Source: https://excoplawstudent.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/does-boston-deserve-neither-liberty-nor-security/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 14:16:16+00:00

Document:
Does Boston Deserve Neither Liberty Nor Security?
Benjamin Franklin, A Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania, from its Origin 289 (1759).
That general warrants, whereby any officer or messenger may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of a fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, or whose offense is not particularly described and supported by evidence, are grievous and oppressive and ought not to be granted.
Declaration of Rights, art. X, Virginia Convention of Delegates (June 12, 1776).
As almost everyone in the United States knows, a bomb was set off at the Boston Marathon, killing three and wounding more than 260. The suspects later robbed a convenience store, killed an MIT police officer, were chased, and engaged in a shoot-out with police in Watertown. One of the two brothers was killed and the other could not be found.
So the police reaction? Seal off a twenty block area and start door-to-door searches. Pulling innocent citizens out of their own homes at gunpoint, their hands over their heads, and then search the home without a warrant or any form of probable cause. The politicians in Massachusetts don’t see a problem with this. Can this be the same state that produced patriots like John Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, and Sam Adams? Can this be the same state where normal citizens, standing up for their rights, fired the shot heard ’round the world on the green at Lexington? Why didn’t the people stand up to this?
What’s the reaction in the legal community? Let us look.
Appealingly Brief, by Dan Klau (Warrantless Searches and the Watertown Manhunt). In his post, he lists several reasons why the searches were not constitutional, and promises more later.
Balkinization, by guest Albert Wong (Warrantless Searches of Homes and the Fourth Amendment). In this law student’s post on the issue, he noted the police could not meet the legal requirements to search, having “no specific or articulable reason to believe that the suspect was present in any given house in the 20-block perimeter….” He also noted that the terror suspect was found outside of the 20-block area.
Popehat, by Clark Bianco (Security Theater, Martial Law, and a Tale that Trumps Every Cop-and-Donut Joke You’ve Ever Heard). Clark notes that in all other terrorist attacks with gunmen on the loose, the government has never before put the city on lock-down.
Probable Cause, by Rick Horowitz (Life in a Post-Constitutional World). This criminal defense attorney decries the loss of liberty and how this is the transformation of the nation into a police state, where your rights end when police officers tell you they end.
Senator Mike Doherty’s website (Doherty Condemns MA Gov. Patrick’s Refusal to Release Terrorists’ Public Assistance Records). “While law enforcement was searching for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in Watertown, they had no problem trampling the Fourth Amendment privacy rights of an entire neighborhood of law-abiding citizens as they went door to door pulling innocent families and children out of their homes at gunpoint before conducting warrantless searches of their homes….” I can’t really summarize that any better, and yes, I now that technically he’s a politician, but he has a J.D.
Trial Theory, by Bobby G. Frederick (Wake Up America). This criminal defense attorney compares what happened in Watertown to the start of a police state, noting that when the police came for the Jews in Germany, they also meekly came out of their houses.
The Volokh Conspiracy – Post 1, by Orin Kerr (House-to-House Searches and the Fourth Amendment). Mr. Kerr notes that the searches turn on reasonableness, and that there are no cases directly on point. He compares the searches to roadblock cases, citing the recent case in Colorado, United States v. Paetsch, No. 12-cr-00258-WJM, ___ F. Supp. ___, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 157021, 2012 WL 5213011 (D. Colo. 2012).
The Volokh Conspiracy – Post 2, by Eugene Kontorovich (The American Athens Becomes a Prison City). He points out that it is”not just the civil liberties of terrorists at stake, but also those of millions of innocent civilians” when you shut down an entire city.
Some images and videos, followed by comments.
In this video, you can see the occupants of the home ordered out of the house at gunpoint, told to put their hands on their heads. Does this look consensual to you?
“Are you f**king kidding me?” This comment, at the start of the video, says it all. There is a whole series from this individual on the searches.
Oh wait, that was from a fictional movie – wasn’t it?
In the past, when faced with tyranny and the oppression of the peoples’ rights, Bostonians stood up and said not here, not now, do not tread on me. How the people of Boston have changed – and not for the better.
