8 ms·

DA, sheriff, who shared woman's nude photos on phone are covered by QI

277 points by y33t 2y ago

ct0 2y ago
https://archive.ph/WEDTk https://archive.ph/WEDTk
1024core 2y ago
> Under qualified immunity, government officials can be held accountable for violating someone’s rights only if a court has previously ruled that it was “clearly established” those precise actions were unconstitutional. Who made this rule?! So a court would have to rule on each and every possible abuse of the law by a government official??
- x86_64Ubuntu 2y ago
  From what I've seen, it has to have been "clearly established" before meaning that unless there is an incident already labeling the act unconstitutional, no dice for the poor lady. It's how you make it so that as society evolves, officers can't be held accountable for new acts.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    Yup. And "clearly established" has to be very clearly established. Several examples in https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/qualified-immunity-legal-practical-moral-failure#regularly-denies-justice-victims https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/qualified-immunity-lega... > Jessop v. City of Fresno: The Ninth Circuit granted immunity to the officers. The court noted that while “the theft” of “personal property by police officers sworn to uphold the law” may be “morally wrong,” the officers could not be sued for the theft because the Ninth Circuit had never issued a decision specifically involving the question of “whether the theft of property covered by the terms of a search warrant, and seized pursuant to that warrant, violates the Fourth Amendment.” > Corbitt v. Vickers: ... the court went on to say that “[n]o case capable of clearly establishing the law for this case holds that a temporarily seized person—as was [the child] in this case—suffers a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights when an officer shoots at a dog—or any other object—and accidentally hits the person.” > Kelsay v. Ernst: The majority noted that there were no prior cases involving the “particular circumstances” of this case; that is, no prior cases specifically held that “a deputy was forbidden to use a takedown maneuver to arrest a suspect who ignored the deputy’s instruction to ‘get back here’ and continued to walk away from the officer.” > Allah v. Milling: The appellate court agreed that the prison guards violated Allah’s rights, specifically holding that this treatment was unlawful punishment because Allah’s treatment “cannot be said to be reasonably related to institutional security, and Defendants have identified no other legitimate governmental purpose justifying the placement.” Nevertheless, the court said the guards were entitled to immunity because there was no prior case concerning the particular disciplinary practice employed by the prison. It's basically judicial Calvinball. "Oh, established case law says you can't kill an innocent person at 6:35pm, but it's not clearly established you can't kill an innocent person at 6:36pm!"
  - 1024core 2y ago
    But hasn't it been "clearly established" by now that sharing someone else's photos from their phone is not legal??
    - UncleMeat 2y ago
      Nope. This is the trick that courts use in qualified immunity cases. You can't just say "well obviously this is a violation of 4th amendment rights by any person's plain reading." You need a prior case where a judge found this specifically. And that prior case needs to match the facts of the current case basically exactly. Any minor difference can be leveraged to argue that this case is a new set of facts and that there is no prior case that would inform a cop that what they are doing is in fact a violation of rights and so they are immune from civil action. The outcome of each one of these cases is that the cop gets off scot free and the court says "the next time this specific thing happens under our jurisdiction you can sue" but that specific thing never happens again for the rest of time because the boundaries of that specific thing are so tight.
      - tavavex 2y ago
        That's insane. I was vaguely aware that the American system that has grown over the 250-year old foundation was getting rusty, but I never knew it has taken such a dark turn. How far can you take the "precise case" thing then? Does it just apply to the specific action that was done? How far can they legally stretch what's considered to be "novel"?
    - mrguyorama 2y ago
      Nope, because the standard is not "Everybody knows it's wrong to do that", the standard is "A previous case exists where an officer did EXACTLY THE SAME THINGS in EXACTLY THE SAME SCENARIO that established that officer CLEARLY VIOLATED THEIR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS" For us mere mortals to be punished, we don't even have to know the law. For a cop to be punished, there has to be precedent. The funny part is that this situation basically means the first cop to do any illegal act will always get away with it.
- banana_feather 2y ago
  The Supreme Court just made it up in the 1960s.
- seo-speedwagon 2y ago
  It was invented by the courts entirely from whole cloth.
- mandevil 2y ago
  It was created out of whole cloth by the Supreme Court in 1967's Pierson v. Ray. That case was a grim reminder of just how terrible the Supreme Court has always been: 15 Episcopal Priests were taking part in the Freedom Rides in 1961 (racially integrated groups taking public transportation across the South to defacto desegregate what had been defacto segregated, the group was 12 white priests and 3 African-American ones). Two police officers arrested all 15 priests while they were sitting in a restaurant for "breach of the peace." A judge convicted them and sentenced them each to four months in prison. They sued the police officers and the judge for false imprisonment. An all-white Jury found the police officers not liable. The Mississippi state supreme court ruled that the judge couldn't even be sued. A Federal Appeals court found the original law (the breach of the peace law) completely unconstitutional, but that the Judge couldn't be sued for upholding the law as it exists: "Mississippi law does not require police officers to predict at their peril which state laws are constitutional and which are not." The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in favor of the Judge and against the Priests, creating the concept of Qualified Immunity. Starting with the mid-aughts conservative turn of the Supreme Court (basically the time that O'Connor is replaced by Alito) it has grown to cover pretty much every act that law enforcement takes, with the modern standard being, basically, "your circuit needs to have found this particular violation to be unconstitutional already for it to count." The recent Supreme Court case finding that President's are immune to prosecution for "Official Acts" has a similar philosophical (though not legal) basis.
  - deleted 2y ago
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  - enoch_r 2y ago
    Do you honestly think, as a principled position, that police officers should be personally liable for enforcing a law which is later decided to be unconstitutional? For example, if a police officer in 1994 arrested someone for violating the Gun Free School Zones act (struck down as unconstitutional in 1995), should they be personally liable for the damages? Should the judge who decided the case? Similarly, if a police officer in NYC arrested someone in 2018 for violating the ban on "gravity knives" (struck down as unconstitutional in 2019), should they be personally liable? If a police officer in Washington, DC arrested someone for violating the city's ban on handguns in 2007 (struck down by the Supreme Court in 2008), should they be personally liable? Would it be a good thing if police officers and officials refuse to enforce Washington state's ban on "assault weapons", or Oregon's magazine capacity limit, because the "conservative turn" of the Supreme Court means that the law might get struck down as unconstitutional, and then they'd be personally liable for the damages? I think it's clear that QI sometimes leads to bad outcomes, but honestly, I'm not sure how the system would function without some similar concept.
