scalia notes these, including suspicionless searches in public prisons…er…schools, but notes that they all (purportedly) derive from some extra-law enforcement need of society.  He goes on to detail how the DNA swabs are intended only for general law enforcement purposes – for the gathering of evidence of criminal wrongdoing.  Id, at 3 -4.

As usual Scalia blasts the majority with its own lame arguments: “The Court hastens to clarify that it does not mean to approve invasive surgery on arrestees or warrantless searches of their homes.  [Internal Cite].  That the Court feels the need to disclaim these consequences is as damning a criticism of its suspicionless-search regime as any I can muster.” Id, at 4.  “Sensing (correctly) that it needs more, the Court elaborates at length the ways that the search here served the special purpose of ‘identifying’ King.  But that seems to me quite wrong – unless what one means by ‘identifying’ someone is ‘searching for evidence that he has committed crimes unrelated to the crime of his arrest.'”  Id, at 5.

The process of “identifying” Mr. King by his DNA took many, many months.  During that time King moved through many stages of the court process on his original charges.  Maryland knew, without a doubt, who they were dealing with.  The DNA was unnecessary for identification; rather, it was critical for a fishing expedition aimed at discovering other potential crimes also committed by King.  This is an affront to both the Fourth and the Fifth Amendments.  By the way, for viewing purposes, the Fifth is buried conveniently next to the Fourth at Constitutional Memorial Gardens.

“King was not identified by his association with the sample; rather, the sample was identified by its association with King. The Court effectively destroys its own ‘identification’ theory when it acknowledges that the object of this search was ‘to see what [was] already known about [King].'”  Id, at 9.  Both the Governor and the Attorney General of Maryland are on record praising DNA collection, not as a suspect identification, but as one designed to fight unsolved crimes.

Scalia knocked the assertion that DNA swabbing is no different, Fourth Amendment wise, than fingerprinting: “The Court asserts that the taking of fingerprints was constitutional for generations prior to the introduction’ of the FBI’s rapid computer-matching system.  This bold assertion is bereft of citation to authority because there is none for it.  The great expansion in fingerprinting came before the modern era of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, and so we were never asked to decide the legitimacy of the practice.”  Id, at 15.   

I love the following quote: “Solving unsolved crimes is a noble objective, but it occupies a lower place in the American pantheon of noble objectives than the protection of our people from suspicionless law-enforcement searches. The Fourth Amendment must prevail.”  Id, at 17.  Sadly, it did not prevail.

The following is also memorable and, in Scalia’s estimate, “most regrettable”: “All parties concede that it would have been entirely permissible, as far as the Fourth Amendment is concerned, for Maryland to take a sample of King’s DNA as a consequence of his conviction for second-degree assault. So the ironic result of the Court’s error is this: The only arrestees to whom the outcome here will ever make a difference are those who have been acquitted (so that their DNA could not have been taken upon conviction).  In other words, this Act manages to burden uniquely the sole group for whom the Fourth Amendment’s protections ought to be most jealously guarded: people who are innocent of the State’s accusations.”  Id, at 18. 

Classic Scalia: “I doubt that the proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection.  I therefore dissent…”  Id, at 18.

DNA%20swab%20for%20web

(Say Ahhhhhh…for the children and such.  Google.)

This ruling pushes us all a bit further down the slippery slope of the modern Amerikan police state.  Scalia noted as much: “Searching every lawfully stopped car, for example, might turn up information about unsolved crimes the driver had committed…”  Id, at 5.  The King case concerned (nominally) serious cases, felonies.  However, the next time you’re stopped for speeding or blowing through a stop sign, don’t be surprised if the officer demands you open your mouth for a good old swabbing.  “If one believes that DNA will ‘identify’ someone arrested for assault, he must believe that it will ‘identify’ someone arrested for a traffic offense.”  Id, at 17.  It’s all for the children or something, you know…

Don’t Drone Me, Bro!

07 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by perrinlovett in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

14th Amendment, 9/11/2001. 12/7/1941, Americans, army, Austin Rhodes, banksters, Big Club, capitalism, children, Clay Whittle, Constitution, Cornfield County, corporatism, Daivd Koresh, drones, due process, Eric Holder, feds, Fifth Amendment, filibuster, GA, government, guilt, idiots, innocence, JAG, Jesus Christ, King John, law, law enforcement, lies, Magna Carta, murder, Natural Law, poor bird, Posse Comitatus Act, Rand Paul, Ron Paul, Scott Dean, Senate, sheriff, tanks, taxes, Texas, the Devil, The Empire, Thomas More, Waco massacre

This post rambles from subject to subject.  Be forewarned.

Drones…

Just last night I thrilled you, my dear readers, with a few news stories concerning the law.  While Attorney General Eric “Fast and Furious” Holder refuses to prosecute super-rich banksters for criminal wrong-doing, he has no problem using drones to murder “ordinary” Americans for any reason or no reason.  Well, in his defense, He said the drones would only be used to thwart catastrophic events like the 9/11/2001 or Pearl Harbor attacks.  I don’t believe him.  It doesn’t matter since he’s not in charge of when the triggers are squeezed. 

