Category Archives: Fourth Amendment

Former President Trump's legal counsel said on the Mark Levin Show that he's preparing to file a Fourth Amendment-related legal challenge "very soon" against the Department of Justice in relation to the Mar-a-Lago raid.

James Trusty, a former federal prosecutor, said that Trump's legal team is going to "weigh in very strong and very hard," stating that they are going to be "attacking" the search warrant used in the FBI's raid on the former president's Florida estate.

"It should be something that gets publicly filed. So the whole United States will get to read this thing," Trusty said regarding the action the former president will take. As for the timing of the move, Trusty said Monday is a "possiblity" but added "it's probably going to be more like hours."

"It's coming very soon," he said.

FEDERAL COURT RULES DOJ MUST RELEASE INTERNAL MEMO TO THEN-AG BARR STATING TRUMP DIDN'T OBSTRUCT JUSTICE

Former U.S. President Donald Trump leaves Trump Tower to meet with New York Attorney General Letitia James for a civil investigation on August 10, 2022 in New York City. (James Devaney/GC Images)

"You know, the Fourth Amendment requires particularity. It requires narrowness to the intrusion on the person's home. And this warrant had language in it. And keep in mind, all we've seen is a warrant and an inventory. But the warrant has language in it about if you find a classified document, you can take the whole box around, it and you can take any boxes near it. And that's really the functional equivalent of a general search. There's just no limit to that kind of scope in the warrant," Trusty said on the Mark Levin Show.

Trusty said that Trump is "entitled" to a specific inventory list of what was taken from Mar-a-Lago, and went on to say that the property receipt, which was publicly released, is a "very vague document."

"We are way behind in terms of the government playing fair and giving us the details that we're entitled to," Trusty said.

He also called it "perplexing" that FBI agents grabbed items such as attorney-client privileged information and passports belonging to the former president.

Agents from the FBI executed a search warrant on Trump's Florida estate on Aug. 8 and seized items, which include 11 sets of material that are listed as classified, as well as some that were marked as top secret.

Trump has denied that any of the materials in his possession at Mar-a-Lago were classified.

Trump's attorney also called for a "judicial intervention" at the district court level that "can help us vindicate the First Amendment rights of the president," adding "we're going to come out swinging."

JUDGE SCHEDULES HEARING ON UNSEALING FBI MAR-A-LAGO SEARCH RECORDS

Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference at the Hilton Anatole on Aug. 6, 2022 in Dallas, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Trusty called for a third party to get involved with the goal of stopping the Justice Department "in their tracks when it comes to inspecting these documents."

"They shouldn't have anybody filter team or not, looking at these materials right now because of the nature of this search and the misrepresentations, frankly, that we're getting from the DOJ about why they did the search and even how they conducted it," Trusty said on the Mark Levin Show.

He said that this is "bizarre territory" and said that it is "worrisome territory in terms of the historic precedent of it," also stating that there are large amounts of documents that were taken that are subject to privilege.

"We think there's a legitimate large swath of potential documents subject to privilege, and we're not willing to just take it on faith," Trusty said.

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Donald Trump leaves NYC post FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago resort (Felipe Ramales: Fox News Digital)

Trump previewed the legal challenge on Friday in a Truth Social post, stating that a "major motion" would soon be filed.

"A major motion pertaining to the Fourth Amendment will soon be filed concerning the illegal Break-In of my home, Mar-a-Lago, right before the ever important Mid-Term Elections. My rights, together with the rights of all Americans, have been violated at a level rarely seen before in our Country. Remember, they even spied on my campaign. The greatest Witch Hunt in USA history has been going on for six years, with no consequences to the scammers. It should not be allowed to continue!," Trump said.

Adam Sabes is a writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to Adam.Sabes@fox.com and on Twitter @asabes10.

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Trump legal counsel vows 'Fourth Amendment based' challenge to Mar-a ...

Electronic Frontier Alliance member Digital Fourthalso known as Restore the Fourth Bostonhas been instrumental in passing surveillance oversight ordinances in the greater Boston area since 2018. Digital Fourth advocates for Fourth Amendment rights in Massachusetts. The Fourth Amendment protects people in the U.S. from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. (For some of EFFs Fourth Amendment work, see ourDeeplinkson the topic.)