- bena 2y ago
  It's also a catch 22. This basically says they can't be held accountable for something unless they've already been held accountable for it.
jmclnx 2y ago
Time for a civil lawsuit. I thought sharing nude pictures against the person's will against the law. I hope she gets a nice big settlement from the people involved.
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  Article says "protects police and government officials from civil liability". (Emphasis mine.)
  - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
    I believe it protects the individuals but not the departments or agencies they work for? Hence "officials".
    - parsimo2010 2y ago
      Qualified immunity covers individuals but agencies do not need to be given qualified immunity because government agencies are covered by sovereign immunity. The government only allows itself to be sued when it decides.
    - UncleMeat 2y ago
      Suing departments is also basically impossible because the bar for a "pattern of misconduct" is ludicrously high. Connick v Thompson is a particularly infuriating case where a man who was sentenced to death by a DA that deliberately withheld blood evidence that would exonerate could not get damages because the long history of Brady violations by the DA's office were actually a series of distinct violations with teeny differences so they couldn't be considered a "pattern."
- mandevil 2y ago
  This was the civil lawsuit, resolved without ever going any further, thanks to the court created doctrine of Qualified Immunity. This is the end of all legal consequences anyone involved will ever face. The Sheriff did lose his job when he lost the election in 2020, and presumably this played a role in that election? But that's not a legal consequence, that's a political one.
josefritzishere 2y ago
Qualified Immunity? That's nonsense. Qualified Immunity shouldn't exist in the first place but this is an obvious abuse from the norm.
mandevil 2y ago
It's good that the Sheriff had already lost re-election five years ago, hopefully this played a part and the current sheriff has learned a lesson. Also, you can't do exactly this again within the 9th Circuit without being sued? That's the best case I've got for the horrific invasion of privacy that this woman and her boyfriend suffered.
- mikeyouse 2y ago
  That same Sheriff was involved with the Malheur Wildlife refuge 'takeover' ... he openly supported the militia and the Feds and State Police considered him such a security liability that they ended up cutting him out of all planning. He repeatedly met for hours at a time with the militia while on duty. He's one of the 'constitutional sheriffs' that have convinced themselves they're the only lawful police in the country and that the FBI et al are illegal. That was years before this illegal seizure and actually might be related as there were numerous complaints about his activities during the takeover from other people in the department and Haley Olsen, whose pics were stolen and shared was dating an officer that was on the Sheriff's 'shit list'. Dude was all around corrupt: https://www.opb.org/news/article/eastern-oregon-grant-county-sheriff-politics-dissent-cost/ https://www.opb.org/news/article/eastern-oregon-grant-county...
  - davidw 2y ago
    Came here to mention ... Grant county being Grant county. Beautiful place to visit, though!
- axus 2y ago
  One of the judges wanted to let it happen again: > In a separate concurring 9th Circuit opinion, Circuit Judge Daniel A. Bress agreed that the court should uphold the trial court’s granting of immunity and dismissal of the claims. But he wrote that the panel should have simply affirmed the lower court ruling and not gone on to find a constitutional violation. > It’s unclear, Bress wrote, whether Idaho authorities are more at fault, for example. “In my respectful view, prudence here dictated that we decide only what we needed to decide,” he wrote.
actionfromafar 2y ago
So, I assume that means a reasonable person would not have known there was anything wrong with that. On that note, theoretically, could all eligible residents of a town be deputized and would they all be covered by QI?
duxup 2y ago
>A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-to-1 that Grant County District Attorney Jim Carpenter’s actions amounted to “a troubling example of the intrusion on Fourth Amendment rights” against illegal searches. >But all three judges upheld a lower court’s decision to grant Carpenter qualified immunity and dismiss the woman’s lawsuit. This is confusing, if there was no warrant, and they violated her 4th amendment rights… how do they get QI?
- vessenes 2y ago
  The facts are fairly complicated in this case. That said, seems like a better attorney might have done better?
  - deleted 2y ago
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  - superb_dev 2y ago
    Which facts are complicated here? The sherif in her home town got access to her the contents of her phone under dubious reasons, gossiped about her arrest, and showed off her nude photos. Seems pretty cut and dry to me
    - collingreen 2y ago
      Seriously - I'm struggling to even imagine a good faith version of sharing nude photos of someone else without their permission. Doing so after getting access to those photos through an abuse of power is horrifying.
      - UncleMeat 2y ago
        Sadly, the existence of a good faith version of the facts isn't really necessary for qualified immunity. You basically just need the court to say "there isn't a prior case with these exact facts demonstrating that it is a constitutional violation" and you are good to go. Even if everybody with a brain can look at the facts and say "well that's obviously a violation of rights" the court can happily say "nope there is some minor factual delta that means that we haven't explicitly ruled on this exact circumstance so how could a cop ever know that they were violating rights?"
cantrecallmypwd 2y ago
This another "Wat?" story I expect to see videos on TCRL[0], WeThePeopleUniversity[1], Steve Lehto[2], and maybe even LegalEagle[3]. 0. https://www.youtube.com/@thecivilrightslawyer/videos https://www.youtube.com/@thecivilrightslawyer/videos 1. https://www.youtube.com/c/WeThePeopleUniversity/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/WeThePeopleUniversity/videos 2. https://www.youtube.com/@stevelehto/videos https://www.youtube.com/@stevelehto/videos 3. https://www.youtube.com/c/LegalEagle/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/LegalEagle/videos
sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
Searched this guy a bit and found him also being a piece of shit in 2001: https://www.bluemountaineagle.com/news/judicial-candidate-backgrounds-carpenter-reprimanded-by-the-bar-for-dishonesty-after-2001-incident/article_fa8b8f4a-d5c9-11ea-9b38-0719fb56fadf.html https://www.bluemountaineagle.com/news/judicial-candidate-ba... “I clearly made a mistake in 2001,” Carpenter told the Eagle. “I took immediate measures to correct that behavior and make it right with the victim. Since then I have been diligent with the courts, other attorneys, and the public in building a relationship of trust and veracity.” Yeah. He learned nothing. These kinds of people learn nothing because we only give them slap on the wrist "punishments". We tell them they were naughty...and nothing else happens to them. He continued his career without any real impact from that 2001 event, just as he will after this event. Is it any surprise at all that they don't behave better, when it's clear they will never actually face a consequence?
Molitor5901 2y ago
Prosecutors and police should simply not have qualified immunity. ANY type of immunity is going to be expanded and abused over time. If more police and prosecutors faced real legal jeopardy for violating the rights of people the problem would solve itself. Until then there is really zero consequences for stealing from a person pulled over on the side of the road, withholding evidence, fabricating witnesses, overcharging, or just outright murdering people.