This morning I was listening to the radio and had the privilege of hearing my friend Austin Rhodes (WGAC, 580 AM, Augusta) give his morning commentary.  He initially praised Senator Rand Paul (Ron’s son) for his filibuster yesterday which targeted the administration’s dystopian law enforcement policies.  Then he surprised me.  He, playing devil’s advocate, asked if a drone strike on David Koresh (remember him?) in 1993 would have prevented the later bloodshed at Koresh’s Seventh Day Adventist Church in Waco, Texas.  At first I was indignant but then I realized the value of his question.  The ultimate answer is “who knows?”  No-one does for certain.

It is my opinion that the government was out to get Koresh and his senior worshippers and would have slaughtered them all anyway.  Austin and I disagree on the nature of the events that unfolded in Waco twenty years ago.  That’s the beauty of America, we can agree to disagree.

There was much disagreement in early 1993, regarding the pre-assualt on the church.  For instance, the warrant obtained by the Imperial stormtroopers was defective.  Perhaps they could not decide on what, if anything, was wrong with Koresh and Co.  That might explain the defects in the law sited to obtain the warrant.  The local Sheriff and the State of Texas disagreed with the feds that crimes were being committed in the church.  A JAG officer (military attorney), when asked about the legality of deploying military assets for this domestic law enforcement “operation,” disagreed with his inquirers.  He reported the scheme was illegal, a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, etc.  The first Stormtroopers on the scene must have disagreed about the wisdom of carrying communication devices in case something went wrong, whether to open fire immediately upon exiting their horse trailer (official police version), and whether the church members would return fire.

In the end, the dissenters were silenced.  The rest is history.  As I recall the Empire had several grounds for the War in Waco: 1) income tax evasion; 2) illegal drugs; 3) illegal firearms; and 4) the abuse of children.  I think they eventually proved the tax count as they can prove that against almost anyone due to the psychotic nature of our tax laws and regulations.  I think there was no evidence of the guns or drugs – any existing specimens would have been destroyed in the government’s fire.  As for the children, while I recall some survivors insisted there had been some sort of impropriety, most (all?) of the children were killed in the fire or crushed to death beneath the Army’s 70-ton tank.  Some may have been shot by snipers.  Anyway, there wasn’t a lot of evidence after the fact.

Still, none of this answers Austin’s question.  I’ll pose a question which is easy to answer definitively: Would a drone strike on Rev. Koresh been legal?  Two questions, really – Would the drone strike have been ethical?  The answer to both questions is a certain “NO!” 

The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution is clear – “No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…”  (Emphasis added).  The Fourteenth Amendment backs up the Fifth’s Due Process provision.  These concepts date back the Magna Carta in 1215.  The truth is eternal, it remains the same in 1215, 1791, 1993, or 2013.  The theory is that if the government wants to kill someone, they must adhere to a certain process.  We generally refer to the key part of the process as a trial (Jury, evidence, and stuff).  The theory jives with what that crazy carpenter, Jesus Christ, talked about twelve centuries before King John admitted his authority was not arbitrary.

For those of you who might have heard Austin and taken his question as a simple endorsement by mistake, how about this: Would Sheriff Whittle’s use of a drone against Scott Dean saved us the trouble and expense of a trial?  He was convicted, after all, by twelve wise citizens.  The fact of his innocence and his accuser’s later recantation are irrelevant for this discussion.  For those of you fortunate enough not to live in Cornfield County, Scott Dean was a County Commissioner.  He adopted some girls.  One of the girls, a teenager with a history of lying in court, accused him of a heinous crime.  He denied any guilt but was convicted none the less.  He went to prison.  Then, his lying adopted daughter, safely out of the country, admitted she made the story up and Dean was in fact innocent.

Since the recent revelation of Dean’s innocence I’m sure the twelve men and women who sent him to prison have the utmost difficulty sleeping at night.  Can you imagine the Sheriff’s guilt and shame had he used a drone instead of the law?  Natural Law and its proper extensions in the corporeal world are important.  “I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”  Saint Thomas More, A Man For All Seasons, 1966.

Due Process of law is a Natural Right to which every person is entitled when human laws exist.  This was obvious to earlier generations of Americans.

Too Big…

In my recent second installment of Slavery In America, https://perrinlovett.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/slavery-in-america-part-ii-of-iii/, I mentioned the Big Club members who are invested in our modern plantation.  The giant banks are charter members of the club.  I mentioned their immunity from criminal prosecution last night.  It seems they are too big to fail, too big to jail, and they are rapidly sucking up all the wealth in this country.  See this story: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/corporatism-a-system-of-control-designed-by-the-monopoly-men-of-the-global-elite.  It’s about “corporatism,” the fascists’ bastardization of capitalism.  It’s an excellent article from an eye-opening site.

It Could Be Worse…

We could all be stuck in a cage and abandoned at the car wash…

0307131156a

(This poor guy was!  He was happily adopted though!)

Yeah, ramblin more than normal… 🙂

Perrin Lovett

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