Fourth Circuit takes aim at gun owners' civil rights #U.S. v Robinson

One of the vehicle's occupants !
So this broad authority to seize and disarm people applies to more than just the driver, who may have committed some traffic violation. A driver who may be suspected of some minor offense involving how and where the vehicle is driven, or parked.

It's open season on passengers and witness-bystanders, too.
Anybody who potentially might object to what a cop asks them to do (mere passengers and even non-passenger witnesses to a crime can be seized and ordered to identify themselves, too, if the government wants to go down that road and risk offending people and provoking the ACLU's outcry.)

This ruling isn't just bad for the given scenario from that one case-- it's a slippery slope for sure.

 

Well, they always say that tough facts make for bad caselaw.
Here, we have a black male seen handling a gun and loitering next to a seedy apartment complex known for drug activity, in the highest-crime area of the city. The man turns out to be a convicted felon, and although it's not something cops knew when they first confronted him, it's certainly something the judges hearing his case knew about, and may have allowed to influence them. If cops aren't supposed to profile people, fine, but we all know they do, and the courts will be reluctant to let a bona-fide guilty-as-hell criminal get away with a crime just due to that.

So, this court creates a new type of profiling that's ok.

Black males loitering in high drug areas = bad profiling. Cops can't make any assumptions about that.

Gun possession = dangers, imminent threat to cops. GOOD PROFILING.
Gun owners can go nuts and start shooting police officers at any moment. That's legitimate profiling. EVEN IF THE PERSON HAS A CARRY PERMIT.
Permits don't matter, says this court, because the danger comes from being armed and having a cop challenge you, NOT from the legality of what and how you're carrying.

So, we're back to profiling. The Court is reading minds. If you have a gun and you have to deal with a cop in the cop's official capacity, you're likely to want to shoot the cop. Can't have that. So we'll take away your rights now, BEFORE you can commit the crime we fear you're thinking about committing.

 

What a broad brush the justices paint with. Maybe I'll start carrying in Thunderwear and they can fondle my junk looking for it.

 

The most important part of the article—where this actually applies—was left out by everyone.

 

My personal opinion is that this ruling is contrary to the cases cited within it.

While I think it is a bad ruling, it does still hinge on the initial stop being legal, and I read nothing in it that legalizes stop and frisks on people simply for being armed. The individual was legally seized under Maryland v. Wilson. It is the court's analysis after that point that is in question.

 

And that's the part that bothers me, not "... has a reasonable, aticulable suspicion that someone possesses a firearm" , just a belief, in other words not even an "inchoate and unparticularized suspicion*" but a mere hunch.


*plagiarized from Terry v Ohio.

Then again, the ruling is right in line with the judge dismissing civil suit against an officers suspicionless seizure in the great Gary Pirkle Park pirkling,

 

Do officers and judges routinely have sex with each other?

 

Are you conceding that your seizure was legal? If not, the cases are not in line at all.

 

Well, the judge conceded that it was all legal and proper, so who am I to argue?


But no, and it STILL irks me.

 

From what I can read and understand in that case opinion, this may be the perfect case for SCOTUS to take up.

Nemo

 

I like the prior 4th Circuit opinion-- the one from February last year, decided by the normal 3-judge panel.

http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Published/144902.P.pdf

************ As for the new "en banc" opinion *************

The problem with getting SCOTUS to grant certiorari on this is that it's a pretty narrow question, very fact-specific.

Mr. Robinson was lawfully stopped for a traffic violation.
Even if that cops were using the traffic violation as a mere excuse (pretext) to stop him and detain him over the concealed handgun allegations, pretextual stops are legal. (Whren v. U.S.) (1996).

So, the narrow issue is can a person who is lawfully detained as a suspect in a separate crime, who is reasonably believed to be carrying a LOADED and CONCEALED handgun (both of these things are important to the 4th circuit en banc opinion) be disarmed and detained a bit longer to have the legality of the situation checked-out?

Is there another U.S. Court of Appeals case that says NO, even when the armed citizen is a suspect in a crime and was lawfully stopped for that?

Is there a split among the circuits?

Well, yes. U.S. v. Leo (7th Cir. 2015). The cops had a 911 call that a couple of teenagers were breaking into an apartment. Cops saw the teenagers in the area both before and immediately after the 911 call. The 911 caller said one kid had a gun, and he placed it in his backpack. Cops detained both of them on reasonable suspicion (not probable cause; this was an investigatory stop). That part was OK. But after they were handcuffed, searching Mr. Leo's zippered-shut backpack was not OK. That was not like a Terry v. Ohio pat-down for a gun that the suspect could have drawn in a second. Opening Mr. Leo's bag was not "incidental to" any lawful arrest (it turns out the apartment wasn't burglarized. The 911 caller was wrong.) Leo did not consent. There were no "exigent circumstances" that made getting a warrant signed by a judge impossible due to time or distance or mobility of the suspects.

The LEO court--the 7th Circuit-- said there is no gun exception to the 4th Amendment. Just being suspected of carrying a gun and being suspected of some other crime is not enough when the gun is not within easy reach and when the suspect is already handcuffed, and when there's no reason to believe that the gun was being carried illegally (cops had no way of knowing Mr. Leo didn't have a carry permit).

So yeah, after Trump's new Justice gets on the Court, let's hope they take up this issue and rule on whether "officer safety" can flatly trump gun rights and allow every cop to treat every armed citizen like a wanna-be cop killer.

 

"Fourth Circuit shreds civil liberties for public gun carry"

Just. Wow.
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-bl...uit-judges-turn-legal-contortionist-over-open

 

Can the President fire circuit court judges?

That's one nasty swamp I'd like to see drained. What do those fools think will happen when they strip away the remaining veneer off our rights? Are they trying to get the Tree of Liberty watered again or something?