This SCOTUS decision is really, REALLY bad news! Read this from Sotomayer::

[vkkv]

Sotomayer::

"""
“Do not be soothed by the opinion’s technical language: This 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,”

By legitimizing the conduct that produces this double consciousness, this case tells everyone, white and black, guilty and innocent, that an officer can verify your legal status at any time. It says that your body is subject to invasion while courts excuse the violation of your rights. It implies that you are not a citizen of a democracy but the subject of a carceral state, just waiting to be cataloged.

We must not pretend that the countless people who are routinely targeted by police are “isolated.” They are the canaries in the coal mine whose deaths, civil and literal, warn us that no one can breathe in this atmosphere. They are the ones who recognize that unlawful police stops corrode all our civil liberties and threaten all our lives. Until their voices matter too, our justice system will continue to be anything but. """"""

- - - This is very sad..

EDIT::: Including link::: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sonia-sotomayor-police_us_57680301e4b0fbbc8beaf4ae?section=

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Couple this decision with the rise of public prisons where the police are truly now

solicitors for future inmates on behalf of corporations.

[tecelote]

33. +1!

When law enforcement becomes a profit center.. we're all fucked.

Prisons already are.

This is not the America I was promised.

[midnight]

36. Another reason to reject prisons for profit.

[TexasMommaWithAHat]

48. Corporate takeover

of the justice system.

[guillaumeb]

2. Do you have a link to a source? eom

[msongs]

3. link to cnn story on the issue...

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/20/politics/sotomayor-supreme-court-dissent-utah-strieff/index.html

[vkkv]

4. Yes, edited in to OP - sorry................. NT

[mountain grammy]

6. Here's a story on it, with Sotomayor's dissent.

the women got it right..

http://reason.com/blog/2016/06/20/sonia-sotomayor-blasts-scotus-for-excusi

[Eleanors38]

5. The Fourth and Fifth Amendments do take a beating.

[mrr303am]

7. SInce 2001

We the people have lost a lot of our Constitutional rights for frivolous reasons and agendas, while the only right conservatives will fight for, with their dying breathes, is the right to own guns, all other rights have been suppressed (or taken away) to one degree or another.

[Phlem]

12. If you have money, the easier it is to exploit your environment.

History shows the ruling class, the rich and powerful, trouncing on the those less than them. Why would it be any different now? Because we're in 2016 this doesn't happen anymore?

The media directs and controls the national dialogue, a private entity made up by guess who?

Trust me, your opinion matters a great deal and a lot of time and money has been invested into that machine.

Your opinion, right down to who you should vote for.

Tell me I'm wrong.



P.S. I agree with you, all I'm saying is follow the money.

[mrr303am]

25. I agree with you that will be the way it plays out,

but I was just answering the question based on my feelings/beliefs, though in our political system my description of the type of VP would just be considered something that would only happen in a dream world far, far away in another galaxy.

[bjobotts]

52. Vote democratic to get the senate back and a president who will appoint a rational SC justice.

This senate ignores their constitutional duty to allow hearing for SC nominee put forward by the president. There are no reasons to avoid doing their job. They've done enough damage. We need to get the vote out and get them out of government.

[Ikonoklast]

54. Wait a minute. The Senate Democrats voted last night in favor of secret government lists.

Lists that once you are put on one of theose secret terrorist watch list, have close to zero recourse getting your named removed, and even then, the FBI says they will still keep your name on that list anyway.

If you think Sen. Joe Manchin saying "due process is killing us" is OK just because he's a Democrat, or Sen. Diane Feinstein saying that "Americans must prove their innocence" is OK, you are just as wrong as any Republican.

[Eleanors38]

55. The "gun question" is pure culture war. And one side is losing...

Not that it matters to them. It's the feeling one gets from occasional moral condemnation of an unacceptable group, even if that group is tens millions of other citizens. License is license, and that is hard to give up.

[63splitwindow]

8. Fruit of the poisonous tree...

Hopefully this case will be rejected as soon as possible by a wiser SC. Clarence Thomas needs to take his healthy retirement and enjoy same as soon as possible.

[vkkv]

9. Police in the south will indeed be gathering some Strange Fruit, sadly...

Lyrics, read and weep:


Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

[Lurker Deluxe]

10. Change it up a little ...

So the police had a drug distribution point under surveillance and a man walks in, stays for a couple of minutes, and walks out and they stop and check him. He has a warrant, he gets arrested, and in that process he gets busted for meth.