- UncleMeat 2y ago
  Prosecutors actually get an even stronger version of immunity. Cops get qualified immunity (which is a stupendously easy bar to cross) but prosecutors get absolute immunity. It's horrifying and clearly not the right way of handling the "well we don't want everybody suing the DA that prosecuted them" problem.
  - highcountess 2y ago
    [dead]
  - LorenPechtel 2y ago
    I think this could to some extent be resolved by explicitly not giving criminal immunity and dispensing with any immunity upon conviction (and the clock starts on conviction.) You don't get the officials buried in lawsuits and you establish a hard boundary as to when you're allowed to sue so you don't get problems with suits testing the edge.
- Bender 2y ago
  I would personally never want any level of legal immunity. If the citizens know I can not be charged then their only recourse at best is vigilante justice or worse removing everything and everyone I love from my life.
  - dudeinhawaii 2y ago
    This means that the person with immunity simply has to keep the level of their crimes low enough that sane and rational people would not jump to vigilante justice. A bad actor could do quite a lot within those boundaries.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
QI as a whole needs to go away. It doesn’t matter if someone is committing a crime or violating someone else’s rights as part of a job. Whether you are a policeman or judge or congressman, it is still a crime.
Imnimo 2y ago
There is a classic Dave Chapelle bit where his friend gets pulled over for driving recklessly. After being confronted he says to the cop, "I'm sorry officer, I didn't know I couldn't do that." The officer, to Dave's shock, replies, "Well now you know! Get outta here!". Then Dave's friend turns to him and says, "That was good, wasn't it? Because I did know I couldn't do that!" This is how QI works.
- datpiff 2y ago
  I think you've missed out a crucial detail of the joke...
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - monktastic1 2y ago
    Surprisingly not: https://youtu.be/0WlmScgbdws?si=k28GyfN5wXmSsf6i https://youtu.be/0WlmScgbdws?si=k28GyfN5wXmSsf6i. Some things just work better in stand-up format.
    - MyOutfitIsVague 2y ago
      This longer video has more context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7fRGKntV1M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7fRGKntV1M Yours cuts off about half the bit, which is frustrating.
    - stanford_labrat 2y ago
      yes by text they might have missed nothing...but what's missing here is that Chapelle is doing his "white-man voice" which is kind of a big detail.
  - mtlynch 2y ago
    To those wondering, the missing context is that Chapelle's friend is white. In the story, he's brazen in his interaction with a police officer because he doesn't get hassled by cops as a white man.
yapyap 2y ago
Disgusting.
fn-mote 2y ago
Watch for statements from police unions across the country denouncing this type of behavior. The newspaper reporter could reach out to local police unions for comment.
- rs186 2y ago
  How useful is "denouncing"? This sets a precedent that pretty much says you can get away if a police officer wants to poke at your pictures and even start gossips, with zero legal consequence. Sure, that does not matter to "good" police officers, but I wish the world only has good officers.
bell-cot 2y ago
The State of Oregon's web site notes: > Oregon DAs are elected in every county and are required to stand for election every four years, thereby maintaining accountability to the public they serve. While the moral satisfaction of this DA being smacked down by a judge might be greater, far less misconduct would occur if the voters could be bothered to throw the perp's out. But somehow, the even the concept of the voters being capable of that...just seems to have vanished from the American mindset. And when the voters can't be bothered - well, you may have a Democracy, at least on paper. But it won't stay one.
Fezzik 2y ago
Funny seeing this here - I practice regularly in this Courthouse. We often darkly joke that Frontier Law is still practiced out there.
p_ing 2y ago
If you want to see removal of QI from your State's largest violent and corrupt gang, contact your state congress critters. CO banned QI. https://www.kxlf.com/news/national/an-inside-look-at-colorados-year-old-qualified-immunity-ban https://www.kxlf.com/news/national/an-inside-look-at-colorad...
- yieldcrv 2y ago
  doesn't look like that's working out in CO that well, aside from some officers resigning, which is a step. I'm curious how the federal court would view any of those colorado cases if it went up to them.
  - deleted 2y ago
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  - p_ing 2y ago
    How is it not working out? Seems citizens are getting some monetary damages, even if they're limited to $25k. I don't see resigning as a bad thing (not that you're representing it that way); if you want to resign because you feel like you need/want to violate someone's rights, you shouldn't have been there to begin with. Is a full capacity police force with a significant number of 'bad apples' better or worse than one down by half, or more, with little to no 'bad apples'?
    - yieldcrv 2y ago
      In my wishlist of accountability I want a tree of liability For example, the partners are automatically accomplices and liable Any discrepancy in police reports and footage/evidence triggers the same civil violation and criminal violation this is useful because now we dont need all the fanfare of going to trial just to find out the actual aggression was called it ‘justified’ using an opaque standard control behavior by regulating the intermediary. In this case I can think of many more intermediaries that civil and criminal liability can extend to for the actions of one bad apple partner, department, union, pension, municipality and an offenders list that follows the officer ideally to keep them off of the neighboring town’s force, and ostracized from most living arrangements I think of nodes in a graph, the officer being one node, but now all the surrounding nodes at risk of being affected will keep the one officer in line, and demand reforms in the department for greater than citizens, judges or the legislature can do I was also thinking to involve the federal government. Municipalities ability to raise capital becoming much more expensive based on how their officers act
piuantiderp 2y ago
[flagged]
zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
Get rid of qualified immunity and make police buy insurance. Not that hard of a fix
- choilive 2y ago
  Simple, but hard to push through. The often politically powerful police don't want that to happen.
- wizzwizz4 2y ago
  > and make police buy insurance Why should good cops subsidise corrupt cops (with a hefty overhead for the insurance companies)? Doesn't that create an additional incentive to be corrupt? Many people are more sensitive to punishment than reward: I'd expect having your premiums go up because a fellow officer got done for abusive conduct would feel like arbitrary group punishment.
  - zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
    Sounds like an incentive for the departments and unions to push out bad cops. Teachers buy school supplies, tradesmen buy their own tools, police can buy insurance.
    - wizzwizz4 2y ago
      An incentive for them to quietly push out bad cops, and cover up their misdeeds long after they're gone. That doesn't sound like a healthy way to solve systemic problems, to me.
deleted 2y ago
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croes 2y ago
I am sure the next Exexutive Order of Trump will change that. He said he will protect women if they want or not, so he surely will something, right?
ryandrake 2y ago
Not to victim-blame, here... Obviously the DA and sheriff are scumbags. But, in this day and age, the privacy battle is either lost or mostly lost. As a general rule, it's probably not a good idea to keep private stuff on your phone anymore. Or, worse, in the cloud. Keep them somewhere that they at least need a warrant and/or your consent to search (and even that really isn't good enough anymore, thanks to all the abuse going on). We should be able to rely on the law to keep the contents of our phones private but so far we can't. Don't put nudes on your phone (or just don't have nudes laying around at all!)
