Legal/scotus thread

Well, the left and the right sides of the court teamed up today to erode your rights a little more. The case Nieves v. Bartlett was decided. In this case, an Alaska man was arrested at a festival. The official reasoning was disorderly conduct and interfering with police investigating another matter. However, the true reason was that this man had yelled at the officer that arrested him earlier instead of talking to the officer. Upon arresting the man, the officer said "bet you wish you'd have talked to me now".

Charges were later dropped and the man sued for a retaliatory arrest. Police say they had probable cause to arrest him for the disorderly conduct and interfering with an investigation and so that should defeat the retaliatory arrest claim.

The Court today basically said that it would be hard to put the subjective motivations of officers on trial so the Court agreed that if there is probable cause, that will automatically defeat a retaliatory arrest claim. They did have one carve out. That was essentially that in the cases of misdemeanor arrests that do not require a warrant, if there was objective evidence that the officer arrested you in retaliation for your speech and did not arrest others engaged in the same conduct who did not engage in speech as you did, then you can sustain a retaliatory arrest claim. That's going to be pretty hard to prove.

I do not like this decision at all.
 
I love me some Supreme Court case discussion. I've recently been going back and reading decisions from the post civil war South because I was curious about the legal reasoning used to uphold clearly unconstitutional laws. I am reading through the Nieves v Bartlett case. So far I dont see anything wrong with the decision but still a ways to go.
 
cajunrevenge said:
I love me some Supreme Court case discussion. I've recently been going back and reading decisions from the post civil war South because I was curious about the legal reasoning used to uphold clearly unconstitutional laws. I am reading through the Nieves v Bartlett case. So far I dont see anything wrong with the decision but still a ways to go.
Click to expand...

What's wrong with the decision is that the government cannot take adverse action against you because of your speech. Today they essentially allowed police to arrest you (adverse action) based on the officer not liking your speech and the only protection they gave was that the police had to have probable cause. That's almost no protection at all.

They pretty much acknowledged that there will be a lot of instances where an officer arrests someone because the officer doesn't like the person's speech and that the person will have no recourse. This will have a chilling effect on speech and the court is okay with that.
 
Okay going to bullet point my thoughts on this,


- The officers content that probably cause automatically gives them immunity from retaliation. The court correctly says that arresting a person for an offense that does not normally result in arrest can be considered retaliation if first amendment protected speech is determined to be the reason the officer decided for arrest as opposed to a ticket. The example given is jaywalking. I very much like Gorsuch's point that Laws have grown so exuberantly and cover so much previously innocent behavior that almost anyone can be arrested for something. Thats been one of my biggest complaints so its nice to see him acknowledge that.



- Seems to me like this could all be cleared up by an independent witness. Wheres a statement from anyone other than the cops and the victim/suspect? I have a hard time believing that in a big festival crowd no one say anything that went on. The kid who was being questioned seems like the ideal person to ask here. If the cops were questioning him then they definitely ID'd him. The conflicting stories mean one side must be committing perjury. Some of the story like stepping up to the officer can be a misunderstanding. This is a perfect case for why we need body cameras. Its not needed just to keep cops honest but to provide evidence for the court to better achieve correct verdicts. Police know that their testimony is considered the word of God in the court and body cameras and independent witnesses take that power away from them. I dont know that the court had the power to order body cameras in the future but it seems to me like this is a place that desperately needs it. Somewhere that there is going to be mass drinking and intoxication.


- Retaliation is always going to be hard to prove because of the difficulty in gathering evidence without the use of police authority. What we desperately need is for all on duty police officers to be atleast audio recorded while on duty with the exception of the bathroom(only if they agree to criminal charges for using the bathroom to escape damaging information from being recorded). As public servants they have no expectation of privacy while on duty and the rights of the public to be safe from abuse far outweighs any privacy concerns of cops. Police choose to be police officers, the public do not have that choice to opt out. The current system makes it very difficult for anyone in the public to gather evidence that would prove intent or the reasonableness of the officers actions. Its very hard to get fair trials involving police because of the general benefit of the doubt we give police. Judges and juries arent supposed to bear witness but they often have a preconceived notion that police are honest. Thats not how its supposed to work. I for example would never be allowed on a jury if I am honest about my mistrust of police but thethe who has the highest opinion of police would most like not be struck from the jury based on bias. Its a well known strategy amongst prosecutors to strike black jurors specifically because they are perceived as to no have favorable opinions of LE. Prosecutors will never admit thats the reason and with no way to get in their head or evidence of their intent they get away with it 100% of the time.