OK, bad ... because?

What if the police were watching a point of distribution for illegal weapons, you know the weapons we don't want people who should not have them to ever get their hands on. What if that guy had just bought an illegal weapon, should the police be able to stop him then? Or is this a bad case because it was "just drugs"?

Really not sure I get the problem, how is this arrest any different than any other sting operation?

[vkkv]

11. That's not what this decision is about. It's about getting pulled over

and searched for no reason at all other than driving while human. Anything a cop finds on you is now a legitimate case against you.

That is the end result of this ruling... As if cops don't have enough power.. Now all of the scumbags in our towns will wanna be cops even more.

[Lurker Deluxe]

13. No

He was not driving, if he was there would be no issue at all as police are allowed to ask for your drivers license, insurance, and any other document they may need. Certainly if a warrant was discovered in this way there would be no case at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_v._Strieff

Unless this is completely fabricated it states the police were watching a suspected drug house and he entered and left while spending a few minutes there. He was stopped because of that on the street. Pretty much any sting operation works this way.

[uponit7771]

17. Then anyone COULD be at a place they weren't supposed to be at any time. Walking by a pizza

... place? there was people being loud there so you can be stopped.

Corner... there was someone who was shot there last week... so you can be stopped

Day care? loud kids or some shit...

Another conscious crime ruling with little constraints on the cop...

Where the person was at is now a reason to stop anyone...

Oh the guy ran, well they sell drugs here all the time... so its ok to stop them...

No restraints on the cops

[Lurker Deluxe]

21. So what to do?

If someone in my neighborhood starts selling drugs what is my recourse?

I call the police, but they can not stop anyone who comes out of the drug house because that is illegal, so there is no way they could ever raid the house because they would never be able to get any reason to. So the drug house remains ... forever?

What is the solution? This was not a new ruling it upheld an older ruling. I am certainly no legal scholar but how would the police ever be able to stop these types of problems without being able to run stings?

Never bust any prostitution rings, or human trafficking, illegal gun sales, or any number of other crimes because that is pretty much how it gets done.

So, what is your solution? Just let the whore houses do their thing, let the illegal gun trade continue, but hey ... drugs, we can't stop that because ya know, all police are bad.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/15pdf/14-1373_83i7.pdf

[uponit7771]

22. Make special provisions by law or get a warrant for the stops for those places not any place...

... the po po deem untoward.

This ruling leaves it up to the cops and that could mean any place...

or

... they get a warrant or provision or some kind of designation and the place isn't left up to the cops.

would that do?

tia

[Lurker Deluxe]

24. how could you get a warrant

You would have no evidence to do so?

That is pretty much how it works, you bust the guy with the meth and he tells you were he got it for consideration and then you go bust the dealer.

Right?

How can you ever bust the guy with the meth?

Change it up, again, someone is walking towards the school house with an AK strapped on him and he looks to be a foul mood. Can you stop him? If you do and he is intoxicated do you charge him with felony weapons possession and prosecute. I damn sure hope so. But in truth you stopped him for no legal reason, and present that, no charge can come from it. That is, if this ruling had been upheld.

Truth is, sounds like this guy had a pretty good legal team to get a possession bust to the USSC, could it be Afluenza not working? Police surely abuse their powers, this just does not read like one of those times to me.

[uponit7771]

26. A warrant for the place a person is coming from, they stopped him because of where he was

... coming from.

Get a warrant for those places that cops will use to jusitfy stopping people like the cops did in this case instead of making them conscious laws subject to what the cops think.

For the AK carrier he could be questioned without a warrant or probable cause just for carrying the weapon... he doesn't have to stop though.

He responds with any since of mischeif then that's it

[Lurker Deluxe]

32. Right

They got a tip that it could be a drug house, you certainly can not get a warrant for a home on a anonymous tip you have to investigate.

This guy did not have to stop any more than the guy with the AK does, he could have kept walking and he did not have to show ID.

He stopped, and gave up his DL. You do not have to identify your self no more than that man who looks to have intent has to stop heading for that school. Cops use these tactics every single day and while there are certainly plenty of cases of abuse, they do stop alot of crime this way. I want that cop stopping people that he has reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, again ... sounds like this guy had pretty good legal representation. If there is a guy in a ski mask hiding in the alley next to the all night coffee house I want the police to go ask him what the hell he is doing, and if he has a warrant drag him in, and during that process if he has an illegal weapon on him charge him. Might have just stopped a rape.

