U.S. Supreme Court Guts Fourth Amendment, Sanctions Police Fishing Expeditions, Giving Police More Leeway to Stop, Arrest and Search Citizens
JOHN WHITEHEAD
FreedomOutpost.com
JULY 1, 2016
WASHINGTON, DC — In a 5-3 ruling in Utah v. Strieff, the U.S. Supreme Court has opened the door for police to stop, arrest and search citizens without reasonable suspicion or probable cause.
In a blistering dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor blasted the court for holding “that the discovery of a warrant for an unpaid parking ticket will forgive a police officer’s violation of your Fourth Amendment rights.” Sotomayor further warned, “[t]his case allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your identification, and check it for outstanding traffic warrants—even if you are doing nothing wrong… So long as the target is one of the many millions of people in this country with an outstanding arrest warrant, anything the officer finds in a search is fair game for use in a criminal prosecution. The officer’s incentive to violate the Constitution thus increases: From here on, he sees potential advantage in stopping individuals without reasonable suspicion—exactly the temptation the exclusionary rule is supposed to remove.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling in Utah v. Strieff is available at www.rutherford.org.
“With this ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court has effectively stripped Americans of their Fourth Amendment rights and provided police with even greater incentives to erode our freedoms, undermine our sovereignty, abuse our trust, invade our privacy and generally operate above the law,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “By giving police a green light to illegally stop any American for any reason, arrest them for any minor outstanding violation, and embark on a fishing expedition of one’s person and property, the Supreme Court has rendered us completely vulnerable to the whims of any cop on the beat.”
The Rest…HERE
