Thursday, September 28, 2006
His Indolence vs. the Exclusionary Rule
Here's a little something that may be of interest to those following this year's NC Supreme Court elections. Mr. Gregory Lee Nowell is complaining on local Roanoke Rapids bulletin board 27870.com of the consequences (home and all possessions sold off, $40,000 missing) of a conviction for drug dealing in 1999: he blames now-Major Strickland and Sheriff Frazier and the Halifax County Sheriff's office in general for the raid and losses, since the conviction was reversed on appeal (details here) when the warrantless search and seizure were ruled illegal. I am soooo gonna make local attorney (and new Republican) Sammy D. Webb read this:
Mr. Nowell, you may have a case if you can prove your house was seized on the basis of a conviction that was later overturned. And we all have the right to know what became of the $40K. You're absolutely right that we can't call you a felon based on 99 CRS 001922-25 (but you weren't acquitted, just not retried, and the Appeals Court wasn't unanimous in finding the search illegal: Judge John wrote a fine dissent and at least I agree with him, for whatever my non-lawyerly opinion matters. By the way, everyone, the vote would've gone the other way and Mr. Nowell would probably be in jail today if then-Judge Timmons-Goodson had voted with Judge John instead of with Judge Greene. Judge Timmons-Goodson has since been appointed to the NC Supreme Court by Governor Easley, to replace Judge Parker whom he elevated to Chief Justice when Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake retired in January. That means that both Chief Justice Parker and Justice Timmons-Goodson have to stand for election November 7th, 2006. Think your vote doesn't matter? Patriots are still dying to uphold your voice in interpreting the Fourth Amendment.)
It sounds to me -
as if they have Strickland and probably Valles to squeeze for testimony and/or evidence to prove you maintained a dwelling for the purpose of dealing drugs, maybe even for a conspiracy charge. I dunno. Do you have more evidence as to the seizure?
As you can see throughout this thread, you may have a technicality of the law on your side, but precious little sympathy. The exclusionary rule is probably the number one reason for Americans' disgust with their legal system, heck, it is much of what MAKES it a legal system rather than a justice system. Too bad most people don't realize that the exclusionary rule is NOT prescribed by the Constitution, it is only the REMEDY the Miranda court prescribed to prevent illegal searches and seizures, and thus it could be replaced by something like an admonition to Congress that illegal searches were taking place and that such must be PUNISHED directly on law enforcement officers to prevent the practice, or the exclusionary rule would have to be applied as the only remedy available to the Judicial branch. Then we would've punished then-Lt. Stanfield with, say, four hours community service studying search and seizure precedents and giving a speech on the subject, invite deputies from neighboring counties, and so forth, it shouldn't be an embarassment to learn a lesson and show the lesson to others. Only if illegal searches continued to be a problem would stiffer punishments for law enforcement officers or reinstatement of the exclusionary rule be necessary.
That's my Constitutional Law tirade for this month. And GAWSPC or whatever that six-capital-letter handle was a dozen or so posts back: well said! and wear your uniform with pride, people you may never even meet stand a little straighter when we see you in it.
Mr. Nowell, you may have a case if you can prove your house was seized on the basis of a conviction that was later overturned. And we all have the right to know what became of the $40K. You're absolutely right that we can't call you a felon based on 99 CRS 001922-25 (but you weren't acquitted, just not retried, and the Appeals Court wasn't unanimous in finding the search illegal: Judge John wrote a fine dissent and at least I agree with him, for whatever my non-lawyerly opinion matters. By the way, everyone, the vote would've gone the other way and Mr. Nowell would probably be in jail today if then-Judge Timmons-Goodson had voted with Judge John instead of with Judge Greene. Judge Timmons-Goodson has since been appointed to the NC Supreme Court by Governor Easley, to replace Judge Parker whom he elevated to Chief Justice when Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake retired in January. That means that both Chief Justice Parker and Justice Timmons-Goodson have to stand for election November 7th, 2006. Think your vote doesn't matter? Patriots are still dying to uphold your voice in interpreting the Fourth Amendment.)
It sounds to me -
Strickland informed Stanfield that he had had “numerous dealings” with Nowell in the past. As part of those “dealing,” Strickland and Nowell would schedule a delivery of marijuana, and Strickland would transport the marijuana to Nowell's residence. After Strickland arrived at Nowell's residence, Nowell usually “would have to go get the rest of the money and leave [Strickland] there until . . . Nowell would return with the money and the deal would be done in the selling of marijuana."
as if they have Strickland and probably Valles to squeeze for testimony and/or evidence to prove you maintained a dwelling for the purpose of dealing drugs, maybe even for a conspiracy charge. I dunno. Do you have more evidence as to the seizure?