If they investigated and found there was no tip ... let him go as there was no reason to watch the house. If he had hassled other people about this same place and come up empty ... let him go. But seems to me he was doing his job, and if it was anything other than drugs most would agree.

[uponit7771]

34. Hmmmm you have some good points, were's the middle ground.. I'm black, I don't want stop and frisk

... mentality where I have lived because I was one of few blacks in those areas.

Well, shit... nevah mind... lol... I was still stopped for some bullshit... one cop even said I've not seen you around here even though I had just bought the estate a month before.

Yeah, I can see cops need the ability to see what's up... I just don't want them to use that to harrase folk

[Curtis]

40. Differences

The first is just a stop and talk. When I used to do this, I would ask the person during the conversation for some ID. Then I'd say something like, "you know, just for safety reasons, I gotta ask. You got any weapons on ya? Mind if I do a quick check for just weapons so I can be comfortable?" So many people say, "sure." Do a quick frisk and note things. Hard things ask what they are. Ask to pull them out and check. Again most people say "okay." Soft things that could be baggies, just brush over them and remember. Don't ask because you're searching for weapons. Then talk. Yeah, I just wanted to ask you about the people in that house....Who are they....Names....Pets....Children....How well you know them....What we're you doing there...? Things like that. Eventually, you can get around to the baggie in their pocket, the pills, etc. It really does work. If not, there's always someone else.

The guy in the ski mask hiding in the alley? Depending on the weather, I'd say reasonable suspicion is easily met and I'd stop and take a much more authoritative approach.

If I were still working, this ruling would have changed the way I did my job.

[Silver_Witch]

43. You are sadly mistaken....

Police have always been allowed to stop someone leaving a known drug house or illegal gambling business. Always!

This law is not that. This one says you Joe Normal are walking down the street just walking, nothing else, and you can legally be stopped and "checked".

Your premises is bogus!

[Lurker Deluxe]

50. I am not

Suspected drug house was the statement. And that is not in dispute.

From Sotomeyer's dissent, end of the third paragraph. From the actual ruling, not cherry picked.

"Strieff just happened to be the first person to leave a house that the officer thought might contain “drug activity.”

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/15pdf/14-1373_83i7.pdf

[Silver_Witch]

59. You are indeed wrong in your premise

The fact is that one can be stopped when leaving a known drug house without this silly ruling by the Court. You are trying to defend this action based on some horrible fear that you will have a person leaving a drug house without the ability to stop him and investigate. That is not the law.

[63splitwindow]

14. As long as a warrant for your arrest...

is later discovered. The original stop, according to this decision, can be for any illegal reason whatsoever.

[OnlinePoker]

47. I heard on NPR yesterday there are over 7 million warrants outstanding in the U.S.

The vast majority are for people too poor to afford a lawyer to have them cleared in a court. Many people aren't even aware they exist until they get picked up.

[dixiegrrrrl]

15. It throws " probable cause" out the window.

Cops have to have a legal reason for stopping you.
They have up till now used some bullshit excuse like broken tail light, 2 miles over the speed limit, etc.
Once they pull you over, then they find another reason to search the car, and quite often the driver is surprised to find the cops "found" some drugs.

Under the old law, the cops grabbed the guy for no cause, but then found an outstanding warrant.

Under the new law, cops can stop you for no cause, and search for warrant and other reasons to haul you in.

And, they now can empty your debit card and credit card of cash, by accusing you of being involved in drugs, and even if they never press legal charges, or they drop charges, you don't get the money back.

[Lurker Deluxe]

16. How can any sting ever work?

First, again, he was not driving.

How can any sting operation ever work again if this was upheld?

The guy had just walked out of a drug house that was being watched, that is how stings work. If the police are watching a drug house and you go in it, you are going to get hassled.

I do not know who this person is, but I doubt he was some poor smuck that just happened to get his drug possession charge turned into a 4th amendment case brought before the supreme court.

[uponit7771]

19. Cause the cops now have 2 trillion "drug houses" or any place of ill repute to claim someone

... was near or at as a reason to stop folk.

