I wasn’t disturbed by the practice I mentioned. chgoliz, I was referring to the disturbing practice of doing pelvic exams on unsuspecting patients under anesthesia, etc, without consent that fireshadow discussed above.
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I’m not sure what assumptions you think I hold that you don’t, but if it hasn’t yet become apparent to you that “our” government no longer cares about the rule of law, at least when and how it applies to the government itself, then that is a big assumption on your part that I do not hold.
The reason I don’t think questions of legality/warrants, etc are important is that the government has so twisted the legal language of even the simpler concepts like the 1st and 4th amendments and due process of law that we must use a higher standard to judge actions. Legality no longer holds its fascination for me, just like it doesn’t for black and poor Americans who’ve always known how the law is twisted to oppress them and steal from them.
The more important question is whether a given act is just. Is it just to violate a person’s body without their consent? Is it moral or just for the NSA to perform dragnet surveillance on entire societies?
The hyper-reliance on questions of legality play right into the hands of the sophists and manipulators who decided that torture was legal, that mass surveillance is legal, that mass assassination from the skies is legal, etc. Somehow its harder to imagine the moral justification for torture, but not so hard to imagine the legal one.
Our dialogues need to apply a higher standard than legality if we are to rise above the linguistic game-playing of questions of legality. Why is it that so many non-lawyers love to play the “is it legal” game these days? Don’t any of you realize the true subjectivity of those questions – that they can be decided differently given the skills of the arguers or the biases of the judges?
I know litigation and the legal system are heralded as the salvation of humanity by some in the US, but that’s only by people who don’t really know how the system works, and for whom it works. The real question, if you want to discuss legality, is how close does the legal system come to representing the ideals of justice and morality? In all too many cases it fails. For the poor and minorities it has always failed. For the privileged among us it used to, more or less, work. But when banks that crashed the economy, causing untold immiseration, poverty and death, are given taxpayer bailouts to continue their pillaging; and when those same banks launder literally hundreds of billions of drug cartel dollars and the “justice” system does nothing; but when those without power are subject to the harshest penalties under every law, petty or otherwise, then the legal system you are so fond of is broken, and the discussion needs to be about something more meaningful.
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I think it’s worse than that. We must face the fact that law enforcement has been infiltrated by space aliens.
That is why you should conceal at least one gun in your own rectum. Checkmate rape-cops.
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Yes, those are the assumptions (I use the word loosely; “premises” is probably better) that I was thinking of. I think you make good points about the subjectivity of law and the failures of our legal system, and I agree, just not to the same degree (not to trivialize an important difference in degree).
For the most part you seem to hold that legality isn’t important at all, as I thought you would based on other things you’ve written. But you surprised me when you said, “The real question, if you want to discuss legality, is how close does the legal system come to representing the ideals of justice and morality?”
Exactly! That is the question; I couldn’t agree more. And I think hi_endian’s question is a natural sub-question of that. Is it not natural to approach the question you pose in part by looking at specific injustices and asking how the legal system views them?
Also, I think you’ve overgeneralizing poor, black Americans when you say they’re uninterested in questions of legality, regardless of whether your “who’ve” is meant to be restrictive or not. It’s easy to find examples of poor, black people who respond to injustice by working for change in the legal system. (Of course, the easiest examples to find are people who become prominent and no-longer-poor. Also, I realize you said “fascination”, not “interest”, but of course the distinction is subjective.)
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It’s far worse than JUST cavity searches or uncertified dogs. At least in the first case, the search warrant specified a specific time of validity, as well jurisdiction of the warrant, and BOTH were clearly and flagrantly violated.
The FIRST medical facility refused to cooperate for ethics reasons, and so they crossed the county line, and thus the warrant was invalid. Additionally, the surgical procedure started in the very early morning hours, and the warrant expired at 10 PM.
This was clear and flagrant abuse under color of law. The second incident was similar AND involved the same cops. The THIRD incident was reportedly ~75 miles away, and conducted by Feds. . .
I think you’re right that the work is to make the legal system operate better, and I never meant to suggest that poor/minority people have no interest in forming a better legal system. My point is that the system we have is not moral or just, and those groups know this better than most. I guess my reason for belittling such questions in this forum is that its not the place such questions will be decided. What can be decided here is how we feel about such things. I find technical questions serve to diminish anger and change the question from what we want to what we have. It has the feel of “I despise X but …”. And everything before the “but” is forgotten.