Digital Fourth's logo

As a 501(c)(4), Digital Fourth does everything from education to drafting legislation and collaborating with Massachusetts elected officials on pro-privacy policy and against surveillance technologies and practices. Digital Fourth has been active for 10 years; the organization started in 2012 to identify state-level solutions to surveillance issues in Massachusetts. They work across the state on municipal issues, too,andmaintain Congressional scorecards on privacy and surveillance issues in collaboration with Fight for the Future.

We spoke with Alex Marthews, president of Digital Fourth, about the organization and their work.

What inspired you to start Digital Fourth?

After 9/11, I watched with horror as the Bush administration started expanding mass surveillance, and harming the rights of both citizens and noncitizens. I followed the scandals over warrantless wiretapping and the Military Commissions Act. I saw the rise of Anonymous, the hounding of Barrett Brown, Julian Assange and Private Manning, and the police repression of Occupy. I didnt feel then like I could act on what I saw as a rapidly expanding surveillance state, because I was still a non-citizen, and felt vulnerable. So when I became a citizen in 2012, I wanted to start a group that would try to fix the damage done to the Fourth Amendment, and fight against mass surveillance and the threats to our privacy."

"There was so much I didnt know at the beginning"

There was so much I didnt know at the beginning, so much I had to learn. I started off thinking that the key problem was just out-of-control NSA; I didnt know about all that was wrong with police culture and the practices of the FBI; about DHS and its inept fusion centers; or about firms like Palantir and Shotspotter, and how they all relate to and reinforce one another.

But what keeps me going is the utter intransigence of the forces we face. Even after all thats been revealed, by Edward Snowden and through the Black Lives Matter movement, these folks inside the police and national security apparatus really think theyve done nothing wrong. They think wed all be better off if we went back as a society to a world where citizens reflexively deferred to them. But theres no unringing that bell. We need new ways of looking at public safety and national security, that reduce the damage theyre doing to our privacy and our freedoms.

Can you tell us about some of your important projects?

Were most proud of having been key in passing surveillance oversight ordinances in Cambridge (2018), Somerville (2019) and Boston (2022). These ordinances outlaw secret government surveillance in the Greater Boston Area, where over one million people live. They also create a review structure for surveillance tech that city agencies want to use in the future

"Through our advocacy, the Massachusetts Senate passed important reforms."

Another thing were proud of is our work on civil asset forfeiture. Police can just straight up seize your stuff pursuant to a police stop, and in Massachusetts, you have very little recourse to get it back. Police can then take the proceeds of those seizures and spend it on literally anythingsurveillance gear, military surplus stuff, ice cream, whatever. Massachusetts has one of the weakest civil asset forfeiture laws in the nation. Through our advocacy, the Massachusetts Senate passed important reforms. Next session, were working on getting those reforms passed into law, among a heap of other things.

Why do you think your work is important?

I think we can all see that as our lives become datafied, what happens to that data and who controls it gets more and more important. Governments across the world are terrified of losing narrative control; theyre white-knuckling it, cracking down on alternate sources of information, resisting accountability by all means up to and including violence.

"We dont have to have a world where were ceaselessly tracked"

We dont have to have a world where were ceaselessly tracked and digitally disciplined. The Fourth Amendment shows another way where, if the government doesnt have evidence of your personal involvement in an actual crime, they leave you be to pursue your own dreams.

I want a world where people can rely on one another, work together, empower one another, without being relentlessly propagandized and surveilled. Today's governments only need mass surveillance and nobody will dare dissent. Nothing less than our future as free people is at stake.

What opportunities exist for people to get involved?

Bostons surveillance ordinance came into force just a few weeks ago. Wed like to help Boston residents understand the surveillance theyre under, participate in public hearings, and press their City Councilors to say no to things like police use of stingrays and drones.

The real core of Digital Fourth is a group of volunteers who get together every Tuesday via video-call at 2:15pm Eastern time. Let me know if youd like to sit in on one of them. Core members include Julie B., Joe C., Mickey M., Jamie O., Lauren P. and Vanessa C. The core members all live either in Boston or its suburbs. But you wont find photos of most of us on the website, because we like our privacy!

"You can get secret surveillance outlawed in your community"

What we need more than anything else are people who can help form groups of volunteers in their cities and towns. You can get secret surveillance outlawed in your community, and help to push back on facial recognition, surveillance in schools, and other invasive practices. We need attorneys to help us draft and introduce bills; activists to protest and organize; experts to help us learn more about surveillance; and ordinary people who see where this is all going, who dislike it, and are willing to say so publicly. If your politics are peaceful, everybody is welcome. Just email digitalfourth@protonmail.com to get started!

