Tag: news

Video of a California Highway Patrol officer punching a woman on
the head on the side of a highway in Los Angeles got
wide attention in July. Back when the incident was exposed, CHP
promised to investigate the matter.

Yesterday, following a nine-hour mediation session, the CHP
agreed to a $1.5 million settlement. And the officer involved has
agreed to resign. From the
Associated Press:

The statement said that Officer Daniel Andrew, who joined the
CHP in 2012 and has been on paid administrative leave since the
incident, “has elected to resign.”

Andrew could still be charged criminally in the case. The CHP
forwarded the results of its investigation of the incident to Los
Angeles County prosecutors last month, saying he could face serious
charges but none have been filed yet.

Much of the money will come in the form of a “special needs
trust,” according to the AP. The woman, Marlene Pinnock, has
bipolar disorder and apparently was off her medication and
wandering in traffic when the officer arrived. She told the AP that
she thought the officer was trying to kill her.

And while Andrew resigning may be considered justice, I would be
wary that he could be easily be rehired by some other law
enforcement agency.

Here’s the video for anybody who missed it in July:

On Monday September 29, the U.S. Supreme Court returns from its
summer break to meet in private conference, where the justices will
consider dozens of new cases up for possible review in the October
2014 term. One case in particular stands out as eminently worthy of
the Supreme Court’s attention.

That case is
Heffner v. Murphy. At issue is a February 2014

ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit which
upheld the constitutionality of Pennsylvania’s 1952 Funeral
Director Law. According to the 3rd Circuit, that state law must
remain on the books, even though several of its out-of-date
provisions no longer make any sense in light of modern technology
and various developments in the funeral industry. For example, the
law forbids funeral homes from offering food, though they are
allowed to offer beverages. What’s the difference? Nobody can say.
“From a public health perspective,” one medical expert testified
earlier in the case, “I find no medical or scientific merit in the
argument that serving food at a funeral home would constitute a
potential public health risk.” The state of Pennsylvania did not
rebut that testimony.

Yet according to the 3rd Circuit, such modern facts are
basically irrelevant to the issue at hand. What matters, the court
said, is that state lawmakers thought they had a rational reason
for enacting the legislation back in 1952. “It may well be that the
legislature’s concern had more force in an earlier time when
refrigeration and sanitation were not as developed as they are
today [and] outdoor temperatures could more readily affect
sanitation as well as food storage and preservation,” the court
observed. “However, there is a fundamental difference between
legislative enactments that may be archaic and those that are
irrational for purposes of our substantive due process
inquiry.”

Is there really such a difference? Not according to the Supreme
Court. In its landmark 1938 decision in
United States v. Carolene Products Co., the Court said:
“[T]he constitutionality of a statute predicated upon the existence
of a particular state of facts may be challenged by showing to the
court that those facts have ceased to exist.”

In other words, Heffner v. Murphy asks the Supreme
Court to clarify whether it meant what it said in Carolene
Products, or whether the 3rd Circuit was correct to say that
“archaic” government restrictions can survive judicial review even
when those restrictions are premised on “facts [that] have ceased
to exist.” Because Carolene Products is one of the most
frequently cited opinions in constitutional law, it’s essential for
the Supreme Court to take a firm stand on its meaning here.

Leading the charge against the irrational Pennsylvania
regulations is a licensed funeral director named Ernest Heffner,
represented by the lawyers at the Institute for Justice, a national
public interest law firm. “Judicial review requires judicial
engagement with the facts of every case,” Heffner told the Supreme
Court in his initial petition seeking review. “The courts cannot
serve as Madison’s ‘bulwark of liberty’ if they are instructed to
ignore the actual irrationality of enforcing a law today in
deference to facts that disappeared long ago.”

Will the Supreme Court agree with him?

It should—if it cares about jurisprudential consistency. For
instance, when the Court struck down laws in Michigan and New York
in 2005 that effectively prevented out-of-state wineries from
directly shipping to consumers (while allowing in-state wineries to
make such shipments), it invalidated the protectionist schemes in
part because of the states’ antiquated claim that “they cannot
police direct shipments by out-of-state wineries.” To the contrary,
the Court observed in
Granholm v. Heald, “improvements in technology have
eased the burden of monitoring out-of-state wineries. Background
checks can be done electronically. Financial records and sales data
can be mailed, faxed, or submitted via e-mail.” The states’ lame,
outmoded justification did not pass constitutional muster.

Similarly, when the Supreme Court invalidated a portion of the
1965 Voting Rights Act in 2013’s
Shelby County v. Holder, it did so because that law
was premised on the existence of what the majority termed
“decades-old data and eradicated practices.” “Voting discrimination
still exists; no one doubts that,” the Court observed. “The
question is whether the Act’s extraordinary measures, including its
disparate treatment of the States, continue to satisfy
constitutional requirements. As we put it a short time ago, ‘the
Act imposes current burdens and must be justified by current
needs.'”