iambateman 2y ago
I think it’s terrible that these unscrupulous officers are hiding behind QI when they knew what they were doing was both wrong and unconstitutional…not to mention mean. Their mothers taught them better than this. I also think we should find a way to reform the function of QI as a protection for civil servants. But. This is why moral leadership matters in government, at every level. The government’s agents will always possess enough power to hurt or embarrass or kill its citizens and the truth is that no amount of fear of prosecution will fully take that away. The particular law enforcement office in this case has a massive cultural problem if it would tolerate this kind of thing in the first place. If the officers involved knew their superiors would discipline the hell out of them for engaging in this kind of behavior, it wouldn’t happen nearly as much. But the reform there isn’t just to fix the law, it’s to fix the process of selecting and incentivizing law enforcement leadership, too. Sheriffs and prosecutors should be expected to run on a zero tolerance policy for this kind of evil and be hauled in front of city council to testify every time it happens. It’s embarrassing for a community and we should all expect better of the people we trust with our public safety. I understand that there are recruiting challenges with LEO’s and it can be tenuous for a mayor to get too confrontational with the sheriff. Maybe we need an independent oversight board or something. But we can re-incentivize good behavior, and then expect our leaders to exhibit it.
- horsawlarway 2y ago
  The literal president of the US is issuing scam-crypto and the supreme court has ruled that they can take bribes. From my perspective - honor and integrity in the government is clearly gone. The moral leadership has exited the building, and is currently getting buried in the ditch out back. There's not even enough accountability to pretend anymore. It's going to be a long, hard road back to anything that approaches "ok", and my guess is it's going to have to happen at the extreme local level.
  - iambateman 2y ago
    Yes. Let's get to work.
    - 2y ago
gosub100 2y ago
A case with similar circumstances from a neighboring state where the officer was indicted by DOJ: https://www.justice.gov/usao-nv/pr/former-reno-police-officer-indicted-civil-rights-violations https://www.justice.gov/usao-nv/pr/former-reno-police-office...
dehrmann 2y ago
> Yet Palmer testified in his deposition that Carpenter twice offered him a copy of the thumb drive and told him, “There were things on the cell phone that, ‘once you see them, you can’t unsee them,’” according to the ruling. Wouldn't that be copyright infringement?
- LorenPechtel 2y ago
  Wouldn't matter if it was. No copyright filed, liability is quite limited.
kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
> Under qualified immunity, government officials can be held accountable for violating someone’s rights only if a court has previously ruled that it was “clearly established” those precise actions were unconstitutional. Every public official swears an oath to uphold the US constitution. At that moment it is clearly established that you are bound by the restrictions on exercise of power as enumerated in the constitution.
metalman 2y ago
there are a lot of problems with this first is that it is questionable if a democracy can exist in any form, with QI,or the form given to prosecutors and then there is the prosecution that continued till sentencing for the former and then, President elect, but now President, under the banner of "no one is above the law" making any kind of reconciliation impossible
dreamcompiler 2y ago
I think this is a travesty of justice. But this case also reinforces some lessons I've internalized: 1. Never give a law enforcement officer verbal (or certainly written!) consent to search your person or your property. Make them get a warrant. If they threaten something like "We can take you to jail or we can clear this up right here if you give us consent to search" then let them take you to jail. 2. Never volunteer information to law enforcement or answer their questions (beyond what's required by law, e.g. identifying yourself in some jurisdictions) unless your lawyer is present. 3. Never have marijuana in your car if you're driving across a border from a state where it's legal to a state where it isn't. State troopers sit at those borders and look for any excuse to pull you over because it's an easy win for them. 4. Be careful in eastern Oregon because while it's not densely populated, it's still very Red. They have to follow state law w.r.t. marijuana but that doesn't mean they won't try to find creative ways to screw you over. The most surprising thing to me about this case is that most of the malfeasance was on the Oregon side rather than the Idaho side.
- Me000 2y ago
  These used used to apply, but you don’t even have to do this anymore. No court is going to see this type of case unless you pleed guilty, lazy DAs are the vast majority they will not prosecute cases if they won’t help them personally so just promise to drag out the case is an auto win. I beat 3 drug charges link this, doesn’t matter exactly what you say as long as you cast doubt on exact words and facts. Stonewalling isn’t as effective as just pretending to be innocent, don’t want them to think you’re a threat.
- RandomBacon 2y ago
  Regarding #1 for those who think you have nothing to hide: You might get the cop that takes an hour to remove all of the seats and scratches things up, and they aren't going to help you put it back together. Maybe you had a passenger who had something fall out of their pocket and end up between the seat cushions that you don't know about.
  - beambot 2y ago
    Obligatory: Don't Talk to the Police (from a lawschool professor)! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
vunderba 2y ago
QI is absolutely a farce, but it should be noted that the woman "signed a form, giving Idaho police consent to search her cellphone" - though the article gives no indication on how much coercion was involved. Related but this should be required viewing by any citizen of the United States: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmtIizXdh88 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmtIizXdh88
thephyber 2y ago
Sheriff and District Attorney. Both elected positions. I would be shocked if voters actually cared enough to kick them out of office.
zdance 2y ago
[dead]
AzzyHN 2y ago
They'll murder you in cold blood, and get away with it. They'll move to another county and get a raise. They'll steal your possessions and drain your bank account, and get away with it. They'll share your nude photos and get away with it. Thin blue line or whatever though.
- FireBeyond 2y ago
  Wouldn't it be awesome if there was like a national registry of police who had been terminated or resigned to avoid termination that police departments could use as a part of the hiring process? Good news: there is! Bad news: a large swathe (in the majority, actually) of Police Department Collective Bargaining Agreements forbid the use of this registry in making hiring decisions...
  - AdrianB1 2y ago
    From my European perspective: here it is illegal to hire someone that is in such a registry, so agreements cannot change what the law say. If you have a registry that is optional, why even bother?
- AdrianB1 2y ago
  I guestimate that 90% of the cops are good or just fine, but the minority that do bad things are creating a bad image for all. My guestimate is that the mayors in the cities with these cops are as guilty as the bad cops for keeping and protecting them. Same for the sheriffs.
humptybumpty 2y ago
QI has gone downhill after SF left..
ThePowerOfFuet 2y ago
>Olson signed a form, giving Idaho police consent to search her cellphone. They extracted and copied the contents of her phone for review. Bloody idiot.