- I do not agree with courts that perceive the act of being arrested as minor and not causing damages. I dont believe in penalizing people that act civilized when facing false arrest and rewarding the people who go ape**** and get beat till their brain dead. Being arrested to me is very psychologically damaging. I take my freedom and liberty very seriously. I wouldnt spend a night in jail for 10,000 dollars. Imagine having a dispute with a person who you are agitated with and they get to order you around like a dog with the implied threat of violence and incarceration if you do not comply. A judge giving someone like 100$ for a wrongful arrest because they acted civilized so they didnt get beat and only spent a night in jail is wrong. If that 100$ actually came from the account of the officer that victimized me then I would feel better about it. This relates to this case as one argument made is that there was no damages because Bartlett was not injured and only spent a few hours in custody in a tent before being released.


- Sotomayor dissents saying the standard set for proving retaliation, that another person wasnt arrested for the same offense, to be unreasonable. Its hard to identify arrests that arent made. She also says their opinion incorrectly disregards the alleged statement the cop made to Bartlett. It would be relevant if there was any way to prove it was said.







Also I dont know if anyone is aware but there is a movie out based on Justice Ginsburg. The title will probably haunt your nightmares but I still recommend it.
 
striker42 said:
What's wrong with the decision is that the government cannot take adverse action against you because of your speech. Today they essentially allowed police to arrest you (adverse action) based on the officer not liking your speech and the only protection they gave was that the police had to have probable cause. That's almost no protection at all.

They pretty much acknowledged that there will be a lot of instances where an officer arrests someone because the officer doesn't like the person's speech and that the person will have no recourse. This will have a chilling effect on speech and the court is okay with that.
Click to expand...



I might be a little unclear as to whats fact with the evidence. Was there any evidence that the cop said "I bet you wish you had talked to me now" other than the testimony of Bartlett? I think all the justices admit that there is a narrow area where a cop can have probable cause and still be guilty of retaliation. I certainly do believe cops do retaliate and its far more widespread of a problem than most people realize, but proving malicious intent is extremely hard to do. The disorderly conduct charge could be proven as retaliation because I highly doubt he was the only person at the festival that said something loudly. I dont buy for a second that Nieves backed down in the first confrontation in an attempt to deescalate. Unless we have a way to discern who is lying though I dont see how they could rule for Bartlett.
 
Last edited:
cajunrevenge said:
I might be a little unclear as to whats fact with the evidence. Was there any evidence that the cop said "I bet you wish you had talked to me now" other than the testimony of Bartlett? I think all the justices admit that there is a narrow area where a cop can have probable cause and still be guilty of retaliation. I certainly do believe cops do retaliate and its far more widespread of a problem than most people realize, but proving malicious intent is extremely hard to do. The disorderly conduct charge could be proven as retaliation because I highly doubt he was the only person at the festival that said something loudly. I dont buy for a second that Nieves backed down in the first confrontation in an attempt to deescalate. Unless we have a way to discern who is lying though I dont see how they could rule for Bartlett.
Click to expand...

This comes, IIRC, from a motion for summary judgment made by the police that was granted by the trial court judge. In motions for summary judgment, all facts must be viewed in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. In this situation you're basically assuming that all of the facts alleged by the guy that got arrested are true. To grant a motion for summary judgment (or uphold it on appeal) in a case like this, you're basically saying that assuming everything you said was true, you still don't have a case as a matter of law.

Whether the officer said what he's alleged to have said is something for a jury to decide.
 
That makes sense with Sotomayors dissenting opinion. I was wondering why there was a complete lack of discussion of the evidence. I heard part of it was captured by local tv news but couldnt find it anywhere. I will have to go over it again with that context in mind.
 
Still a little on the fence. I went back and read the district courts opinion and I agree that if the statement alleged to have been made is true that it should fall under retaliatory arrests. Whats curious to me is that Officer Weight is said to have pushed Bartlett when he stepped closer to him. That Nieves initiates the arrest in that situation seems oddly worded to me. Was Officer Weight not going to arrest him? If Officer Weight arrests him then its clearly not retaliatory because unless I missed it he wasnt involved in the first confrontation. Given the situation I think its probable that any reasonable officer would give people more leeway that they might otherwise on disorderly conduct. I dont understand what the context of the statement by Nieves would be other than retaliation. Its an admission that the arrest would not have happened if not for the first encounter.
 
thethe said:
I agree 100%.

But i also think our society is losing a lot of its moral fiber and sex should hold more meaning than what it has now.
Click to expand...

Yeah. Sex should be what it was about in the old days. Establishing dominance and procreating.

What the ****, are you high all the time?
 
There are a couple of interesting cases left to be decided this term.

