Hacker Cinema
The Star Chamber
1983 · Film · 105 min
Directed by Peter Hyams
As violence escalates in Los Angeles and heinous murders are committed, Steven Hardin, a young judge of the California Supreme Court, must struggle with his tortured conscience and growing despair as he watches helplessly as the ruthless criminals brought before his court go free because clever lawyers find obscure loopholes in the law.
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4 comments on Hacker News
I think Avery's prosecution was corrupt enough to be worth vacating on police misconduct alone.[1] However, implicit in your comment is the premise that process is more important than outcome. While I fully agree with that (as a lawyer), I think ordinary peoples' view of the justice system is a bit different.
Watch the beginning of the 1983 Michael Douglas movie, "Star Chamber." The first scenes show two men getting away with the rape and murder of a young boy, because the damning piece of evidence (a bloody shoe), was found in their van pursuant to a search in violation of the 4th amendment. The audience is supposed to be outraged by this failure of justice.
Surely you've heard the consternation about criminals "getting off on a technicality." A lot of people view procedural protections as just that: technicalities. It's people with that mindset reacting so negatively to this documentary. To them, Avery's actual guilt or innocence is the important thing. The process is just technicalities.
The same mindset makes it easy to justify police misconduct, and I imagine it was strongly at work with Avery's jury. Once you admit the evidence excluded in the documentary, such as Avery's prior conduct, it becomes quite reasonable to conclude that Avery is actually guilty. At the same time, with the "planted blood" theory seemingly debunked by the FBI test, the only blatantly obvious police misconduct you're left with is the planted key. If you view outcome as being more important than process, it's very easy to think of finding Avery innocent based on the planted key as simply letting him off on a "technicality."
[1] Not to mention the pervasive logical and legal fallacies in Ken Kratz's statements, which left me yelling at the TV.
The OP's characterization of it is wrong--three non-violent felonies couldn't trigger three-strikes' even before California's recent reform (you had two have two violent felonies first).
Moreover, for-profit prisons barely existed in the early 1990's when states like California and Washington started passing three strikes laws. Law enforcement, prison unions, private prisons, etc, have definitely benefited from these things, but the actual policies arose from public outrage in the 1980's and 1990's about the government being "soft on crime." For example, either California's law was passed on the back of public outrage at the murder of Polly Klass.
One bit of context that's lost in current discussions is how much consternation existed in the 1980's and 1990's about crime. If you look at the media from the time, there is a ton of hand-wringing about criminals being let out early on parole or clearly guilty people getting acquitted "on a technicality" (usually a 4th amendment violation).
A movie that captures the zeitgeist of the time is the 1983 movie Star Chamber: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_Chamber: "Judge Steven Hardin (Michael Douglas) is an idealistic Los Angeles jurist who gets frustrated when the technicalities of the law prevent the prosecution of two men who are accused of raping and killing a 10-year-old boy. They were driving slowly late at night and attracted the suspicion of two police officers, who wondered if the van's occupants might be burglars. After checking the license plate for violations, the policemen pulled them over for expired paperwork, claimed to have smelled marijuana, then saw a bloody shoe inside the van. However, the paperwork was actually submitted on time (it was merely processed late), meaning the police had no reason to pull over the van and Hardin has no choice (see fruit of the poisonous tree) but to throw out any subsequently discovered evidence, i.e. the bloody shoe. Hardin is even more distraught when the father of the boy attempts to shoot the criminals in court but misses and shoots a cop instead. Subsequently, the father commits suicide while in jail only after he informs Hardin that another boy has been discovered raped and murdered and tells him "This one is on you, your Honor. That boy would be alive if you hadn't let those men go." After hearing all this, Judge Hardin approaches his friend, Judge Caulfield (Hal Holbrook), who tells him of a modern-day Star Chamber: a group of judges who identify criminals who fell through the judicial system's cracks and then take actions against them outside the legal structure."
I wonder what the definition is of something being "on" my phone.
Suppose that in the course of searching my phone, a cop runs the Facebook app. He sees one of my friends make (purely as a joke, as someone who knows him would understand) some asinine, but apparently threatening comment. That comment wasn't there when I last looked, indeed, it's not "there" at all, but on Facebook's server. Could I be considered to be complicit in my friend's (joking) plot?
Now change the circumstance slightly, so instead of FB, it's a SMS text message. Again, it just arrived, so I don't even know it's there. My friend is jokingly asking if I've completed some illegal activity. Can this be used as evidence against me?
The purpose of these 4th Amendment protections isn't just protection of privacy. It's also because in many cases, the evidence implies incorrect conclusions when you assume that the suspect knowingly and intentionally possessed something (of which he was really unaware).
For me, this idea was really driven home by the movie "The Star Chamber"[1]. On the surface it's just a crime thriller, but the idea it posits is really worth thinking about.
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086356/
If you have nothing in your car it's quite ok to have it searched, what specific reason would you have not to consent in the knowledge they can force the issue if they want to?
Your last phrase is not true. They need probable cause for a search, and a speeding charge will not give them that.
Reason #1 to refuse: The possibility of being framed.
Reason #2 to refuse: There could be something in the car that you're not aware of. I remember an old movie called The Star Chamber (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086356/ ). As I recall the plot, a man's van was stolen and used to commit a kidnap/murder, then returned to its initial location. A subsequent illegal police search turned up the kid's shoe under a seat, something the owner really had no clue about. This is a one-in-a-million occurrence, but it's you life we're talking about.