277 points by y33t 2y ago

ct0 2y ago

https://archive.ph/WEDTk https://archive.ph/WEDTk

> Under qualified immunity, government officials can be held accountable for violating someone’s rights only if a court has previously ruled that it was “clearly established” those precise actions were unconstitutional. Who made this rule?! So a court would have to rule on each and every possible abuse of the law by a government official??

x86_64Ubuntu 2y ago
From what I've seen, it has to have been "clearly established" before meaning that unless there is an incident already labeling the act unconstitutional, no dice for the poor lady. It's how you make it so that as society evolves, officers can't be held accountable for new acts.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  Yup. And "clearly established" has to be very clearly established. Several examples in https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/qualified-immunity-legal-practical-moral-failure#regularly-denies-justice-victims https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/qualified-immunity-lega... > Jessop v. City of Fresno: The Ninth Circuit granted immunity to the officers. The court noted that while “the theft” of “personal property by police officers sworn to uphold the law” may be “morally wrong,” the officers could not be sued for the theft because the Ninth Circuit had never issued a decision specifically involving the question of “whether the theft of property covered by the terms of a search warrant, and seized pursuant to that warrant, violates the Fourth Amendment.” > Corbitt v. Vickers: ... the court went on to say that “[n]o case capable of clearly establishing the law for this case holds that a temporarily seized person—as was [the child] in this case—suffers a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights when an officer shoots at a dog—or any other object—and accidentally hits the person.” > Kelsay v. Ernst: The majority noted that there were no prior cases involving the “particular circumstances” of this case; that is, no prior cases specifically held that “a deputy was forbidden to use a takedown maneuver to arrest a suspect who ignored the deputy’s instruction to ‘get back here’ and continued to walk away from the officer.” > Allah v. Milling: The appellate court agreed that the prison guards violated Allah’s rights, specifically holding that this treatment was unlawful punishment because Allah’s treatment “cannot be said to be reasonably related to institutional security, and Defendants have identified no other legitimate governmental purpose justifying the placement.” Nevertheless, the court said the guards were entitled to immunity because there was no prior case concerning the particular disciplinary practice employed by the prison. It's basically judicial Calvinball. "Oh, established case law says you can't kill an innocent person at 6:35pm, but it's not clearly established you can't kill an innocent person at 6:36pm!"
- 1024core 2y ago
  But hasn't it been "clearly established" by now that sharing someone else's photos from their phone is not legal??
  - UncleMeat 2y ago
    Nope. This is the trick that courts use in qualified immunity cases. You can't just say "well obviously this is a violation of 4th amendment rights by any person's plain reading." You need a prior case where a judge found this specifically. And that prior case needs to match the facts of the current case basically exactly. Any minor difference can be leveraged to argue that this case is a new set of facts and that there is no prior case that would inform a cop that what they are doing is in fact a violation of rights and so they are immune from civil action. The outcome of each one of these cases is that the cop gets off scot free and the court says "the next time this specific thing happens under our jurisdiction you can sue" but that specific thing never happens again for the rest of time because the boundaries of that specific thing are so tight.
    - tavavex 2y ago
      That's insane. I was vaguely aware that the American system that has grown over the 250-year old foundation was getting rusty, but I never knew it has taken such a dark turn. How far can you take the "precise case" thing then? Does it just apply to the specific action that was done? How far can they legally stretch what's considered to be "novel"?
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    Nope, because the standard is not "Everybody knows it's wrong to do that", the standard is "A previous case exists where an officer did EXACTLY THE SAME THINGS in EXACTLY THE SAME SCENARIO that established that officer CLEARLY VIOLATED THEIR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS" For us mere mortals to be punished, we don't even have to know the law. For a cop to be punished, there has to be precedent. The funny part is that this situation basically means the first cop to do any illegal act will always get away with it.
banana_feather 2y ago
The Supreme Court just made it up in the 1960s.
seo-speedwagon 2y ago
It was invented by the courts entirely from whole cloth.
mandevil 2y ago
It was created out of whole cloth by the Supreme Court in 1967's Pierson v. Ray. That case was a grim reminder of just how terrible the Supreme Court has always been: 15 Episcopal Priests were taking part in the Freedom Rides in 1961 (racially integrated groups taking public transportation across the South to defacto desegregate what had been defacto segregated, the group was 12 white priests and 3 African-American ones). Two police officers arrested all 15 priests while they were sitting in a restaurant for "breach of the peace." A judge convicted them and sentenced them each to four months in prison. They sued the police officers and the judge for false imprisonment. An all-white Jury found the police officers not liable. The Mississippi state supreme court ruled that the judge couldn't even be sued. A Federal Appeals court found the original law (the breach of the peace law) completely unconstitutional, but that the Judge couldn't be sued for upholding the law as it exists: "Mississippi law does not require police officers to predict at their peril which state laws are constitutional and which are not." The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in favor of the Judge and against the Priests, creating the concept of Qualified Immunity. Starting with the mid-aughts conservative turn of the Supreme Court (basically the time that O'Connor is replaced by Alito) it has grown to cover pretty much every act that law enforcement takes, with the modern standard being, basically, "your circuit needs to have found this particular violation to be unconstitutional already for it to count." The recent Supreme Court case finding that President's are immune to prosecution for "Official Acts" has a similar philosophical (though not legal) basis.
- deleted 2y ago
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- enoch_r 2y ago
  Do you honestly think, as a principled position, that police officers should be personally liable for enforcing a law which is later decided to be unconstitutional? For example, if a police officer in 1994 arrested someone for violating the Gun Free School Zones act (struck down as unconstitutional in 1995), should they be personally liable for the damages? Should the judge who decided the case? Similarly, if a police officer in NYC arrested someone in 2018 for violating the ban on "gravity knives" (struck down as unconstitutional in 2019), should they be personally liable? If a police officer in Washington, DC arrested someone for violating the city's ban on handguns in 2007 (struck down by the Supreme Court in 2008), should they be personally liable? Would it be a good thing if police officers and officials refuse to enforce Washington state's ban on "assault weapons", or Oregon's magazine capacity limit, because the "conservative turn" of the Supreme Court means that the law might get struck down as unconstitutional, and then they'd be personally liable for the damages? I think it's clear that QI sometimes leads to bad outcomes, but honestly, I'm not sure how the system would function without some similar concept.
bena 2y ago
It's also a catch 22. This basically says they can't be held accountable for something unless they've already been held accountable for it.