[This interview has been edited for length.]

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Get to Know the EFA: Digital Fourth - EFF

The North Dakota Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Oct. 7 in the Ward County States Attorneys Office appeal of a judicial ruling suppressing evidence in a Ward County murder case.

Shawnee Lynn Krall, 29, Minot, has been charged with Class AA felony murder and Class AA felony gross sexual imposition in the Dec. 20, 2020, death of his roommate, Alice Queirolo, 29, at a Minot residence. Krall remains in custody on the charges.

North Central District Court Judge Stacy Louser threw out all evidence, including the evidence of the victims body, which police found in the defendants vehicle on property belonging to another party. Minot police had asked for a warrant for that vehicle but were turned down by both Kralls probation officer, because she didnt know if he actually owned that car, and by the Ward County States Attorneys Office, which told them they didnt have enough evidence to get a warrant.

A witness, Zach Barnett, testified at a district court hearing last November that he saw Minot police open the car door before Barnett asked them to have it towed away. The two officers testified they hadnt opened the car door until the witness made the request. Louser believed Barnetts account and wrote that she found his testimony consistent. She determined the two officers had illegally searched the vehicle.

During the oral arguments before the State Supreme Court, defense attorney Nicholas Thornton argued that a ruling in favor of the Ward County States Attorneys Office would emasculate the Fourth Amendment. Thornton argued that this was a case of the two Minot Police officers refusing to take no for an answer, that they conducted the search to speed up the investigation and tried to avoid the Fourth Amendment requirements for a search.

Thornton also noted that the defense had argued that Krall should be released on bond pending the Supreme Court appeal. The states attorneys office argued that further evidence has turned up that can be used to prosecute the murder charge. Louser had agreed to lower Kralls bond to $200,000 cash or corporate surety from the previous $2 million. Krall has not been able to post bond.

Ward County Assistant States Attorney Leah Viste argued during the oral arguments on Oct. 7 that the body in the trunk would have been inevitably discovered anyway. Viste also noted that Barnett agreed with the officers that the trunk of the car had not been opened and the body was not discovered until after Barnett had asked for the car to be removed and the tow truck was already on the scene.

Viste told the justices that the gross sexual imposition charge against Krall will not stand if the evidence from the car is suppressed. The sexual assault evidence came from an autopsy of the victim. However, it is possible that the murder charge against him could be prosecuted based on other evidence.

The Supreme Court will make a ruling on the appeal at a later date.

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Arguments heard in body in trunk case | News, Sports, Jobs - Minot Daily News

What's coming up the development pipeline in Ormond Beach?

The Ormond Beach Planning Board will meet at 6p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 16, at the City Commission Chambers to discuss five items.

The first is a special exception comes from Paradise Pointe, a newassisted living and memory care facility.The facility seeks approvalto allow a 6-foot decorative open aluminum fence with landscaping along its west property boundary with Aberdeen at Ormond Beach, in lieu of a 6-foot masonry wall.

Paradise Pointe, to feature 87 private apartments in a resort-style setting,is being constructedat 350 Clyde Morris Blvd. It will span three stories and 75,000 square feet, and is scheduled to open in the winter.

The next four items to be considered for approval by the board are all land development code amendments. The first is an amendment to establish dimension standards for townhomes and enhance the conditional use criteria for these types of development, as well. The second is a to reducethe required rear yard setback for screen enclosures, third to amend the expiration date for a development order variance from one to two years, and the fourth amendment isadministrative in nature regarding the second North U.S. 1 Interlocal Planning and Municipal Service area.

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Ormond Beach Planning Board to meet Thursday - Ormond Beach Observer

A legal scholar advocates the removalrather than the increased regulationof police forces from schools.

Federal and state governments in the United States have invested nearly $2 billion in school policing programs over the past two decades. By using these funds to hire school resource officerssworn law enforcement personnel who work in schoolsschool officials aim to ensure student safety by quelling the specter of gun violence that looms over American campuses.

But Barbara Fedders of the University of North Carolina School of Law argues in an article that, much to the contrary, police presence interferes with school governance, negatively impacts student learning, and leads to the overrepresentation of youth of color in the criminal legal system.

