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posted by martyb on Sunday August 28 2016, @01:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the wheels-of-justice dept.

https://theintercept.com/2016/08/26/sheriffs-raid-to-find-blogger-who-criticized-him-was-unconstitutional-court-rules/

An appellate court in Baton Rouge ruled Thursday that a raid on a police officer's house in search of the blogger who had accused the sheriff of corruption was unconstitutional. The Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeals argued that Sheriff Jerry Larpenter's investigation into the blog ExposeDAT had flawed rationale: the alleged defamation was not actually a crime as applied to a public official.

The unanimous ruling from the three-judge panel comes after police officer Wayne Anderson and his wife Jennifer Anderson were denied assistance in local and federal court. "I love it when justice is tangible," Jerri Smitko, one of the Andersons' laywers, told The Intercept. "With that piece of paper it says that what they did was unconstitutional — that's a great feeling because you're holding it in your hand and it's vindication for people that they intended to oppress," she added.

The raid was sparked by the sheriff's investigation into who was behind the anonymous blog that accused local officials, including him, of corruption and fraud. Through a blog and a Facebook page called "John Turner," ExposeDAT used public records to show conflicts of interest. The sheriff sought warrants when Tony Alford, a local business owner, filed a criminal complaint about the blog. On August 2, Larpenter and his deputies raided the Andersons' house after they traced the IP address of the John Turner Facebook page through a warrant to AT&T. The information AT&T provided, according to an affidavit, gave the sheriff an address and a name: Wayne Anderson. The court found that the raid on the Andersons' house was unjustified.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by tathra on Sunday August 28 2016, @03:01PM

    by tathra (3367) on Sunday August 28 2016, @03:01PM (#394220)

    look, if you commit a crime under color of law, it should be punished 10x as a normal citizen.

    i agree. all public employees should be held to a higher standard than regular civilians. being a public employee means you're intentionally choosing a job which requires selflessness by design, to serve the constitution (remember that oath of office? violating it is a federal crime [cornell.edu]) and the public good. we are their bosses, not the other way around, why aren't we holding our employees (literally our employees, paid from our taxes) to a higher standard?

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by TheGratefulNet on Sunday August 28 2016, @03:27PM

    by TheGratefulNet (659) on Sunday August 28 2016, @03:27PM (#394226)

    the system has gotton so big and the citizens SO POWERLESS that we have LOST CONTROL OF OUR GOVERNMENT.

    now, if you read our history and our laws, we knew this would happen and we created laws so that citizens can keep the government in fear, in check, as it is said. we let that go, little by little, and now its impossible (100% impossible) to reel it back in with anything short of a full out war and revolution. not kidding - wish I was. but the power base is so strong and their addiction to their own power is so strong, it will NEVER be given up without a major fight. and since the polite man's way of doing things (courts, laws) are all in the favor of the elite, we can't expect remedy that way. at some point, things will boil and all hell will break loose. it has to happen. it will. the only question is: when.

    we used to have the right to bear arms, mostly so that the government would think twice about trying to bully its citizens. I guess that ship has sailed and our 2nd ammendment is now a joke. we can't own anything we want and our firepower is basically pee shooters compared to organized governments. even the police force has planned for this and has been bulking up in order to defend the elites (oh, if those ignorant cops only knew that they were fools and being taken as fools by the elites that they really serve; I wonder how many of them really know what their role in society is? its not to stop bad guys; its to protect the ruling class PERIOD. full stop.)

    read the lyrics to this old song. you'll see what I'm talking about:

    http://www.metrolyrics.com/banks-of-marble-lyrics-iris-dement.html [metrolyrics.com]

    [quote]
    I've traveled 'round this country
    from shore to shining shore
    It really made me wonder
    the things I heard and saw

    I saw the weary farmer
    plowing sod and loam
    l heard the auction hammer
    just a-knocking down his home

    But the banks are made of marble
    with a guard at every door
    and the vaults are stuffed with silver
    that the farmer sweated for.
    [/quote]

    hint: the guards (cops) exist to protect the weath and 'safety' of the ruling elite. PERIOD. cut thru the fake bs and you'll see this. and you should feel betrayed by this knowledge if its new to you. 'protect and serve' is a tv show tagline from the 60's, but it never was real. it was always a lie when it referred to regular people.

    --
    "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday August 28 2016, @07:12PM

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 28 2016, @07:12PM (#394297) Journal

      It's been in process since before the civil war. This strongly indicates that it is a systematic problem. The system was designed to work with strong state governments and a weak federal government, but rapid transportation and communication made that unworkable.

      The proper action would have been to repeatedly amend the constitution, but the amendments that were able to get approved didn't address the underlying problems, and so we have troops on foreign soil in undeclared wars, a ridiculous interpretation of the interstate commerce clause, and man other farcical legal presumptions. Often this is because there *is* no national consensus. Consider the 2nd amendment. There is absolutely NO justification there for the government to decide what constitutes a "well regulated militia". Clearly most of the founders would consider that most people would own firearms and be organized to use them, but nowhere does it imply a role for the government in that. One could argue that it should be the job of the state government, but not the federal. However with a dense rapidly moving, and mostly urban, population is seems probable that regulation is, indeed, needed. This implies not that the current amendment should be new-speaked into meaning something that it doesn't say, but rather that there should be an amendment dealing with it. However there is no national consensus, so no such amendment would have a chance of passage. This is clearly something that should be left to the state governments, or if there is no state consensus, then to the county and city governments. Once a larger consensus can be attained, THEN is the time for laws with wider coverage, and only when there is a national consensus should there be even an attempt at a federal amendment.

      Perhaps is should be easier to make amendment, but the laws need to be intelligible, so there should be a requirement that most high school graduates should agree on what any law means in order for it to be valid. (Sampling is valid, but be sure to use large enough random samples and to cover the entire demographic.)

      --
      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday August 29 2016, @12:27AM

    by Thexalon (636) on Monday August 29 2016, @12:27AM (#394371)

    Why aren't we holding our employees (literally our employees, paid from our taxes) to a higher standard?

    In the case of police in the US, it's because for decades the majority of white people were more afraid of black people than they were of police, and willing to tolerate and even support police abuse of black people if it meant they could feel safer from black people, and the legislators wrote the laws accordingly. That's less true than it was even 20 years ago, but it's still true enough that there isn't the political will to change the laws that were written to favor police over citizens (with the unwritten understanding that the police are supposed to only take advantage of that when dealing with racial minorities).

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.