Louisiana Lawmen Play Fast And Loose with the Constitution
On August 29, 2008 in Civil Rights, Drug War, In The News, Law Enforcement
In its 2000 decision in Indianapolis v. Edmond, the US Supreme Court held that efforts to attack the drug trade by holding a checkpoint to look for drugs was a violation of the Fourth Amendment’s protection of the right to be free from unwarranted searches and seizures. In the years since then, a handful of departments across the county, usually in the South, have brazenly trumpeted their resort to drug checkpoints. Read the rest of this entry »
California Supreme Court to Take Up Medical Marijuana Limits Issue
On August 29, 2008 in Courts, In The News, Legalization, Medical Marijuana
The California Supreme Court agreed to revisit the question of how many plants and how much marijuana medical marijuana patients may legally possess. It did so by taking up a prosecutor’s appeal of a May California Appellate Court decision that found a 2003 law designed to make the state’s medical marijuana law operational conflicted with the voter-approved Compassionate Use Act by setting fixed limits on how much marijuana patients may possess.
The state’s Compassionate Use Act does not specify the amount of marijuana a patient may possess. Instead, that law allows an amount of marijuana “reasonably related to the patient’s current medical needs.” Read the rest of this entry »
Latest Illinois Report Prompts Civil Rights Groups to Call for End to Consent Searches
On August 08, 2008 in Civil Rights, Miscellaneous
The Illinois Department of Transportation earlier this month issued its annual report on race and traffic stops. The results showed that police were much more likely to ask minority drivers to consent to searches without probable cause, but that they were much less likely to actually find drugs, guns, or other contraband in consent searches directed at minority drivers.
The results are consistent with the first three years of results under the state’s traffic stop racial profiling monitoring program. That program went into effect in 2004 after the state legislature passed legislation authored by then state Sen. Barack Obama (D) enacting it. Read the rest of this entry »