Funding for police presence in schools has increased dramatically over the years. In the aftermath of the Columbine massacre at a Colorado high school in 1999, the federal governments COPS in Schools program disbursed $68 million for the deployment of police in public schools nationwide. Five years later, COPS in Schools had awarded another 3,000 grants funding thousands of additional school resource officer positions. And following school shootings in 2018 in Florida and Texas, states allocated an additional $965 million toward increasing law enforcement presence in schools.

Although intended to promote safety, locating police officers in schools can also cause problems. Juvenile law experts and students rights advocates alike have proposed a number of regulatory fixes to address such issues. In her recent article, though, Fedders suggests that more regulation is not the answer. She argues that the removal of police from schoolsrather than the regulation of their practicesis the best way to eradicate the effects of what has become a school-to-prison pipeline.

According to Fedders, one method of regulation touted by some scholars would focus on altering criminal procedure doctrine so that it takes into account the unique characteristics of school settings and the young people that inhabit them. Some reformers propose changing Fourth Amendment doctrine to treat school police as traditional law enforcement officers rather than school officials. Fedders suggests, however, that police presence in schools will likely continue driving students into the criminal legal system despite such reforms, since officers would still be free to make arrests for minor infractions.

Other scholars advocate ex ante regulatory measures rather than changes to the procedures for arrests and criminal adjudication. These proposals would increase the regulation of eligibility criteria or would impose training mandates for school resource officers. Nonetheless, Fedders deems such regulatory strategies as inadequate to ameliorate the harms of in-school policing. She points to one study on police academy training programs that found that only 1 percent of officers training time, on average, was spent on juvenile justice issues and school policing techniques.

With no federally approved training standards, Fedders finds vast inconsistencies in federal and state training programs and guidance. Federal guidance issued by the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Justice in 2014 recommended enhanced training for school resource officers, but the Trump Administration rescinded that guidance in 2018. It has not been reinstated.

Fedders notes that states rarely step in to fill the regulatory voids left by gaps in federal guidance on training. Furthermore, she suggests that it is unlikely that the school resource officer industry will impose training-related regulations upon itself. Although the National Association of School Resource Officers recommends minimum training standards for school resource officers, the local law enforcement agencies that dispatch officers to schools are free to disregard such recommendations.

Another approach to regulating school resource officers would be to see schools enter into voluntary cooperative agreements with law enforcement agencies to set clear expectations on when and how officers are to become involved in issues of student misconduct. To support such efforts, the Education Department and the Justice Department established the SECURe Local Implementation Rubric, a tool designed to guide school districts seeking to implement these kinds of school-police partnerships.

Fedders concedes that cooperative agreements between schools and law enforcement agencies likely would be responsive to concerns about the school-to-prison pipeline, as they might slow the influx of school-based offense cases into juvenile court and help to prevent officers from committing violations of students rights. She asserts, though, that these agreements are not strong enough to regulate the behavior of school police officers because they often contain loopholes for police discretion. Moreover, Fedders notes that such agreements are usually drafted by political actors whose motives are misaligned with the interests of students and their families.

Fedders argues that policymakers need to consider an option that is hiding in plain sight: remove police from schools. She proposes that policymakers should begin looking to the work of grassroots anti-school-police organizers to glean inspiration. She sees the call to remove police entirely from schools as an abolitionist effort that holds the power to unite advocates of students rights.

Rather than asking how to regulate police in schools, Fedders concludes that the right question for policymakers to ask is whether police should be in schools in the first place.

Excerpt from:
Limiting the Power of Police in Schools - The Regulatory Review

Democrats have been falsely accusing Republicans of supporting violence, being against law enforcement and not supporting our Constitution, among other false accusations. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is pure projection on the Democrats part.

We love America and the principles this nation was founded on, which paved the way for Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party to end the injustice of slavery. We believe the main role of government is to protect our God-given rights laid out in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

We support free speech and religious liberty, even if we disagree with it we do not try to silence disagreements or demand compliance like the Democrats do.

We support a free press not media that are controlled/influenced by those in government. Wed prefer it if the press were less biased and more honest in their coverage.

We believe in due process/the Fourth Amendment.

We are against out-of-control spending that causes inflation, and we want a robust economy with rising wages and opportunities for all.

We strongly support law enforcement as long as they dont abuse their position of power.

