Posts tagged American Civil Liberties Union

Supreme Court Watch: Salinas v. Texas

59
4 weeks ago
by dcpetterson in

When do you have this right?

The Supreme Court will today heart oral argu­ments in Sali­nas v. Texas. This case will address an enor­mous out­stand­ing ques­tion on Fifth Amend­ment rights. We all know that some­one accused of a crime in Amer­i­can is allowed to remain silent both dur­ing ques­tion­ing after being arrested, and at trial. The ques­tion is, do the same rights against self-​​incrimination apply before an arrest and an accu­sa­tion is made? As was asked in a 1980 deci­sion, the Court has not yet ruled on “whether or under what cir­cum­stances pre-​​arrest silence” while being ques­tioned by law enforce­ment is enti­tled to protection.

The ques­tion before the Court is pretty straight­for­ward:

Whether or under what cir­cum­stances the Fifth Amend­ment’s Self-​​Incrimination Clause pro­tects a defendant’s refusal to answer law enforce­ment ques­tion­ing before he has been arrested or read his Miranda rights.

(more…)

Supreme Court Watch: Missouri v. McNeely

34
4 months ago
by dcpetterson in

How far can police go in obtain­ing evi­dence with­out per­mis­sion? There are some instances (called “exi­gent cir­cum­stances”) in which the law holds that Fourth Amend­ment pro­tec­tion against unrea­son­able searches and seizures, and the need for a search war­rant, are com­monly sus­pended. The lim­its of this idea will be tested in the Supreme Court today.

The case of Mis­souri v. McNeely asks whether a law enforce­ment offi­cer may obtain a non­con­sen­sual and war­rant­less blood sam­ple from some­one sus­pected of dri­ving while intox­i­cated, under the argu­ment that wait­ing the time needed to obtain a war­rant would allow “the nat­ural dis­si­pa­tion of alco­hol in the blood­stream.” This, argues the State of Mis­souri, pro­vides “exi­gent cir­cum­stances” which per­mit the State to over­ride the driver’s Fourth Amend­ment rights. (more…)

Dread Scott?

48
11 months ago
by dcpetterson in

Must we now dread Scott?

A lit­tle over a week ago, I wrote about Florida’s impor­tance in the upcom­ing elec­tion, and the efforts of the Repub­li­can gov­er­nor there to dis­en­fran­chise Florid­i­ans who are likely to vote Demo­c­ra­tic. There have been fur­ther devel­op­ments in the story.

The U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice (DOJ) has filed a law­suit in an effort to block Gov­er­nor Rick Scott’s attempt to purge minori­ties from the voter rolls. In response, Gov­er­nor Scott announced his intent to sue the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity to gain access to a data­base he says will assist his efforts.

Gov­er­nor Scott’s con­tro­ver­sial pro­gram is intended, he says, to ensure that non-​​citizens in Florida don’t vote. The state is match­ing infor­ma­tion on driver’s licenses (which often includes cit­i­zen­ship sta­tus) against lists of reg­is­tered vot­ers. Over 2,600 let­ters were sent — 87 per­cent to African-​​Americans and His­pan­ics — inform­ing selected vot­ers that they would be dropped from the vot­ing rolls unless they could prove their cit­i­zen­ship within thirty days. Many of the peo­ple indi­cated as non-​​citizens on their licenses have since become cit­i­zens, and sim­ply not altered their records. In Miami-​​Dade County, forty of those receiv­ing notice have been shown to be non-​​citizens. More than five hun­dred have already sup­plied proof of cit­i­zen­ship, pro­vid­ing (so far) more than a ten-​​to-​​one ratio of false pos­i­tives. (more…)

Torture

12
1 year ago
by Michael Weiss in

The United States did it. Pres­i­dent George W. Bush knew about it. And he lied about it to all of us.

This is all infor­ma­tion that can be gleaned by the roughly 140,000 for­merly clas­si­fied doc­u­ments obtained by the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union (ACLU) via Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act requests. ACLU researcher Larry Siems then got the unen­vi­able task of read­ing through all of those documents.

It took him two years.

As part of the project, he started The Tor­ture Report, a web­site devoted to the research. More recently, with the com­ple­tion of his research, he pub­lished The Tor­ture Report: What the Doc­u­ments say about America’s Post 9⁄11 Tor­ture Pro­gram.

Here are some of the low­lights con­tained in the moun­tain of doc­u­ments. (more…)

Supreme Court Watch: Minneci v. Pollard

17
1 year ago
by dcpetterson in

Taft Fed­eral Prison

Today, the Supreme Court will hear argu­ments on whether employ­ees of pri­vate prison oper­a­tors can be sued for vio­lat­ing the con­sti­tu­tional rights of inmates. It is clear that the gov­ern­ment and its rep­re­sen­ta­tives must not vio­late the rights of prison inmates, and can be sued if they do. Does this extend also to the employ­ees of pri­vate contractors?

The Lit­i­gants

Five employ­ees of a com­pany that runs a fed­eral prison in Taft, Cal­i­for­nia — Mar­garet Min­neci, Jonathan E. Akanno, Robert Spack, Bob D. Stiefer and Becky Maness — are ask­ing the Supreme Court to recon­sider an adverse judge­ment from the Ninth Cir­cuit Court of Appeals. The com­pany for which they worked at the time was called Wack­en­hut Cor­rec­tions Cor­po­ra­tion. It is now part of The GEO Group.

The respon­dent is Richard Lee Pol­lard, an inmate at the prison, who orig­i­nally sued Ms. Min­neci et al. for vio­lat­ing his Con­sti­tu­tional rights. He was then serv­ing part of a 20-​​year sen­tence for drug traf­fick­ing and firearms crimes.

Mr. Pol­lard claims to have suf­fered injuries at the hands of Ms. Min­neci and other employ­ees of GEO, in vio­la­tion of Con­sti­tu­tional pro­tec­tions against cruel and unusual pun­ish­ment. But employ­ees of a pri­vate con­trac­tors are not employ­ees of the gov­ern­ment. Does this relieve them of the bur­den of fol­low­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion? (more…)

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