jmclnx 2y ago

Time for a civil lawsuit. I thought sharing nude pictures against the person's will against the law. I hope she gets a nice big settlement from the people involved.

actionfromafar 2y ago
Article says "protects police and government officials from civil liability". (Emphasis mine.)
- bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  I believe it protects the individuals but not the departments or agencies they work for? Hence "officials".
  - parsimo2010 2y ago
    Qualified immunity covers individuals but agencies do not need to be given qualified immunity because government agencies are covered by sovereign immunity. The government only allows itself to be sued when it decides.
  - UncleMeat 2y ago
    Suing departments is also basically impossible because the bar for a "pattern of misconduct" is ludicrously high. Connick v Thompson is a particularly infuriating case where a man who was sentenced to death by a DA that deliberately withheld blood evidence that would exonerate could not get damages because the long history of Brady violations by the DA's office were actually a series of distinct violations with teeny differences so they couldn't be considered a "pattern."
mandevil 2y ago
This was the civil lawsuit, resolved without ever going any further, thanks to the court created doctrine of Qualified Immunity. This is the end of all legal consequences anyone involved will ever face. The Sheriff did lose his job when he lost the election in 2020, and presumably this played a role in that election? But that's not a legal consequence, that's a political one.

josefritzishere 2y ago

Qualified Immunity? That's nonsense. Qualified Immunity shouldn't exist in the first place but this is an obvious abuse from the norm.

mandevil 2y ago

It's good that the Sheriff had already lost re-election five years ago, hopefully this played a part and the current sheriff has learned a lesson. Also, you can't do exactly this again within the 9th Circuit without being sued? That's the best case I've got for the horrific invasion of privacy that this woman and her boyfriend suffered.

mikeyouse 2y ago
That same Sheriff was involved with the Malheur Wildlife refuge 'takeover' ... he openly supported the militia and the Feds and State Police considered him such a security liability that they ended up cutting him out of all planning. He repeatedly met for hours at a time with the militia while on duty. He's one of the 'constitutional sheriffs' that have convinced themselves they're the only lawful police in the country and that the FBI et al are illegal. That was years before this illegal seizure and actually might be related as there were numerous complaints about his activities during the takeover from other people in the department and Haley Olsen, whose pics were stolen and shared was dating an officer that was on the Sheriff's 'shit list'. Dude was all around corrupt: https://www.opb.org/news/article/eastern-oregon-grant-county-sheriff-politics-dissent-cost/ https://www.opb.org/news/article/eastern-oregon-grant-county...
- davidw 2y ago
  Came here to mention ... Grant county being Grant county. Beautiful place to visit, though!
axus 2y ago
One of the judges wanted to let it happen again: > In a separate concurring 9th Circuit opinion, Circuit Judge Daniel A. Bress agreed that the court should uphold the trial court’s granting of immunity and dismissal of the claims. But he wrote that the panel should have simply affirmed the lower court ruling and not gone on to find a constitutional violation. > It’s unclear, Bress wrote, whether Idaho authorities are more at fault, for example. “In my respectful view, prudence here dictated that we decide only what we needed to decide,” he wrote.

actionfromafar 2y ago

So, I assume that means a reasonable person would not have known there was anything wrong with that. On that note, theoretically, could all eligible residents of a town be deputized and would they all be covered by QI?

duxup 2y ago

>A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-to-1 that Grant County District Attorney Jim Carpenter’s actions amounted to “a troubling example of the intrusion on Fourth Amendment rights” against illegal searches. >But all three judges upheld a lower court’s decision to grant Carpenter qualified immunity and dismiss the woman’s lawsuit. This is confusing, if there was no warrant, and they violated her 4th amendment rights… how do they get QI?

vessenes 2y ago
The facts are fairly complicated in this case. That said, seems like a better attorney might have done better?
- deleted 2y ago
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- superb_dev 2y ago
  Which facts are complicated here? The sherif in her home town got access to her the contents of her phone under dubious reasons, gossiped about her arrest, and showed off her nude photos. Seems pretty cut and dry to me
  - collingreen 2y ago
    Seriously - I'm struggling to even imagine a good faith version of sharing nude photos of someone else without their permission. Doing so after getting access to those photos through an abuse of power is horrifying.
    - UncleMeat 2y ago
      Sadly, the existence of a good faith version of the facts isn't really necessary for qualified immunity. You basically just need the court to say "there isn't a prior case with these exact facts demonstrating that it is a constitutional violation" and you are good to go. Even if everybody with a brain can look at the facts and say "well that's obviously a violation of rights" the court can happily say "nope there is some minor factual delta that means that we haven't explicitly ruled on this exact circumstance so how could a cop ever know that they were violating rights?"

cantrecallmypwd 2y ago

This another "Wat?" story I expect to see videos on TCRL[0], WeThePeopleUniversity[1], Steve Lehto[2], and maybe even LegalEagle[3]. 0. https://www.youtube.com/@thecivilrightslawyer/videos https://www.youtube.com/@thecivilrightslawyer/videos 1. https://www.youtube.com/c/WeThePeopleUniversity/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/WeThePeopleUniversity/videos 2. https://www.youtube.com/@stevelehto/videos https://www.youtube.com/@stevelehto/videos 3. https://www.youtube.com/c/LegalEagle/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/LegalEagle/videos

sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago

Searched this guy a bit and found him also being a piece of shit in 2001: https://www.bluemountaineagle.com/news/judicial-candidate-backgrounds-carpenter-reprimanded-by-the-bar-for-dishonesty-after-2001-incident/article_fa8b8f4a-d5c9-11ea-9b38-0719fb56fadf.html https://www.bluemountaineagle.com/news/judicial-candidate-ba... “I clearly made a mistake in 2001,” Carpenter told the Eagle. “I took immediate measures to correct that behavior and make it right with the victim. Since then I have been diligent with the courts, other attorneys, and the public in building a relationship of trust and veracity.” Yeah. He learned nothing. These kinds of people learn nothing because we only give them slap on the wrist "punishments". We tell them they were naughty...and nothing else happens to them. He continued his career without any real impact from that 2001 event, just as he will after this event. Is it any surprise at all that they don't behave better, when it's clear they will never actually face a consequence?

Molitor5901 2y ago

Prosecutors and police should simply not have qualified immunity. ANY type of immunity is going to be expanded and abused over time. If more police and prosecutors faced real legal jeopardy for violating the rights of people the problem would solve itself. Until then there is really zero consequences for stealing from a person pulled over on the side of the road, withholding evidence, fabricating witnesses, overcharging, or just outright murdering people.