We support legal immigration and simply want our border to be more secure again, keeping drugs and human traffickers out.

We want every law-abiding American to be able to vote and we also want to make sure our elections are secure and fairly administered, and our laws are followed.

We firmly believe that Democratic policies have made it harder for the average American to be free and succeed during the past several years. We believe America is imperfect but fundamentally good, because our nation was born out of a desire for freedom.

If you believe in the things I mention above, and if youre tired of the divisiveness and gaslighting by the Democratic Party telling you not to believe your own eyes, I ask you to join us in helping make America a better place for all Americans.

Please vote Republican on or before Nov. 8. We love America, and we want all Americans to experience freedom and have opportunities to succeed.

Gaydean Nolte

Ellison Bay, Wisconsin

Read the original:
Letter to the Editor: What Republicans Believe - Door County Pulse

Former President Donald Trump is claiming the Mar-a-Lago raid and subsequent investigations into his possible mishandling of classified documents a "hoax." He also thinks other presidents should be under investigation.

At a rally in Nevada on Saturday, Trump claimed that former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, and Barack Obama were all much worse than him about retaining documents.

He said those presidents were given "all the time they needed" when it came to their documents -- something he claims he was not afforded.

"Just look at how every other president has been treated when they left office. Very interesting," Trump said, according to Mediaite. "They've been given all the time, all the time needed, because you're supposed to have as much time as you need, and complete deference when it came to their documents and their papers."

The former president then went on to single out Obama.

"Barack Hussein Obama moved more than 20 truckloads, over 33 million pages of documents, both classified and unclassified, to a poorly built and totally unsafe former furniture store located in a rather bad neighborhood in Chicago. With no security, by the way," he said.

Trump also took aim at George W. Bush, saying he stored "68 million pages in a warehouse in Texas and lost 22 million White House emails." He said Bill Clinton took "millions of documents from the White House to a former car dealership in Arkansas...and kept classified recordings in his sock drawer."

Trump also mentioned Hillary Clinton deleting "33,000 emails under congressional subpoena," and George H.W. Bush taking "millions of documents to a former bowling alley and a former Chinese restaurant... with no security and a broken front door."

"When will they investigate and prosecute Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, George Bush, and look into what took place with George Bush's father, a very nice man," he asked rhetorically. "Are they under potential prosecution? I don't think so. I don't think they are."

"They should give me back everything that they've taken, he added.

Trump said in contrast, he only had a "small number of boxes in storage at Mar-a-Lago" which were guarded by the Secret Service.

"The FBI with many, many people raided my house. It's in violation, by the way, of the Fourth Amendment, and many other things also," he said. "There is no crime... but they make it sound like the greatest crime in America was committed. And we've got all these warehouses that are just falling down buildings essentially, loaded up with just millions and millions of pages of previous presidents and nothing was ever said about it."

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Trump wants other presidents investigated - KRLD

Former President Donald Trump's comments at a Nevada rally on Saturday night indicate that he is "guilty," according to one former federal prosecutor.

Making the rounds ahead of the hotly contested midterm elections, Trump spoke at a rally in Minden, Nevada, to help support GOP Senate candidate, Adam Laxalt, and gubernatorial candidate, Joe Lombardo. He discussed numerous things during his speech, notably insisting that investigations should be launched into numerous other former presidents, and Hillary Clinton, for allegedly mishandling documents themselves.

During his speech, Trump made claims about how the late former President George H.W. Bush handled documents after leaving the White House, which were highlighted in a tweet from Howard Mortman, C-SPAN's communications director.

"George H.W. Bush took millions of documents to a former bowling alley and a former Chinese restaurant where they combined them," Trump said. "So they're in a bowling alley slash Chinese restaurant...By contrast, I had a small number of boxes and storage at Mar-A-Lagovery small, relativelyguarded by the great Secret Service. And yet the FBI, with many people, raided my house. It's in violation, by the way, of the Fourth Amendment, and many other things also."

Mortman's tweet was shared by Joyce Vance, a former federal prosecutor and outspoken critic of the former president, who offered her own take on Trump's claims, based on her own legal experience.

"In my experience as a prosecutor, people say stuff like this when they're guilty & scared," she said.