In this particular case I reacted strongly because to me warrant or not, violating a person’s body is always wrong. In fact, this incident reminds me of nothing if not torture. Is the discovery of some classes of drugs that some people in society have decided are “illegal” (there’s that word again) more vital than protecting human rights and dignity? And how would a warrant protect those same interests and people? Do judges really have such wisdom? Maybe some do, but given they are almost uniquely drawn from a particular class of people, and are deeply invested in the system itself, I don’t have much hope of it.
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I don’t understand. This woman looks white.
How do you know the race of the victim? The picture in the post is of the lawyer.
Ah, that explains everything.
Don’t you think respecting what little privacy the victim may have left is kind of important?
@Boundegar probably assumed that the picture posted was of the victim and was trying to make a point about police typically targeting non-white people (so targeting a white woman would seem odd).
For the first case, with David Eckert, his lawyer is quoted as saying that he is white while the officers were Hispanic: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/11/05/man-seeks-millions-after-nm-police-force-colonoscopy-in-drug-search . I do not know about the race of the second guy.
I do not see where @Boundegar made any demands that the female victim reveal her identity.
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No, I didn’t mean to imply any demand was made. In the other cases, at least some of the officers had hispanic surnames, though that says nothing about ethnicity.
I would actually hate to see this one get diverted into race relations, as it would tend to detract from the matter of basic civil rights abuses under color of authority. Seems obvious that if anyone can be targeted like this at all, then everyone can. I would hope there won’t even be a chance to snag any stats about that. If we can end it altogether, any other prejudices or numbers won’t matter anyway.
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Exactly, pretty sure that putting together ‘rape squads’ is widely considered a war crime.
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Rape is illegal. Forced anal or vaginal exams without consent is rape.
Furthermore, when 2 or more people conspire to violate a constitutionally protected right (unreasonable search and seizure comes to mind) they are in criminal violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241 : US Code - Section 241 which states in part
(…) if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
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I suspect the number of times that a repeat cavity search reveals drugs that didn’t appear on an X-ray approaches zero.
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I would suspect that as well, but it is still an important question. I would think that there would be rules regarding cavity searches that clearly state things like “If an x-ray shows no sign of foreign objects inside the suspect, then this is sufficient evidence that the suspect is not carrying anything.”
Trying to search for information regarding this has mostly led to news articles about these recent cases, but for crossing the border it appears that “strip searches, cavity searches, involuntary X-rays and other particularly invasive investigative techniques” “require reasonable suspicion, but no warrant” ( https://ssd.eff.org/your-computer/govt/warrantless )
So, not only did searching about x-rays versus cavity searches lead to many news articles about the three most recent cases, it also led to information about other cases:
Texas
Two women were searched on the side of the road (!!) and got $185,000: http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Roadside-Cavity-Search-Lawsuit-Settled-for-185000-213189691.html
Albany, NY
Here is a case where a guy was cavity searched (and charged for it) and then sued. He won $125,000: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Man-sedated-during-search-gets-125-000-546520.php
Another woman, however, was convicted of lying after she complained about being searched and was sentenced to one-and-a-half years: https://secure.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=812090&category=REGION Apparently the case against her was built on the testimony of a man who received a plea offer for the robberies he committed: http://alb.merlinone.net/mweb/wmsql.wm.request?oneimage&imageid=6724624 and https://secure.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?newsdate=2/18/2013&navigation=nextprior&category=REGION&storyID=773289
Another woman says that she was searched at a hospital, sued, but then dropped the lawsuit: http://www.troyrecord.com/general-news/20081202/woman-drops-charge-against-albany-cops
Milwaukee
Police officers were charged with performing illegal cavity searches on multiple suspects: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/10/milwaukee-cops-charged_n_1954772.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milwaukee_Police_Department#Strip_searches
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Oh, well…yeah.
Not saying it has never happened or still can’t. But I am saying that best practice guidelines have existed in the UK since before I qualified and were followed at my medical school and everywhere I have practiced since.
Plus if someone wants to line up medical students to do pelvic exams without consent on someone I’m anaesthetising, they’ll have to get through me first.
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