As you can see throughout this thread, you may have a technicality of the law on your side, but precious little sympathy. The exclusionary rule is probably the number one reason for Americans' disgust with their legal system, heck, it is much of what MAKES it a legal system rather than a justice system. Too bad most people don't realize that the exclusionary rule is NOT prescribed by the Constitution, it is only the REMEDY the Miranda court prescribed to prevent illegal searches and seizures, and thus it could be replaced by something like an admonition to Congress that illegal searches were taking place and that such must be PUNISHED directly on law enforcement officers to prevent the practice, or the exclusionary rule would have to be applied as the only remedy available to the Judicial branch. Then we would've punished then-Lt. Stanfield with, say, four hours community service studying search and seizure precedents and giving a speech on the subject, invite deputies from neighboring counties, and so forth, it shouldn't be an embarassment to learn a lesson and show the lesson to others. Only if illegal searches continued to be a problem would stiffer punishments for law enforcement officers or reinstatement of the exclusionary rule be necessary.
That's my Constitutional Law tirade for this month. And GAWSPC or whatever that six-capital-letter handle was a dozen or so posts back: well said! and wear your uniform with pride, people you may never even meet stand a little straighter when we see you in it.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
The eternal "too few troops" meme
Here's something I wrote as a comment on the Anti-Idotarian Rottweiler (warning: strong language) in response to the (primarily anti-Rumsfeld) criticism of Operation Iraqi Freedom expressed by three former officers (text here).
Those three former officers make some good points, especially on the need for properly engaging the non-DOD parts of the government and nation for the Long War. However, I don't think they understand the Bush approach (not that their approach is necessarily wrong, but...).
The Global War on Terror is not primarily a military conflict. In fact, the lack of long-term planning for expanding the military makes me think the plan may not even include ANY more involvement of ground troops in an offensive role. Shock and Awe wasn't supposed to awe just the Iraqi regime, or even the Iraqi nation, but all pan-Arabia and even all Islam. And it worked, for some time, even as the Left made it increasingly obvious that the West's resolve was not as firm as we could hope. No Arab or even Muslim nation wants to fight our military.
The objective of OIF was not to kill America's enemies. Taking out Saddam was a big part of the public justification for it, but the real goal was to stimulate the formation of an anti-jihadi ideology in the heart of Arab Islam. The GWOT will end when the jihadists are so discredited that even any remaining conservative strain of Islam realizes that resorting to global terrorism is a losing option. Proving that democracy can succeed in Iraq would be a big step toward this goal, as democracy would ensure that there will be at least some public dissent against ANY Islamist ideology. Every little bit of dissent within Islam is a net gain for us at this point; our public affairs officers cheerfully taught electoral politics to the Iraqi COMMUNIST PARTY: for crying out loud, even good Marxists don't think that the dictatorship of the proletariat be established other than via progress to an industrialized state with a corresponding class structure. Iraq stepping up to become an actual military ally in the GWOT would be a bonus, but we can call Iraq a success already just because any amount of freedom there will necessarily engender a pro-democracy fifth column throughout the Arab world. It may be weak. It may not even be able to sustain itself. But OIF was an experiment. On 9/11 we had two clear options: surrender or genocide. Bush is trying to cultivate a third option. Personally, I didn't think it would work the first time, and that we'll have to overthrow multiple Arab regimes before they start to get the idea, so I thought (pretty much still do) that using up all our Cold War military stores and exhausting our ground forces in one enterprise was a bad idea. Now, however, I'm not so sure. It may yet work, and the rest of the military involvement in the GWOT could be some time-gaining bombing raids on Iran and some containment operations in places like Darfur while the Iraqis prosper and laugh at their neighbors.
Sure we didn't send enough troops to fully pacify Iraq. We didn't and still don't have enough troops for that, probably wouldn't even if we had 27 million soldiers so we could have one handcuffed to every Iraqi. We won our part of the Iraqi war long ago. It is now the Iraqis' job to pacify their own country. Even if they don't, we will still have time to think about revoking our adherence to international genocide laws and the parts of the Geneva Convention requiring us to protect human rights in the wake of our overthrowing a government. We had enough troops in Iraq to've turned left and gone right through Syria and Lebanon and brought our troops home from Beirut a few weeks after Saddam's statue came down; then we could've just announced that we'd be back to teach the next lesson whenever we wanted. Our message if our Iraq experiment fails may well be to that Arab that one of the generals quoted, "better 40 years of tyrrany than 40 days of chaos". Our message could be, "we can do worse than make war on you, we can knock down whatever you build as often as we like until you build a functioning society."