It is the duty of a police officer, just as much as it is the duty of a military officer, a private citizen or anyone else to refuse to carry out an unlawful order. Carrying out an order that you know to be unlawful opens you up to criminal and civil liabilities, even if you would normally be shielded from those while carrying out lawful orders.
The problem is the possibility that the officers who carried out the search were unaware that their orders were unlawful. If so, given how BASIC the need for a warrant and the reasons for the requirement are to police work, how widespread the knowledge of the warrant requirement is throughout society, any of those officers that can truthfully claim he did not know his superiors had given him an unlawful order is not qualified to hold the job he does.
I agree that it is the duty of an officer to refuse to obey an unlawful order. I’ll go further than you do on this. No trained peace officer would not know that an order to do a door-to-door search without a warrant is unlawful.
The reason I inserted “trained” in front of peace officer is because of what I found out about Louisiana and what a commenter informed me about Arkansas–that both of those jurisdictions allow the city to just hand a guy a badge and a gun and tell him to go enforce the law, without sending them to a police academy first.
The problem I see is one of damages. How do you prove damages for that? You’re probably not going to be charged with anything, and if you were you could get it suppressed, but absent that, you don’t have damages. The only option that I can see is to request a declaratory judgment and injunctive relief. The problem there is to get an attorney to handle it, since there is no real guarantee of payment for him (or her).
Thanks for this post. This story is of great importance. Unfortunately, I have yet to read of any homeowner refusing this intrusion. Perhaps they all ‘consented’ in the face of overwhelming force.
And to think this was the response to one teenager!
They weren’t given a choice. When they answered the knock, they had AR15s pointed at them, and in Mass., it takes 6 weeks just to get a permit to purchase or own a gun. They’ve disarmed the population there, especially in Boston.
Who says the terrorists haven’t won? One teenager causes the shutdown of a city, declaration of martial law, countless civil right violations by police, and he wasn’t even armed!
Even better, the younger brother was inside the perimeter being searched.
Sorry about the delay in your second comment Rick. The spam filter holds any comment with more than one hyperlink for approval and I didn’t see it until now.
In my mind, the disgraceful reaction by LE turned out to be much more damaging than the crime they were investigating.
Thank you for this article and your blog as well. I live near Pittsburgh, PA and tomorrow, May 5th, we have our own Marathon. All of our local news agencies have informed the public about how anyone with a backpack or large bag can expect that they may be searched, that security officials want to discourage people from bringing large bags or backpacks to the event, and yet not one news outlet wrote about any concern for the citizen’s Fourth Amendment rights in all of this. Not surprising, but quite frustrating.
Just thought that I would update this post. I just returned from attending the Pittsburgh Marathon, and despite the saber rattling reported in the press, plenty of people in attendance had large bags and backpacks including myself. I saw no one being searched during the 3 hours that I was there, nor did anyone approach me asking to search my bag. I was eyeballed by security, but that is their job.
After web-searching this subject provided something one can piece together, allow me to play Devil’s advocate . . .
As y’all well aware, the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution doesn’t forbid all searches and seizures, just “unreasonable” ones. The absolute in the 4th amendment is that no warrant shall be issued “without probable cause.” That is the one absolute you cannot break, but it does not say you always have to have a warrant to search, or that you always have to have probable cause.
Reasonableness, as defined by the courts, is that point at which the government’s interest advanced by a particular search or seizure outweighs the loss of individual privacy or freedom of movement that attends the government’s action (Illinois v. Lidster, 540 U.S. 419, 427 (2004) [“in judging reasonableness, we look to the gravity of the public concerns served by the seizure, the degree to which the seizure advances the public interest, and the severity of the interference with individual liberty”]).