[malthaussen]

20. Presumably you read the decision and the dissents.

If you disagree with Justice Sotomayer, then presumably your opinion will not be changed by lay opinion.

-- Mal

[malthaussen]

18. Yeah. but tell us how you feel, Justice Sotomayer.

The woman is just a tad perturbed, methinks. And I agree with all four parts of her dissent, unlike her honorable colleagues Kaplan and Ginsberg.

-- Mal

[SCantiGOP]

23. This can be corrected

If the we and our Party don't screw it up, Trump and demographics could easily give us another 8-12 years of Democratic-appointed SC justices. Get rid of Thomas and Alito and you won't see these kind of decisions.

[Hortensis]

27. Yes. A solid liberal-leaning majority will fix this.

A conservative majority will fix it in law for decades.

Btw, why aren't people demanding to know WHO Scalia was meeting at that secret desert meeting and WHY not a subject? It's not like it's the first time, or the fifth. Presumably absolutely none of the nearly 40 others meeting there have been identified by investigative journalists.

It is extremely likely that Scalia was colluding with others, like the giant Koch alliance, who want to use SCOTUS to move our national structure radically and semi-permanently right by reinterpreting the Constitution.

[davidn3600]

28. I'm not convinced on that

Snowden and other NSA whistleblowers has said neither party has the moral high ground on this. They are both bad when it comes to the police/surveillance state issues.

[Silver_Witch]

45. Agreed!

[SCantiGOP]

56. the point is, it is not the parties

The Supreme Court is a check on the Congress, and therefore a check on the parties.
This is clearly a violation of the 4th Amendment, and the current Supreme Court, by a 5-3 vote, is probably the only one in history that would have ruled this way. A decent court would reverse this unreasonable search and seizure issue, so the inclination of the parties would not be a factor.

[Silver_Witch]

58. It is clearly a violation of the 4th Amendment.

Did I say something that lead you to believe I felt otherwise?

[SCantiGOP]

60. No argument here

Saying that neither party has the "moral high ground" misses the point that their main involvement in this process is the appointment of Supreme Court judges, who rule on the laws they pass.

[loyalsister]

29. Ginsburg is notorious

Sotomayor is a bad ass! Her full dissent is worth reading...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/06/20/sonia_sotomayor_dissent_in_utah_v_strieff_takes_on_police_misconduct.html

[marybourg]

30. So it turns out we were the land of the free

and the home of the brave only so long as we were protected from attack by two huge oceans. Once those oceans no longer protected us, well, "these colors" do run, don't they?

[n2doc]

31. Papers, Please.....

You half nothing to fear, Citizen!

[cureautismnow]

35. What in the world got into Justice Breyer? Siding with the neocons.

It makes no sense, until I read this:

"Justice Breyer is by many measures more conservative than the court’s three other liberals. He was more likely to vote with Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Kennedy, Justice Thomas or Justice Alito than any of the other liberals. But there was one stark and telling exception: Justice Breyer was less likely than any of the other liberals to vote with Justice Scalia. Those two justices often tangle at oral arguments and often have differing views of privacy rights, with Justice Scalia joining the court’s liberals in Fourth Amendment cases and Justice Breyer voting the other way."

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/24/upshot/24up-scotus-agreement-rates.html

[davidthegnome]

37. Why can't they all be like her?

I can't imagine even most conservatives approving of this particular ruling - particularly libertarians who claim to be big on personal and individual freedom. There will be those who say "well, if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have to worry about this..." it is yet another line of thought in that slippery slope that has enabled wiretapping programs of really questionable legality, drone strikes of the same, NSA surveillance programs, the "Patriot Act" and so on and so forth.

I've got nothing on my record I need or want to hide - but that should not entitle law enforcement officials to randomly stop me without cause, demand my ID and look into my personal details and history. Really, this ruling is an assault on privacy for all Americans - but I suspect that those who will suffer the most for it will be African American, Muslims, poor people and young people.

As for not being a citizen of a democracy... the Citizens United ruling, years ago, was a very strong indicator that that was already the case. People mocked Bernie for talking about "oligarchy", or the 1%, or the top 10% of the 1%... but, the fact of the matter is, he was spot on with everything he said. If your skin is white enough and you have enough money... chances are you'll be left alone. If your skin is white enough and you have enough money, chances are... you can get away with almost anything even if you do it on public television.

