martybegan
Diamond Member
- Apr 5, 2010
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How can a person be stopped unlawfully if there is an outstanding warrent for that person's arrest?This is where you and I disagree. Perhaps where the Supreme Court and I would disagree also. If there is an outstanding warrent for arrest on a person, then that person has already lost by due process the right to not be detained, arrested and searched. A warrent for arrest is a document that has to be approved by a judge and should carry even more weight than a search warrent.If the stop is random, anything found during the stop is inadmissible for whatever they find, so he would skate on the illegal drug charge, but still be detained for the murder warrant. The warrant doesn't go away because of the random stop. The warrant overrides the randomness of the stop, but the randomness makes anything found inadmissible.
The fun question is, lets say he has a murder warrant, and the murder weapon is found during the random stop. The murder warrant is still valid, but is the found weapon (and lets say it wasn't obvious on the guy, say in a bag of clothes) admissible in the murder case?
I would say no.
Suppose Joe Blow is walking down the street, and there is a warrent for the arrest of Joe. Does the warrent give authority to cops to arrest Joe. I say yes. In fact, the cops have the authority even even if they don't know it. A particular cop may not yet know about the warrent or know what Joe looks like, but the existence of the warrent still gives that cop the authority to arrest Joe Blow.
The problem with that is that it condones random searches. Remember, I think that in the case of a non-flagrant unlawful stop the gun would be in. The cop had some cause, even if it wasn't enough. To me only a truly random stop, a flagrant violation, would render the gun inadmissible.
Because you can't just randomly stop people on the street looking for warrants.
Why not?
Because that would be a flagrant violation of the rules cops use to see if they can stop and question someone.