So in one instance among a sets of exceptions SCOTUS has carved out of the 4th Amendment is a hap-hazard body of case-law evolved over the years known as the “administrative search doctrine.” Starting with Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523 (1967), SCOTUS held that a reasonable administrative search may be conducted upon a showing of probable cause which is less stringent than that required for a search incident to a criminal investigation. Under this doctrine, the government must establish a substantial compelling need to search, that the search will serve the need, and that the decision to search a particular person is not left to the discretion of a field officer. Examples, as you’re well aware, are public school students, government employees, probationers, business inspections, airports, checkpoints, border crossings, and—increasingly—wiretaps and other searches used in the gathering of national security intelligence, . . .
. . . And dragnets, like the kind we’ve seen last month, and are regarded by the courts as another form of administrative search because such intrusions are permissible if they involved only minimally intrusive government actions necessary to protect important health or safety interests that an individualized probable cause regime could not sufficiently protect. In other words: “The constitutional question would seem to depend on whether the searches are reasonably limited in scope (such as limited to a specific geographic area), the dangerousness of the suspect (here, very high), and the strength of the government’s case that the suspect may be in the area and cannot be caught another way.” And all you need is a cell-phone call to a judge for him to issue a wide-area warrant.
But you can argue that reasonableness tests currently in use are too-open ended, unnecessarily broad and too deferential to the government resulting with governmental interests defined broadly and privacy and individual interests narrowly. Many regard the reasonableness test, that balances government need versus individual privacy, operates as a form of rational basis review under which the government presumptively wins.
Name one search of private homes like this that the Court has approved.
Whether the ACLU objects or not is of little to no import. They’ve been wrong before.
“The Fourth Amendment proscribes all unreasonable searches and seizures, and it is a cardinal principle that “searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment — subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.”” Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 392 (1978).
“[W]arrants are generally required to search a person’s home or his person unless ‘the exigencies of the situation’ make the needs of law enforcement so compelling that the warrantless search is objectively reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.” Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 403 (2006).
There was no probable cause that the suspect was in any of the houses searched. There was no hot pursuit leading to a specific house, or even to a couple of houses. They searched a 20 block area. They had time to obtain warrants, but did not even try. They didn’t try because no judge would have granted a warrant under those circumstances. It was not objectively reasonable.
“Perhaps most telling of all, as reflected in the text of the Warrant Clause, the particular way the Framers chose to curb the abuses of general warrants–and by implication, all general searches–was not to impose a novel “evenhandedness” requirement; it was to retain the individualized suspicion requirement contained in the typical general warrant, but to make that requirement meaningful and enforceable, for instance, by raising the required level of individualized suspicion to objective probable cause.” Vernonia Sch. Dist. 47j v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 670 (1995) (J. O’Connor dissenting).
Of course, the people of Boston had no choice, having been effectively disarmed, they had no means to contest the violation of their Constitutional rights.
The place to contest violation of Constitutional rights is in a court of law, not at one’s doorstop. And especially when there’s an M-16’s business end screwed into the back of the neck (I know, had that happened to me once).
But remember it’s still reasonableness, not individualized suspicion, that is the ultimate touchstone of Fourth Amendment protection. So the government is always free to argue that, in light of the totality of the circumstances in a particular case, the conduct of law enforcement was reasonable. And of course, “the Supreme Court’s standard of reasonableness is comparatively generous to the police in cases where potential danger, emergency conditions or other exigent circumstances are present.” (Roy v. Inhabitants of Lewiston, 42 F.3d 691, 695 (1st Cir.1994)).
The essential task of government is to preserve the life, liberty, and property of all individuals within its jurisdiction against their forcible destruction by other individuals. The Camara Court explained that it was reasonable to depart from the usual requirement of individualized suspicion because public safety depended on it: “Unlike the search pursuant to a criminal investigation, the inspection programs at issue here are aimed at securing city-wide compliance with minimum physical standards for private property. The primary governmental interest at stake is to prevent even the unintentional development of conditions which are hazardous to public health and safety.” And isn’t that exactly what was at stake in Watertown? While the Camara Court back then distinguished building inspections from “criminal investigations,” that shouldn’t matter. When Tsarnaev ran into that neighborhood he was as much a “condition which [was] hazardous to public health and safety” as he was a criminal suspect.
