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Stereotypical comments about Middle Eastern detainees did not defeat actual consent

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Officers had reasonable suspicion from furtive movements and nonsensical answers to questions about travel to detain the defendants and ask for consent. While the officers applied a crass stereotype to the defendants' Middle Eastern ethnicity and claimed on radio that they had suicide bombers wandering around Florida and were concerned that they were driving with a Qur'an in their laps, the officers got consent to search and found cut PVC pipe usable for pipe bombs which had "a potassium nitrate explosive mixture. The government also contends a forensic analysis of the laptop computer revealed Mohamed in a video explaining how to construct a remote-controlled explosive device." The search was valid, even discounting the racial stereotyping. United States v...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on March 04, 2008 (boomark / email).