Thread: Don't rob a bank in Spain

Do you disagree with the reading of the Miranda warning, and the exclusion of evidence which was gathered by law enforcement through means which violated your 4th, 5th and/or 6th Amendment rights?

Originally Posted by mhailey

Do you disagree with the reading of the Miranda warning, and the exclusion of evidence which was gathered by law enforcement through means which violated your 4th, 5th and/or 6th Amendment rights?

I'm still undecided on the Miranda but I think the fruit of the poisoned tree is a good idea and should be applied more liberally.
Seems to me that there tends to be a lot of cherry picking there by judges with agendas.

I was simply pointing out two major rules that are behind much of the uneducateds griping about "Can you believe that lawyer got him off on some bullshit technicality?? These lawyers just ruin the system !!"

I will give an example and we shall see if the brilliant legal minds here can come up with the right answer.

A car is pulled over for running a stop sign in a residential area.
The officer who made the stop runs the operators info and there are no warrants, license is valid, tag is good, guy was convicted of felony possession in 98 . No trouble with the law since then.

A second car arrives and they decide to go on a fishing expedition.
Operator refuses to allow the officers to search his car then the officer will call for a dog, the dog will alert (on command) and the car will be searched.


The officers search the car and find a illegal weapon.

Shazam, felony weapons charge. The guy is looking at serious time.

Does the exclusionary rule apply to this?
The dog gave a false alert.
The police were searching for drugs.
They didn't find drugs.
They found a weapon, which is not what they were after and is not what the dog smelled.
Does fruit of the poison tree apply?

Your flaw is the "alert on command" statement. Sorry, but i have never seen that happen. I have seen them search on command, attack on command, but never provide an alert to the presence of drugs on command.

If you are alleging that the cops forced the dog to alert, and it did not do so on its own volition, then the search was invalid, assuming this can be proven.

However, if the dog alerted, but was mistaken, then the question would turn on whether the officers had a valid reason to believe the alert. i.e. does this dog have a history of falsely alerting. if this dog has a highly accurate past when it alerts, then the search is valid, and the person is screwed.

The CYA statement: I assume that this is a hypothetical situation, does not apply to anyone in particular, and assumes a general jurisdiction (no specific state), as this is not intended for the purpose of providing legal advise.

if the cops really wanted to search that vehicle, all they needed to do was arrest the person and perform a serch incident to arrest, or impound the vehicle, and then perform an inventory search at the impound lot.

I'm concurring with Mhailey... i seem to recall that the simple fact that a person is pulled over for speeding, or another traffic infraction, opens them up for a police search... i think the supreme court weighed in on this in the early 90s...

but hey i'm not a lawyer, just mildly fascinated by the corrupt laws we live under.

Originally Posted by syslight

I'm concurring with Mhailey... i seem to recall that the simple fact that a person is pulled over for speeding, or another traffic infraction, opens them up for a police search... i think the supreme court weighed in on this in the early 90s...

but hey i'm not a lawyer, just mildly fascinated by the corrupt laws we live under.

And Jim, lets not forget the scary local "Justice Courts" we have here in NY. They're a throwback to colonial times.

Jordan

Originally Posted by jnich67

And Jim, lets not forget the scary local "Justice Courts" we have here in NY. They're a throwback to colonial times.

Jordan

Oh i have not forgotten them... i ran for one last year... lost it to the incumbent who is almost as well qualified for the position as my dog and nearly as well trained (the dog is house broken)

there are however good things that come out of them... old justices with 8th grade educations can be very lenient to you ... 8 of 9 tickets being dismissed and the last one was reduced to "parking on the pavement"... only cost 250$ and no points, no bump in the insurance bill. then again they could just as easily throw in jail for a year.
for the record the 9 tickets were all one event about 20 years ago... nothing like feeding your need for speed.

ALWAYS take a lawyer to justice court.

It is not that speeding opened the way to a search, but that she got arrested for speeding, and then her car was searched incident to the arrest. The search and the arrest were both determined to be valid.