UncleMeat 2y ago
Prosecutors actually get an even stronger version of immunity. Cops get qualified immunity (which is a stupendously easy bar to cross) but prosecutors get absolute immunity. It's horrifying and clearly not the right way of handling the "well we don't want everybody suing the DA that prosecuted them" problem.
- highcountess 2y ago
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- LorenPechtel 2y ago
  I think this could to some extent be resolved by explicitly not giving criminal immunity and dispensing with any immunity upon conviction (and the clock starts on conviction.) You don't get the officials buried in lawsuits and you establish a hard boundary as to when you're allowed to sue so you don't get problems with suits testing the edge.
Bender 2y ago
I would personally never want any level of legal immunity. If the citizens know I can not be charged then their only recourse at best is vigilante justice or worse removing everything and everyone I love from my life.
- dudeinhawaii 2y ago
  This means that the person with immunity simply has to keep the level of their crimes low enough that sane and rational people would not jump to vigilante justice. A bad actor could do quite a lot within those boundaries.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

QI as a whole needs to go away. It doesn’t matter if someone is committing a crime or violating someone else’s rights as part of a job. Whether you are a policeman or judge or congressman, it is still a crime.

Imnimo 2y ago

There is a classic Dave Chapelle bit where his friend gets pulled over for driving recklessly. After being confronted he says to the cop, "I'm sorry officer, I didn't know I couldn't do that." The officer, to Dave's shock, replies, "Well now you know! Get outta here!". Then Dave's friend turns to him and says, "That was good, wasn't it? Because I did know I couldn't do that!" This is how QI works.

datpiff 2y ago
I think you've missed out a crucial detail of the joke...
- deleted 2y ago
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- monktastic1 2y ago
  Surprisingly not: https://youtu.be/0WlmScgbdws?si=k28GyfN5wXmSsf6i https://youtu.be/0WlmScgbdws?si=k28GyfN5wXmSsf6i. Some things just work better in stand-up format.
  - MyOutfitIsVague 2y ago
    This longer video has more context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7fRGKntV1M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7fRGKntV1M Yours cuts off about half the bit, which is frustrating.
  - stanford_labrat 2y ago
    yes by text they might have missed nothing...but what's missing here is that Chapelle is doing his "white-man voice" which is kind of a big detail.
- mtlynch 2y ago
  To those wondering, the missing context is that Chapelle's friend is white. In the story, he's brazen in his interaction with a police officer because he doesn't get hassled by cops as a white man.

yapyap 2y ago

Disgusting.

fn-mote 2y ago

Watch for statements from police unions across the country denouncing this type of behavior. The newspaper reporter could reach out to local police unions for comment.

rs186 2y ago
How useful is "denouncing"? This sets a precedent that pretty much says you can get away if a police officer wants to poke at your pictures and even start gossips, with zero legal consequence. Sure, that does not matter to "good" police officers, but I wish the world only has good officers.

bell-cot 2y ago

The State of Oregon's web site notes: > Oregon DAs are elected in every county and are required to stand for election every four years, thereby maintaining accountability to the public they serve. While the moral satisfaction of this DA being smacked down by a judge might be greater, far less misconduct would occur if the voters could be bothered to throw the perp's out. But somehow, the even the concept of the voters being capable of that...just seems to have vanished from the American mindset. And when the voters can't be bothered - well, you may have a Democracy, at least on paper. But it won't stay one.

Fezzik 2y ago

Funny seeing this here - I practice regularly in this Courthouse. We often darkly joke that Frontier Law is still practiced out there.

p_ing 2y ago

If you want to see removal of QI from your State's largest violent and corrupt gang, contact your state congress critters. CO banned QI. https://www.kxlf.com/news/national/an-inside-look-at-colorados-year-old-qualified-immunity-ban https://www.kxlf.com/news/national/an-inside-look-at-colorad...

yieldcrv 2y ago
doesn't look like that's working out in CO that well, aside from some officers resigning, which is a step. I'm curious how the federal court would view any of those colorado cases if it went up to them.
- deleted 2y ago
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- p_ing 2y ago
  How is it not working out? Seems citizens are getting some monetary damages, even if they're limited to $25k. I don't see resigning as a bad thing (not that you're representing it that way); if you want to resign because you feel like you need/want to violate someone's rights, you shouldn't have been there to begin with. Is a full capacity police force with a significant number of 'bad apples' better or worse than one down by half, or more, with little to no 'bad apples'?
  - yieldcrv 2y ago
    In my wishlist of accountability I want a tree of liability For example, the partners are automatically accomplices and liable Any discrepancy in police reports and footage/evidence triggers the same civil violation and criminal violation this is useful because now we dont need all the fanfare of going to trial just to find out the actual aggression was called it ‘justified’ using an opaque standard control behavior by regulating the intermediary. In this case I can think of many more intermediaries that civil and criminal liability can extend to for the actions of one bad apple partner, department, union, pension, municipality and an offenders list that follows the officer ideally to keep them off of the neighboring town’s force, and ostracized from most living arrangements I think of nodes in a graph, the officer being one node, but now all the surrounding nodes at risk of being affected will keep the one officer in line, and demand reforms in the department for greater than citizens, judges or the legislature can do I was also thinking to involve the federal government. Municipalities ability to raise capital becoming much more expensive based on how their officers act

piuantiderp 2y ago

[flagged]

zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago

Get rid of qualified immunity and make police buy insurance. Not that hard of a fix

choilive 2y ago
Simple, but hard to push through. The often politically powerful police don't want that to happen.
wizzwizz4 2y ago
> and make police buy insurance Why should good cops subsidise corrupt cops (with a hefty overhead for the insurance companies)? Doesn't that create an additional incentive to be corrupt? Many people are more sensitive to punishment than reward: I'd expect having your premiums go up because a fellow officer got done for abusive conduct would feel like arbitrary group punishment.
- zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
  Sounds like an incentive for the departments and unions to push out bad cops. Teachers buy school supplies, tradesmen buy their own tools, police can buy insurance.
  - wizzwizz4 2y ago
    An incentive for them to quietly push out bad cops, and cover up their misdeeds long after they're gone. That doesn't sound like a healthy way to solve systemic problems, to me.

deleted 2y ago

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croes 2y ago

I am sure the next Exexutive Order of Trump will change that. He said he will protect women if they want or not, so he surely will something, right?

ryandrake 2y ago

Not to victim-blame, here... Obviously the DA and sheriff are scumbags. But, in this day and age, the privacy battle is either lost or mostly lost. As a general rule, it's probably not a good idea to keep private stuff on your phone anymore. Or, worse, in the cloud. Keep them somewhere that they at least need a warrant and/or your consent to search (and even that really isn't good enough anymore, thanks to all the abuse going on). We should be able to rely on the law to keep the contents of our phones private but so far we can't. Don't put nudes on your phone (or just don't have nudes laying around at all!)

