|
This is a purely educational website. Nothing here is legal advice or creates or implies an attorney-client relationship. If you have a specific legal issue, PLEASE talk to a lawyer who practices where you live—laws vary from place to place, and how they're applied varies from courthouse to courthouse. Your local county bar association can probably refer someone who handles matters like yours.
By using this site, you agree that you are awesome. Use of this site also constitutes acceptance of its Terms of Service and Privacy Policies, which are known to medical science as a cure for insomnia.
It's best to keep all discussions in the comments. But if you really need to reach Nathan privately, go ahead and email him at n.e.burney@gmail.com. He won't mind.
THE ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO LAW and the PEEKING JUSTICE logo are pretty damn cool trademarks and should probably be registered one of these days.
© Nathaniel Burney. All rights reserved, though they really open up once you get to know them.
|
|
I don’t know about anyone’s musical tastes, but right now the exchange between Jay-Z and the police officer in “99 Problems” seems relevant.
“While the song’s meaning is widely debated, the chorus ‘If you’re having girl problems, I feel bad for you son/I’ve got 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one’ was defined in Jay-Z’s book, Decoded, as referring to a police dog. Jay-Z wrote that in 1994 he was pulled over by police while carrying cocaine in a secret compartment in his sunroof. Jay-Z refused to let the police search the car and the police called for the drug sniffing dogs. However, the dogs never showed up and the police had to let Jay-Z go. Moments after he drove away, he wrote that he saw a police car with the dogs drive by.”
Also:
“In 2011 Southwestern Law School Professor Caleb Mason wrote an article with a line-by-line analysis of the second verse of the song from a legal perspective referencing the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, citing it as a useful tool for teaching law students search and seizure law involving search warrants, Terry stops, racial profiling, the exclusionary rule, and the motor vehicle exception. The article notes the song lyrics are legally incorrect in indicating that a driver can refuse an order to exit the car and that police would need a warrant to search a locked glove compartment or trunk.”
Wow – I was actually thinking about Mason’s article when I was reading this. Thanks for saving me the trouble of looking for it.
So this comic implies that saying yes to “may we come in” counts as giving consent to a search. I have a few questions about that.
Say your home has a mud room or vestibule–if you allow an officer to step into that room, does that count as giving consent to search the entire house? Does simply allowing the officer to cross the threshold of the door count as consent to search the entire house?
What if you allow the officers to step through your door and there’s a section of the house that’s part of the same building, but which is completely separated from the rest of the house by walls? By this, I mean that to access this other section from the area into which you allowed the officers, you would have to go outside and enter the building through another door because there are no doorways inside between the two sections. Would allowing the officers to step into one section count as giving consent to search the other section?
Excellent question, and I’ll be addressing this on the next pages if you can wait!
Fun fact: In Iowa (and I think in New Jersey too), the police DO have to tell you that you’re free to go, and that you can refuse to consent to the search. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ia-supreme-court/1584122.html
And of course, if you don’t consent, I can continue to detain and harass you about the contents of the thing you won’t consent to let me search, until your denial amounts to probable cause.
Could searching the bag of someone who is severly impaired (blotto, say) be considered unlawful, even if they said “Yeesh, officher”?
That’s #2 above.