In early August, Trump's Florida residence at Mar-a-Lago was searched by FBI agents as part of an investigation into the former president's alleged hiding of sensitive, top-secret documents taken after he left the White House last year. The search ultimately yielded numerous boxes full of such material, with agents saying that they were not securely stored. Recent reports also indicate that the Department of Justice (DOJ) believes Trump may be hiding yet more documents.

The former president has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in regard to the documents, and said that any classified documents that he took from the White House when he left last year had been declassified.

During his speech, Trump alleged that other former presidents did not face any investigations for the documents they took from the White House, citing Barack Obama and George W. Bush as more examples.

"Barack Hussein Obama moved more than 20 truckloads, over 33 million pages of documents, both classified and unclassified, to a poorly built and unsafe former furniture store located in a bad neighborhood in Chicago," Trump said. "With no security, by the way."

Trump's specific claim about Obama's documents has not held up to scrutiny, with fact-checking investigations finding that none of the documents were classified and that they were transferred to the custody of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in 2017. Outgoing presidents also routinely request non-classified documents from their time in office, for inclusion in future presidential libraries.

Newsweek reached out to Trump's office for comment.

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Trump Rally Speech Shows He's 'Guilty and Scared': Former Prosecutor - Newsweek

from the killing-dogs-is-still-regular-police-business dept

Cops kill dogs literally all the time. It happens so often even the DOJ has taken notice.

Laurel Matthews, a supervisory program specialist with the Department of Justices Community Oriented Policing Services (DOJ COPS) office, says its an awful lot. She calls fatal police vs. dogs encounters an epidemic and estimates that 25 to 30 pet dogs are killed each day by law enforcement officers.

So, when Loveland (CO) police officer Matthew Grashorn arrived on the scene of a non-crime, he did what cops do: he killed someones dog. This killing happened only 13 seconds after Officer Grashorn arrived, something confirmed by his own body camera recording.

Colorado residents Wendy Love and Jay Hamm had done nothing more than stop in the vacant parking lot of a local business to give their dogs a chance to stretch their legs while the couple took a look at the second-hand ice machine they had acquired. The business owner called the police after noticing this on his security cameras, claiming he felt the couple was perhaps attempting to tamper with his locked dumpster.

Officer Grashorn arrived, exited his vehicle, and was greeted by one of the couples dogs running toward him. He yelled at the couple to get their dog, which the couple did, calling back their 16-year-old dog, Bubba, who was first to greet the officer. However, another of their dogs, a terrier/boxer mix named Herkimer trotted towards the officer. Grashorn shot the second dog. Then he prevented the couple from comforting the wounded animal or seeking help for its wounds, delaying any medical care until after a supervisor had arrived. By that time it was too late for Herkimer. He was euthanized after spending four days in intensive care.

Adding insult to injuries resulting in death, Grashorn issued a summons for unlawful ownership of a dangerous dog to the grieving couple, a charge that was ultimately dismissed.

The couple sued the city of Loveland, along with Officer Grashorn. Grashorn claimed the dog aggressively approached him, justifying his ultimately deadly force. The couple claimed the dog merely approached the officer with normal curiosity and never posed a threat.

A year after the filing of the lawsuit, the couple has finally secured a bit of justice. As Colorado Politics reports (and, even better, provides a copy of the ruling), Officer Grashorn has been denied qualified immunity by the federal court.

The court comes to this conclusion despite never having viewed the body cam video, which the couple inexplicably failed to enter into evidence. No doubt this will be corrected as the case moves forward to trial, but its still an unforced error.

Despite this lack of evidence that would likely resolve a bunch of disputed facts, the court agrees that the killing of the couples dog was not only a seizure under the Fourth Amendment, but an unreasonable one at that. From the decision [PDF]:

[T]he Court finds it would be clear to a reasonable officer that killing a pet dog is a Fourth Amendment seizure and would violate the Fourth Amendment, absent a warrant particularly describing the things to be seized or circumstances justifying an exception to the warrant requirement. Whatever lawful justifications may exist for the seizure in this case, the Court finds the circumstances alleged in the Complaint do not establish an exception to the warrant requirement as a matter of law. And regardless of whether Defendant Grashorn believed Herkimer posed an imminent threat justifying the use of deadly force, the allegations do not establish that the shooting the dog was reasonable.