[Silver_Witch]

44. Exactly!! Thank you!

[Ford_Prefect]

38. What will this mean as applied to free speech issues during the campaign?

I guess we'd better not provoke any police with comments about their past behavior.

There goes the last 66 years of public political expression.

[L. Coyote]

39. NPR listen

Justice Sotomayor Delivers Blistering Dissent In Utah Search Case
June 20, 2016 on All Things Considered
Nina Totenberg

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that an otherwise illegal search of a pedestrian by a police officer in Utah was permissible under the Constitution because the pedestrian had an outstanding warrant out for his arrest. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a blistering dissent focused on the implications of the decision. .....

Read Justice Sotomayor's Words on Racial Injustice Before You Go to Sleep Tonight
​The truth about "isolated" incidents.
Charles P. Pierce Jun 20, 2016

WASHINGTON—Madame Justice Sonia Sotomayor seems to have felt her last nerve jumped upon. Earlier today, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Utah v. Streiff. The case involved a man named Edward Streiff, who was stopped without cause by a police officer in Salt Lake City. The officer discovered that Streiff had an outstanding warrant and, upon searching Streiff, discovered methamphetamine. The Utah Supreme Court—that would be the supreme court that works in Utah!—reversed Streiff's conviction because the original police stop had been illegal. By a 5-3 margin, the Supreme Court of the United States reversed the decision of the Utah Supreme Court, the majority arguing that the discovery of the meth made the original stop less illegal. Justice Clarence Thomas opined in a majority opinion that the "deterrent value" of the arrest mitigated the illegality of the stop. (If this sounds like ends justifying means, that's only because it is.)

Madame Justice Sotomayor, writing in dissent, cranked up the Enola Gay.

She summoned up the "suspicionless stops" which were characteristic of Jim Crow law-enforcement. After she paid decent fealty to the universality of Fourth Amendment protections, she made it quite clear that a lot of this is About Race, even though nothing ever is About Race. She even talked about how, sometimes, when people of color are stopped without cause, those people end up being dead.

......

[center]

Drew Childers ?@TPFBreakingNews 58 seconds ago
In 1 Quote, Sonia Sotomayor Sums Up What's Wrong With Unreasonable Search and Seizure
https://mic.com/articles/146645/in-one-quote-sonia-sotomayor-sume-up-what-s-wrong-with-unreasonable-search-and-seizure … - @mic

Purplegarter ?@Purplegarter1 2 minutes ago
The Supreme Court Just Ruled In Favor Of The Police State, And Sonia Sotomayor Is Not Having It
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sonia-sotomayor-police_us_57680301e4b0fbbc8beaf4ae

John Crowley-Buck ?@johncrowleybuck 4 minutes ago
Powerful, but tragic in its necessity. Justice Sotomayor’s dissent against racial profiling...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/06/20/sonia_sotomayor_dissent_in_utah_v_strieff_takes_on_police_misconduct.html

World kNews ?@world_knews 5 minutes ago
Sotomayor's Blistering Dissent Against 'Frisk While Brown'
http://worldknewz.com/index.php?menu=trends&id=1466478002&l=en&key0=8 …

Rosemary ?@rosemarycolon 6 minutes ago
In Scathing Dissent Justice Sotomayor Says Supreme Court Just Gave The Green Light To Racist Cops
http://thkpr.gs/3790300 via @thinkprogress

[lovemydog]

41. She used language from black lives matter

and also 'I can't breathe.'

Bless Justice Sotomayor.

Let's elect democrats and get more people like her on the Supreme and federal courts!

[Silver_Witch]

42. Now it is official. We are guilty until proven innocent!

I am sad!

[geardaddy]

46. There goes the Fourth Amendment out the window. n/t

[Javaman]

49. prisoners in our own homes.

I think that's the long game.

[still_one]

51. yes it is

[lark]

53. Yep, they keep taking away our rights, bit by bit.

When I first saw these headlines, I had a chill race down my back. This is scary stuff and just shows how little we matter to the justice system. To them we are all criminals just waiting to be caught and put in jail and made to pay outrageous fines, fees and $$ for everything except air. Jails are nothing but profit centers and they take the most from people that can afford it the least. Then they put them back in jail when they can't keep up with the states' bloodsucking. Sickening!

[ffr]

57. HRC 2016 or have the court continue its conservative values

One huge reason to get people off their sofas and vote.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027932056