Pennsylvania’s Funeral Director Law also imposes current
burdens. It must therefore also be justified by current needs.
While it’s conceivable that the law’s contested provisions might
have made a certain amount of sense back in 1952, there’s no reason
to think those same restrictions serve any sort of legitimate
public health or safety purpose today—a point that even the 3rd
Circuit reluctantly conceded in regards to the nonsensical ban on
serving food in funeral homes (“the Pennsylvania General Assembly
may want to revisit the need for some of these restrictions”).

“Restriction of liberty today must be justified by some
legitimate public purpose today,” Ernest Heffner told the
Court in his briefing.

He’s exactly right. The Supreme Court should take his case and
reverse the 3rd Circuit.

On September 25, 1789—exactly 225 years ago
today—Congress passed the
ten amendments that make up the Bill of Rights.

Yes, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution—the ones
that protect everything from free speech to due process—originated
as a series of bills in Congress. They were drafted by future
president James Madison, at the time a congressman from Virginia.
Madison also wrote the text of the Constitution, which had
established a system of limited government but hadn’t explicitly
protected individual rights. With the Bill of Rights, it now did
both.

What was the impetus for these revolutionary changes? Baylen
Linnekin argues that one key element was spiraling British attacks
on colonists’ “food freedom.”

Attacks on food freedom incensed the Founding Fathers. The list
of grievances Thomas Jefferson articulates in the Declaration of
Independence includes rebukes
of King George for permitting British troops to “eat out the[]
substance” of colonists’ cupboards and for trampling on colonists’
fishing rights.

View this article.

Video footage has been released in the
shooting death of John Crawford, the man who was gunned down in
a Beavercreek, Ohio, Walmart by cops who apparently thought he was
armed and dangerous. In reality, Crawford had picked up a pellet
rifle from the hardware section of the store and was carrying it
around while he talked on the phone.

The police maintained that Crawford had refused orders to drop
the weapon; the video footage proves definitively that that was
not the case—the cops shot the man almost immediately
after encountering him. Claims in some media outlets that Crawford
had been walking around the store and pointing the gun at people
also seem false, unless those occurrences happened during the few
seconds that Crawford was out of range of the surveillance
camera.

Nevertheless, a grand jury declined to indict the two officers
involved, according to
The Huffington Post. The U.S. Department of Justice
will look into the matter, however.

When this
story first broke, many wondered whether mitigating factors
would emerge to explain, if not justify, the reaction of law
enforcement officers. To my eyes at least, the surveillance video
confirms the worst case scenario: The cops killed this man for
almost no reason whatsoever.

Watch the video below.

A bit of Internet buzz in
recent weeks has it that the Canadian government is warning its
citizens not to bring large amounts of cash to the United States
because cops might steal it under the guise of “asset forfeiture.”
It’s not really true, though it ought to be. It is true,
however, that the United States government warns Americans
traveling to Canada that border authorities could well go pawing
through their cell phones and laptops without any cause at all.

The buzz started with a piece by CBC Senior Washington
Correspondent Neil Macdonald
cautioning:

On its official website, the Canadian government informs its
citizens that “there is no limit to the amount of money that you
may legally take into or out of the United States.” Nonetheless, it
adds, banking in the U.S. can be difficult for non-residents, so
Canadians shouldn’t carry large amounts of cash.

That last bit is excellent advice, but for an entirely different
reason than the one Ottawa cites.

There’s a shakedown going on in the U.S., and the perps are in
uniform.

Macdonald never claimed the warning is
related to asset forfeiture (it’s actually because of U.S. Customs
requirements), but uses it as a starting point for a riff on asset
forfeiture, building on the Washington Post‘s
great coverage of that nationwide law enforcement scam.

But the Internet took the ball and ran with it, with sites
and bloggers
announcing that the Canadian government cautions travelers
about uniformed highwaymen south of the border.

Again, the Canadian government should offer that
warning, but it doesn’t.

But the U.S. State Department does
caution travelers about warrantless searches of electronic
equipment for travelers heading north of the border.

Canada has strict laws concerning child pornography, and in
recent years there has been an increase in random checks of
electronic media of travelers entering Canada.

Computers and cell phones are subject to searches without a
warrant at the border and illegal content can result in the seizure
of the computer as well as detention, arrest, and prosecution of
the bearer.

The searches are justified as attempts to intercept child
pornography, but just-because pawing through your stuff by
government officials is intrusive and annoying no matter the
reason. It’s also potentially dangerous, since there’s no way of
knowing what officials will find intriguing while scanning your
hard drive.

Then again, the United States
does the same thing. In the course of a lawsuit over the
practice, the
ACLU noted, “Between October 1, 2008 and June 2, 2010, over
6,500 people—nearly 3,000 of them U.S. citizens—were subjected to a
search of their electronic devices as they crossed U.S. borders.
DHS claims it has the right to conduct these invasive searches
whenever it likes, to whomever it likes, and without having any
individualized suspicion.”

The official policy is here,
and it has been
upheld in court.

Ain’t
travel fun?