Is the opus of IRAQ THE MODEL (really good articles just lately) and giving women the vote worth the lives of 2800 of our best children? I don't know yet, but I think we owe it to our civilized traditions to try. Let's see if the jihadis can put those genies back in their bottles.
Oh, and I agree with the three officers in every hint they gave concerning disconnects in the executive, legislative, judicial, and popular approaches to the GWOT, but it seems to me that the most serious Infowar failures have been those involving Congress and the Supreme Court. We the People, the American Sovereign, get our chance to fire shots in this war only occasionally: choose your targets well on November 7th.
Those three former officers make some good points, especially on the need for properly engaging the non-DOD parts of the government and nation for the Long War. However, I don't think they understand the Bush approach (not that their approach is necessarily wrong, but...).
The Global War on Terror is not primarily a military conflict. In fact, the lack of long-term planning for expanding the military makes me think the plan may not even include ANY more involvement of ground troops in an offensive role. Shock and Awe wasn't supposed to awe just the Iraqi regime, or even the Iraqi nation, but all pan-Arabia and even all Islam. And it worked, for some time, even as the Left made it increasingly obvious that the West's resolve was not as firm as we could hope. No Arab or even Muslim nation wants to fight our military.
The objective of OIF was not to kill America's enemies. Taking out Saddam was a big part of the public justification for it, but the real goal was to stimulate the formation of an anti-jihadi ideology in the heart of Arab Islam. The GWOT will end when the jihadists are so discredited that even any remaining conservative strain of Islam realizes that resorting to global terrorism is a losing option. Proving that democracy can succeed in Iraq would be a big step toward this goal, as democracy would ensure that there will be at least some public dissent against ANY Islamist ideology. Every little bit of dissent within Islam is a net gain for us at this point; our public affairs officers cheerfully taught electoral politics to the Iraqi COMMUNIST PARTY: for crying out loud, even good Marxists don't think that the dictatorship of the proletariat be established other than via progress to an industrialized state with a corresponding class structure. Iraq stepping up to become an actual military ally in the GWOT would be a bonus, but we can call Iraq a success already just because any amount of freedom there will necessarily engender a pro-democracy fifth column throughout the Arab world. It may be weak. It may not even be able to sustain itself. But OIF was an experiment. On 9/11 we had two clear options: surrender or genocide. Bush is trying to cultivate a third option. Personally, I didn't think it would work the first time, and that we'll have to overthrow multiple Arab regimes before they start to get the idea, so I thought (pretty much still do) that using up all our Cold War military stores and exhausting our ground forces in one enterprise was a bad idea. Now, however, I'm not so sure. It may yet work, and the rest of the military involvement in the GWOT could be some time-gaining bombing raids on Iran and some containment operations in places like Darfur while the Iraqis prosper and laugh at their neighbors.
Sure we didn't send enough troops to fully pacify Iraq. We didn't and still don't have enough troops for that, probably wouldn't even if we had 27 million soldiers so we could have one handcuffed to every Iraqi. We won our part of the Iraqi war long ago. It is now the Iraqis' job to pacify their own country. Even if they don't, we will still have time to think about revoking our adherence to international genocide laws and the parts of the Geneva Convention requiring us to protect human rights in the wake of our overthrowing a government. We had enough troops in Iraq to've turned left and gone right through Syria and Lebanon and brought our troops home from Beirut a few weeks after Saddam's statue came down; then we could've just announced that we'd be back to teach the next lesson whenever we wanted. Our message if our Iraq experiment fails may well be to that Arab that one of the generals quoted, "better 40 years of tyrrany than 40 days of chaos". Our message could be, "we can do worse than make war on you, we can knock down whatever you build as often as we like until you build a functioning society."
Is the opus of IRAQ THE MODEL (really good articles just lately) and giving women the vote worth the lives of 2800 of our best children? I don't know yet, but I think we owe it to our civilized traditions to try. Let's see if the jihadis can put those genies back in their bottles.
Oh, and I agree with the three officers in every hint they gave concerning disconnects in the executive, legislative, judicial, and popular approaches to the GWOT, but it seems to me that the most serious Infowar failures have been those involving Congress and the Supreme Court. We the People, the American Sovereign, get our chance to fire shots in this war only occasionally: choose your targets well on November 7th.
