worrisome shit

[rone]

So is the decision in US v. Kelly Gould a stomping on the 4th Amendment? It seems to me that the officers behaved correctly in that case, but should that sort of assumption be made by default?

I'm trying to look for more information on this, but it seems very sparse or very partisan.

Comments

[lots42.livejournal.com]

The story doesn't make sense.

-Who- let the cops in to search for Gould?

If it was the houseowner this was irrelevant, as this invalidates a need for a warrant.

And if Gould was suspected of making those violent threats, why didn't they just get the damned warrent in the first place?

[dreamcarnival.livejournal.com]

If you click in the article to the link to the case (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/5th/0230629cr0p.pdf) you can get the details, but the main version of the case (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/5th/0230629cv0p.pdf) is 63 pages long. The person who let the person in was just a friend, Dennis Cabral, who also lived in the trailer home, evidently, who had "no actual or apparent authority to authorize a search of the bedroom." I think they should have gone and gotten the warrant also. I haven't had time to plough through the 63 page long version of the case but eventually I will. Footnote 1 from the 20-page case: "1The district court–without appellate challenge–found that “the officers’ initial entry into the mobile home was legal, because they had the voluntary consent of a resident. However, Mr. Cabral had neither actual nor apparent authority to consent to the search of the master bedroom.” We do not interpret the district court’s ruling as including a finding that the presence of the officers, when they initially observed that defendant was not in bed, was in violation of defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights."