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Lowering the bar on probable cause

By ti

Earlier this week Justice Roberts took pains to call attention to the fact that he wants to reduce the level of evidence and suspicion necessary for cops to stop a suspected drug buyer. The SCOTUS denied certiorari in Pennsylvania v. Dunlap (see the last paragraph of that article), in which the Commonwealth of PA appealed its high court’s decision that cops did not have probable cause to stop a dude after observing him make a quick, hand-to-hand exchange of something small for something else small. The cops argued it was a cash for drugs exchange and Roberts emphatically agreed that the cops had plenty of reason to stop the guy and investigate after seeing this transaction from a distance. In fact, Roberts wants so badly for the world to know he thinks cops should be able to act on hunches that he wrote an attention-grabbing collection of sentence fragments to say so...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Imbroglio on October 16, 2008 (boomark / email).