The court doesnt bother to discuss whether or not this violation of rights is clearly established. That will likely come into play during the inevitable appeal of the decision. It merely states flatly that a reasonable officer would not believe deadly force was justified in this situation. If that ruling withstands an appeal, cops who kill dogs in this jurisdiction will be on notice theyll need to provide more than subjective statements about feeling threatened by the mere approach of mans best friend.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, colorado, dogs, jay hamm, loveland, matthew grashorn, police, qualified immunity, wendy love

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Court Strips Immunity From Cop Who Shot A Dog Within Seconds Of Arriving On The Scene Of A Non-Crime - Techdirt

First Amendment

By Debra Cassens Weiss

October 4, 2022, 12:03 pm CDT

A cover of the Onion parody news publisher. Image from Shutterstock.

Updated: The satirical website the Onion deems itself to be the single most powerful and influential organization in human history in an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case of an Ohio man who was prosecuted for creating a parody Facebook page for the local police department.

The Onion brief supports Anthony Novak, who lost his lawsuit against Parma, Ohios police department when the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Cincinnati ruled that police had qualified immunity from his constitutional claims.

The Onion cannot stand idly by in the face of a ruling that threatens to disembowel a form of rhetoric that has existed for millennia, that is particularly potent in the realm of political debate, and that, purelyincidentally, forms the basis of the Onions writers paychecks, the amicus brief says.

The petition for certiorari should be granted, the rights of the people vindicated, and various historical wrongs remedied. The Onion would welcome any one of the three, particularly the first.

The brief argues that a satire works best when told with a straight faceand that means that Novak didnt have to include a disclaimer on his fake Facebook page for the Parma, Ohio, police department. The page, which was up for 12 hours, claimed that the department was offering free abortions in a police van and was hosting a pedophile reform event with a no means no learning station.

About a dozen people called police about the page, including some who wanted to know whether it was real. Police then posted a warning about the fake page on the departments website, which Novak copied onto his fake Facebook page.

After learning Novaks identity through a Facebook search warrant, police arrested Novak, who spent four days in jail before making bond. He was later acquitted on a charge of disrupting police functions.

Novak sued for violation of his First and Fourth Amendment rights. The 6th Circuit ruled against Novak in April.

Novak is represented by the Institute for Justice, according to a Sept. 27 press release. Its cert petition asks the Supreme Court to decide whether government officials are entitled to qualified immunity when they arrest someone based purely on speech. The Institute for Justice argues that the Supreme Court should do away with qualified immunity altogether.

The Onion brief argues that a parody has to plausibly mimic the original to work. The brief cites instances in which its parody was taken as reality, as when:

Chinas state-run news agency republished a news story by the Onion proclaiming Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, the sexiest man alive.

An Iranian news agency uncritically picked up a headline by the Onion titled: Gallup Poll: Rural Whites Prefer Ahmadinejad to Obama.

A Republican congressman thought that he had to warn his constituents about the abortion-rights movement after reading a headline by the Onion titled: Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex.

The brief also says its headlines have forecast future events and provides this 2017 headline as an example: Mar-a-Lago Assistant Manager Wondering If Anyone Coming to Collect Nuclear Briefcase From Lost and Found.

The brief began with a tongue-in-cheek description of the Onion, complete with claims that it has a daily readership of 4.3 trillion, and that it supports more than 350,000 full- and part-time journalism jobs in its numerous news bureaus and manual labor camps stationed around the world. The brief also asserts that the publication owns and operates the majority of the worlds transoceanic shipping lanes.

The Onion intends to continue its socially valuable role bringing the disinfectant of sunlight into the halls of power, the brief says. And it would vastly prefer that sunlight not to be measured out to its writers in 15-minute increments in an exercise yard.

The listed authors of the Onion brief are two lawyers from Michigan law firm Miller Johnson: Steve van Stempvoort, chair of the firms appellate practice group, and litigator D. Andrew Portinga.

But Mike Gillis, head writer for the Onion, wrote much of the brief, NPR reports. Gillis told the publication that he wrote most of the arguments and jokes, and then the lawyers added legal precedent and historical context in an extremely collaborative process.

Hat tip to Bloomberg Law, CNN and the Associated Press which had coverage of the brief.

Updated Oct. 5 at 8:45 a.m. to add information on Mike Gillis, the Onion writer who wrote much of the brief.

See the original post here:
Claiming to have 4.3 trillion readers, the Onion supports parodist and its writers' paychecks in SCOTUS brief - ABA Journal