[extropy-chat] John John Perry Barlow vs The Man

[Amara Graps]

Sadly, it looks like things didn't go so well for Barlow at his hearing.

John Perry Barlow's account of the situation (I posted this before)
http://barlow.typepad.com/barlowfriendz/2004/12/a_taste_of_the_.html

Barlow's relevant legal documents
http://www.barlowfriendz.net/busted/


 From an attendee in the Courtroom:
"Thursday 16th December 2004
In the Superior Court of California, County of San Mateo"

http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/weblog/nb.cgi/view/vitanuova/2004/12/16/1

"On Wednesday I went to Superior Court for the hearing on John Perry's
motion to suppress. The defense claimed that the search at the airport
in 2003 was not "reasonable" and therefore that evidence obtained from
it should not be admitted. The Superior Court of California, County of
San Mateo, is accustomed to dealing with cases that arose at the San
Francisco Airport, but it's not particularly used to constitutional
challenges to aviation screening procedures, nor to having multiple
camera crews turn out for a single pre-trial evidentiary hearing in a
misdemeanor drug possession case. "

[many details deleted here.. you should real the full acount]

"Despite the drama and entertainment that developed at the end of the
defense testimony, the judge ruled against Barlow, denying the motion
to suppress and ruling that the search was lawful and that the results
of the search could be introduced into evidence against Barlow. In his
ruling from the bench, there was not a lot of intricate logical
argument about caselaw; instead, it was dominated by references to
common sense. (In appellate courts, in my experience, and perhaps even
in Federal trial courts, judges may be more apt to plunge into
abstractions and theoretical principles and the categories drawn by
caselaw; this judge seemed extremely disinclined to do that. I do keep
in mind that he had only seen the case file for the first time two
hours before, and that he was perhaps surprised by the explosion of
highly abstract civil liberties arguments, some of them likely matters
of first impression. I imagine that usually disputes in state trial
courts are a good deal more concrete!).

"The judge mentioned that the penalty Barlow would face, if convicted,
would not be particularly severe, and seemed to express slightly
obliquely the view that it would be in Barlow's best interest to plead
guilty -- and that it was surprising that he hadn't done so, or would
be surprising if he didn't do so. (I think there's also a class issue
at work here. Most defendants can't afford to fight for principle and
can at the very best afford to look out for themselves, not for the
abstract rules by which the fourth amendment is brought to bear on a
class of cases.)

"The judge remarked that obviously it must not be the rule that
screeners have to ignore contraband when they find it. So the
question, he said, is whether they have a reason to look in the first
place; if they have a reason to look, then they can use their own
judgment -- and that's what Ms. Ramos did. When she shook the bottle
and opened it, that didn't indicate that she was looking for drugs;
perhaps she was stupid to do so, but being careless about one's own
safety is not sufficient to make a search unreasonable under the
fourth amendment. She used her own judgment about the nature of the
threats and the best way of investigating them, which is a reasonable
search. Hence Barlow's motion must be denied; his argument about
reasonableness, while founded on a commendable concern with privacy,
is too broad in its implications, because it would ultimately suggest
that screeners must ignore contraband they find.

"Apparently, Barlow did intend to suggest this. At least, he was
prevented from introducing a lot of evidence about how screeners do
things that are useful for finding drugs. At a minimum, Barlow wanted
to suggest that screeners who are supposed to be looking for
explosives should not be permitted to use search techniques or
procedures that are specifically aimed at finding drugs rather than
explosives (arguably, for example, shaking a bottle).



-- 

Amara Graps, PhD
Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI)
Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF),
Adjunct Assistant Professor Astronomy, AUR,
Roma, ITALIA     Amara.Graps at ifsi.rm.cnr.it