iambateman 2y ago

I think it’s terrible that these unscrupulous officers are hiding behind QI when they knew what they were doing was both wrong and unconstitutional…not to mention mean. Their mothers taught them better than this. I also think we should find a way to reform the function of QI as a protection for civil servants. But. This is why moral leadership matters in government, at every level. The government’s agents will always possess enough power to hurt or embarrass or kill its citizens and the truth is that no amount of fear of prosecution will fully take that away. The particular law enforcement office in this case has a massive cultural problem if it would tolerate this kind of thing in the first place. If the officers involved knew their superiors would discipline the hell out of them for engaging in this kind of behavior, it wouldn’t happen nearly as much. But the reform there isn’t just to fix the law, it’s to fix the process of selecting and incentivizing law enforcement leadership, too. Sheriffs and prosecutors should be expected to run on a zero tolerance policy for this kind of evil and be hauled in front of city council to testify every time it happens. It’s embarrassing for a community and we should all expect better of the people we trust with our public safety. I understand that there are recruiting challenges with LEO’s and it can be tenuous for a mayor to get too confrontational with the sheriff. Maybe we need an independent oversight board or something. But we can re-incentivize good behavior, and then expect our leaders to exhibit it.

horsawlarway 2y ago
The literal president of the US is issuing scam-crypto and the supreme court has ruled that they can take bribes. From my perspective - honor and integrity in the government is clearly gone. The moral leadership has exited the building, and is currently getting buried in the ditch out back. There's not even enough accountability to pretend anymore. It's going to be a long, hard road back to anything that approaches "ok", and my guess is it's going to have to happen at the extreme local level.
- iambateman 2y ago
  Yes. Let's get to work.
  - 2y ago

gosub100 2y ago

A case with similar circumstances from a neighboring state where the officer was indicted by DOJ: https://www.justice.gov/usao-nv/pr/former-reno-police-officer-indicted-civil-rights-violations https://www.justice.gov/usao-nv/pr/former-reno-police-office...

dehrmann 2y ago

> Yet Palmer testified in his deposition that Carpenter twice offered him a copy of the thumb drive and told him, “There were things on the cell phone that, ‘once you see them, you can’t unsee them,’” according to the ruling. Wouldn't that be copyright infringement?

LorenPechtel 2y ago
Wouldn't matter if it was. No copyright filed, liability is quite limited.

kevin_thibedeau 2y ago

> Under qualified immunity, government officials can be held accountable for violating someone’s rights only if a court has previously ruled that it was “clearly established” those precise actions were unconstitutional. Every public official swears an oath to uphold the US constitution. At that moment it is clearly established that you are bound by the restrictions on exercise of power as enumerated in the constitution.

metalman 2y ago

there are a lot of problems with this first is that it is questionable if a democracy can exist in any form, with QI,or the form given to prosecutors and then there is the prosecution that continued till sentencing for the former and then, President elect, but now President, under the banner of "no one is above the law" making any kind of reconciliation impossible

dreamcompiler 2y ago

I think this is a travesty of justice. But this case also reinforces some lessons I've internalized: 1. Never give a law enforcement officer verbal (or certainly written!) consent to search your person or your property. Make them get a warrant. If they threaten something like "We can take you to jail or we can clear this up right here if you give us consent to search" then let them take you to jail. 2. Never volunteer information to law enforcement or answer their questions (beyond what's required by law, e.g. identifying yourself in some jurisdictions) unless your lawyer is present. 3. Never have marijuana in your car if you're driving across a border from a state where it's legal to a state where it isn't. State troopers sit at those borders and look for any excuse to pull you over because it's an easy win for them. 4. Be careful in eastern Oregon because while it's not densely populated, it's still very Red. They have to follow state law w.r.t. marijuana but that doesn't mean they won't try to find creative ways to screw you over. The most surprising thing to me about this case is that most of the malfeasance was on the Oregon side rather than the Idaho side.

Me000 2y ago
These used used to apply, but you don’t even have to do this anymore. No court is going to see this type of case unless you pleed guilty, lazy DAs are the vast majority they will not prosecute cases if they won’t help them personally so just promise to drag out the case is an auto win. I beat 3 drug charges link this, doesn’t matter exactly what you say as long as you cast doubt on exact words and facts. Stonewalling isn’t as effective as just pretending to be innocent, don’t want them to think you’re a threat.
RandomBacon 2y ago
Regarding #1 for those who think you have nothing to hide: You might get the cop that takes an hour to remove all of the seats and scratches things up, and they aren't going to help you put it back together. Maybe you had a passenger who had something fall out of their pocket and end up between the seat cushions that you don't know about.
- beambot 2y ago
  Obligatory: Don't Talk to the Police (from a lawschool professor)! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

vunderba 2y ago

QI is absolutely a farce, but it should be noted that the woman "signed a form, giving Idaho police consent to search her cellphone" - though the article gives no indication on how much coercion was involved. Related but this should be required viewing by any citizen of the United States: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmtIizXdh88 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmtIizXdh88

thephyber 2y ago

Sheriff and District Attorney. Both elected positions. I would be shocked if voters actually cared enough to kick them out of office.

zdance 2y ago

[dead]

AzzyHN 2y ago

They'll murder you in cold blood, and get away with it. They'll move to another county and get a raise. They'll steal your possessions and drain your bank account, and get away with it. They'll share your nude photos and get away with it. Thin blue line or whatever though.

FireBeyond 2y ago
Wouldn't it be awesome if there was like a national registry of police who had been terminated or resigned to avoid termination that police departments could use as a part of the hiring process? Good news: there is! Bad news: a large swathe (in the majority, actually) of Police Department Collective Bargaining Agreements forbid the use of this registry in making hiring decisions...
- AdrianB1 2y ago
  From my European perspective: here it is illegal to hire someone that is in such a registry, so agreements cannot change what the law say. If you have a registry that is optional, why even bother?
AdrianB1 2y ago
I guestimate that 90% of the cops are good or just fine, but the minority that do bad things are creating a bad image for all. My guestimate is that the mayors in the cities with these cops are as guilty as the bad cops for keeping and protecting them. Same for the sheriffs.

humptybumpty 2y ago

QI has gone downhill after SF left..

ThePowerOfFuet 2y ago

>Olson signed a form, giving Idaho police consent to search her cellphone. They extracted and copied the contents of her phone for review. Bloody idiot.