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

[Patrick Wilken]

Amara:

But won't this will be appealed to a higher court? You wouldn't expect 
the lowest level court to be particularly interested in making a bold 
statement on the 4th amendment.

best, patrick




On 17 Dec 2004, at 15:35, Amara Graps wrote:

> 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
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