However, an administrative search, even with its lesser probable cause standard, may not be used as a subterfuge to avoid the burden of establishing probable cause to support a criminal investigative search. A valid administrative search conducted without a warrant or probable cause cannot be a pretext for gathering evidence of violations of criminal laws. An administrative search must be reasonable, i.e. the search is limited in its intrusiveness as is consistent with satisfaction of the administrative need that justifies it. For example, stopping a motorist as part of an effort to prevent a terrorist attack is an impermissible administrative search without a warning or a prior notice. (Com. v. Frodyma, 386 Mass. 434, 436 N.E.2d 925 (1982); Com. v. Lipomi, 385 Mass. 370, 432 N.E.2d 86 (1982); Com. v. Accaputo, 380 Mass. 435, 404 N.E.2d 1204 (1980). Com. v. Rosenthal, 52 Mass.App.Ct. 707, 712 n. 9, 714, 755 N.E.2d 817, 821 n. 9, 823 (2001) [police cannot use the pretext of an administrative search to detain a suspect in a criminal investigation where there is no lawful basis such as reasonable suspicion or probable cause to justify the action]; Com. v. Krisco Corp., 421 Mass. 37, 41 n. 3, 653 N.E.2d 579, 582 n. 3 (1995); Com. v. Bizarria, 31 Mass.App.Ct. 370, 375 n. 7, 578 N.E.2d 424, 427 n. 7 (1991); Com. v. Eagleton, 402 Mass. 199, 521 N.E.2d 1363 (1988). Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U.S. 32, 45–46, 121 S.Ct. 447, 456, 148 L.Ed.2d 333 (2000); Com. v. Carkhuff, 441 Mass. 122, 126, 804 N.E.2d 317, 320 (2004); Com. v. Carkhuff, 441 Mass. 122, 127, 804 N.E.2d 317, 321 (2004); Com. v. Carkhuff, 441 Mass. 122, 128–130, 804 N.E.2d 317, 322–323 (2004) [The Court decided the issue under Art. 14 of the Declaration of Rights]).
And speaking of doorstops, it’s not clear what touched off the cops’ forcible entry to haul out that couple in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ1-ZUN3Li0 after the 1:07 mark. Even their interview didn’t clarify it. But once you open that door the threshold where you at is considered a public place and the cops can execute a detention there. Furthermore, if you retreat or step behind the threshold, the cops may go in after you. Why is the threshold a public place? Because it’s not merely visible to the public but is as exposed to public view, speech, hearing, and touch as if you’re standing completely outside the house (See People v. Watkins (1994) 26 Cal.App.4th 19, 29; U.S. v. Santana (1976) 427 U.S. 38, 42; People v. Hampton (1985) 164 Cal.App.3d 27, 36; U.S. v. Whitten (9th Cir. 1983) 706 F.2d 1000, 1015 [“A doorway, unlike the interior of a hotel room, is a public place.”]; U.S. v. Botero (9th Cir. 1978) 589 F.2d 430, 432. 21; U.S. v. Albrektsen (9th Cir. 1998) 151 F.3d 951, 954, fn.5).
As you’re no doubt aware, in a manhunt, the police can access lawns and peer in windows, but the legal protection of probable cause still exists (even in the lowered probable cause standard of an administrative search). If there is no sign of trouble—a blood smear, sign of forced entry, cries for help—the police cannot enter a home no matter who’s on the loose. As Jack Schonely, author of Apprehending Fleeing Suspects: Suspect Tactics and Perimeter Control, said: “We still have to follow the law. Without probable cause, the police can only ask residents to come out for permission to enter.” As the homeowner on the vid described it, the cops may had said it breathlessly with a sense of urgency, but it remained voluntary until the handcuffs come on. According to news reports, a lot of people did said “No, thanks” and the cops moved on.
From the longer version of the vid you posted, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nrkcUV_7Qk&NR=1&feature=endscreen, I estimate the time the occupants were instructed out the house and detained during the investigation as about five to seven minutes. A typical Terry investigative detention when you get pulled over is about twenty minutes.

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