One major case that doesn't get enough attention is Kisor v. Wilke. The current precedent is that courts should defer to administrative agencies when the agency interprets its own ambiguous regulations. There's a lot at play here. On the one hand agencies can stretch interpretations of regulations to the point the rule really changes without having to go through the notice and comment process. On the other hand, many regulations are so technical that a federal judge would be bumbling around trying to interpret them.

I predict the end result will be underwhelming. I expect either a modest change to the current rule or that the justices will punt based on the facts of this case (e.g. regulation at issue is not ambiguous).

The most interesting from a constitutional law point to me is the separate sovereigns case. Currently you can be tried by the feds and the state for the same actions. This case challenges that alleging that it's double jeopardy. The problem here is the implications a change could have on someone who was previously tried in a foreign court. Suppose the US catches a terrorist who killed Americans and wants to try the terrorist in a US court. If that terrorist had previously been given a sham acquittal in a foreign court, it could bar prosecution as that terrorist had been acquitted by a sovereign entity.

I predict a large majority of the court upholds the current rule allowing being tried by separate sovereigns.

The culture war case deals with a large cross memorial in Maryland. It was erected nearly 100 years ago as a WWI memorial honoring people in the area who died in the war. The facts in this case will probably doom those challenging the cross. Even some of the liberals on the court seemed to have no appetite for tearing down the cross.

I predict a holding that is narrowed to old war memorials as much as possible.

The least exciting to me are the highly political cases. There are a couple dealing with gerrymandering and the citizenship question on the census. I've not followed these quite as closely.

I expect there will be a rule established for gerrymandering. It's too important and the courts are all over the place. As for the citizenship question, I expect a 5-4 to allow the question.

We'll see how my predictions turn out.
 
In the separate sovereigns case I would think that there are enough charges that overlap that this really shouldnt be much of an issue. Listening to a lot of cases the charges can get ridiculous. Instead of just murder or manslaughter theres using a gun in the commission of a felony and all other kids of **** thats like 20 charges for the same crime.


As for the war memorial cross I dont think anyone views that as a Christian thing anymore. Obviously someone does but I dont think the general public does.



On a seperate note I still wonder why/how no one has challenged the counties in Louisiana being called Parishes.... thats a catholic thing. I wont doubt that it has survived challenges in the past because many lower court Judges dont give two ****s about the law or the constitution and rule based on their emotions and biases. What do they care if their cases get overturned 95% of the time on appeal, they suffer no consequences. ****ing Roy Moore was a chief justice of a state and he thinks the bible is the law.
 
Maybe striker42 could shed some light on how Alex Jones's lawyers could accidentally send child porn images to the plaintiffs lawyers.

Is this some kind of slick set up against Jones's case or could such a thing really happen?
 
Runnin said:
Maybe striker42 could shed some light on how Alex Jones's lawyers could accidentally send child porn images to the plaintiffs lawyers.

Is this some kind of slick set up against Jones's case or could such a thing really happen?
Click to expand...

It's possible that it could really happen. The explanation is that the images were sent to an infowars email address. The plaintiffs attorneys requested emails as part of discovery (a common thing) and the emails were turned over in bulk. These emails were part of bulk dump of emails sent to the plaintiff's attorneys.

Considering how discovery often consists of dumping massive amounts of documents on your opponents and having your opponents do the work of sifting through them, it's entirely possible. Some people out there could have been spamming infowars email accounts with child porn and those emails would then have been turned over as part of what was requested in discovery without ever being reviewed.

That being said, who knows if that's what really happened. It's also possible it's a ploy to distract attention or just a spiteful move.
 
striker42 said:
It's possible that it could really happen. The explanation is that the images were sent to an infowars email address. The plaintiffs attorneys requested emails as part of discovery (a common thing) and the emails were turned over in bulk. These emails were part of bulk dump of emails sent to the plaintiff's attorneys.

Considering how discovery often consists of dumping massive amounts of documents on your opponents and having your opponents do the work of sifting through them, it's entirely possible. Some people out there could have been spamming infowars email accounts with child porn and those emails would then have been turned over as part of what was requested in discovery without ever being reviewed.

That being said, who knows if that's what really happened. It's also possible it's a ploy to distract attention or just a spiteful move.
Click to expand...


My gut thought was someone that hated Infowars sent them the porn with the intent of Infowars later getting busted and In trouble for it. That actually happens quite a bit. Dumbass move by the sender if that happened
 
In a move that surprised no one, the SCOTUS upheld the separate sovereigns doctrine in a 7-2 decision. The majority's reasoning was that the double jeopardy clause prevents being prosecuted twice for the same offense, not the same conduct. When there are two sovereigns there are two sets of laws that apply and can be two offenses.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top