Source: http://constitution.org/lrev/roots/cops.htm
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 16:11:03+00:00

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Police work is often lionized by jurists and scholars who claim to employ "textualist" and "originalist" methods of constitutional interpretation. Yet professional police were unknown to the United States in 1789, and first appeared in America almost a half-century after the Constitution's ratification. The Framers contemplated law enforcement as the duty of mostly private citizens, along with a few constables and sheriffs who could be called upon when necessary. This article marshals extensive historical and legal evidence to show that modern policing is in many ways inconsistent with the original intent of America's founding documents. The author argues that the growth of modern policing has substantially empowered the state in a way the Framers would regard as abhorrent to their foremost principles.
Uniformed police officers are the most visible element of America's criminal justice system. Their numbers have grown exponentially over the past century and now stand at hundreds of thousands nationwide.1 Police expenses account for the largest segment of most municipal budgets and generally dwarf expenses for fire, trash, and sewer services.2 Neither casual observers nor learned authorities regard the sight of hundreds of armed, uniformed state agents on America's roads and street corners as anything peculiar — let alone invalid or unconstitutional.
Yet the dissident English colonists who framed the United States Constitution would have seen this modern 'police state' as alien to their foremost principles. Under the criminal justice model known to the Framers, professional police officers were unknown.3 The general public had broad law enforcement powers and only the executive functions of the law (e.g., the execution of writs, warrants and orders) were performed by constables or sheriffs (who might call upon members of the community for assistance).4 Initiation and investigation of criminal cases was the nearly exclusive province of private persons.
While this historical disconnect is widely known by criminal justice historians, rarely has it been juxtaposed against the Constitution and the Constitution's imposed scheme of criminal justice.8 "Originalist" scholars of the Constitution have tended to be supportive, rather than critical of modern policing.9 This article will show, however, that modern policing violates the Framers' most firmly held conceptions of criminal justice.
The modern police-driven model of law enforcement helps sustain a playing field that is fundamentally uneven for different players upon it. Modern police act as an army of assistants for state prosecutors and gather evidence solely with an eye toward the state's interests. Police seal off crime scenes from the purview of defense investigators, act as witnesses of convenience for the state in courts of law, and instigate a substantial amount of criminal activity under the guise of crime fighting. Additionally, police enforce social class norms and act as tools of empowerment for favored interest groups to the disadvantage of others.10 Police are also a political force that constantly lobbies for increased state power and decreased constitutional liberty for American citizens.
Formal criminal justice institutions dealt only with the most severe crimes. Misdemeanor offenses had to be dealt with by the private citizen on the private citizen's own terms. "The farther back the [crime rate] figures go," according to historian Roger Lane, "the higher is the relative proportion of serious crimes."52 In other words, before the advent of professional policing, fewer crimes — and only the most serious crimes — were brought to the attention of the courts.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, police forces took on a brave new role: crime-fighting. The goal of maintaining public order became secondary to chasing lawbreakers. The police cultivated a perception that they were public heroes who "fought crime" in the general, rather than individual sense.
The 1920s saw the rise of the profession's second father — or perhaps its wicked stepfather — J. Edgar Hoover.62 Hoover's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) came to epitomize the police profession in its sleuth and intelligence-gathering role. FBI agents infiltrated mobster organizations, intercepted communications between suspected criminals, and gathered intelligence for both law enforcement and political purposes.
But the constitutions of the Founding Era gave no hint of any thin blue line. Nothing in their texts enunciated any governmental power to "fight crime" at all. "Crime-fighting" was intended as the domain of individuals touched by crime. The original design under the American legal order was to restore a semblance of private justice. The courts were a mere forum, or avenue, for private persons to attain justice from a malfeasor.67 The slow alteration of the criminal courts into a venue only for the government's claims against private persons turned the very spirit of the Founders' model on its head.
To suggest that modern policing is extraconstitutional is not to imply that every aspect of police work is constitutionally improper.68 Rather, it is to say that the totality and effect of modern policing negates the meaning and purpose of certain constitutional protections the Framers intended to protect and carry forward to future generations. Modern-style policing leaves many fundamental constitutional interests utterly unenforced.
Americans today, for example, are far more vulnerable to invasive searches and seizures by the state than were the Americans of 1791.69 The Framers lived in an era in which much less of the world was in "plain view" of the government and a "stop and frisk" would have been rare indeed.70 The totality of modern policing also places pedestrian and vehicle travel at the mercy of the state, a development the Framers would have almost certainly never sanctioned. These infringements result not from a single aspect of modern policing, but from the whole of modern policing's control over large domains of private life that were once "policed" by private citizens.
The treatment of law enforcement in the courts shows that the law of crime control has changed monumentally over the past two centuries. Under the common law, there was no difference whatsoever between the privileges, immunities, and powers of constables and those of private citizens. Constables were literally and figuratively clothed in the same garments as everyone else and faced the same liabilities — civil and criminal — as everyone else under identical circumstances. Two centuries of jurisprudence, however, have recast the power relationships of these two roles dramatically.
The tradeoff has had the effect of depriving Americans of certainty in the executions of warrantless arrests. Judges now consider only the question of whether there was reasonable ground to suspect an arrestee, rather than whether the arrestee was guilty of any crime. This loss of certainty, when combined with greater deference to the state in most law enforcement matters, has essentially reversed the original intent and purpose of American law enforcement that the state act against stern limitations and at its own peril. Because arrest has become the near exclusive province of professional police, Americans have fewer assurances that they are free from unreasonable arrests.
But the right to resist unlawful arrest can be considered a constitutional one. It stems from the right of every person to his bodily integrity and liberty of movement, among the most fundamental of all rights.104 Substantive due process principles require that the government interfere with such a right only to further a compelling state interest105 — and the power to arrest the citizenry unlawfully can hardly be characterized as a compelling state interest.106 Thus, the advent of professional policing has endangered important rights of the American people.
As Professor Peter L. Davis points out, there is no good reason why police should not be liable criminally for their violations of the criminal code, just as other Americans would expect to be (and, indeed, as the constables of the Founding Era often were).152 Yet in modern criminal courts, police tend to be more bulletproof than the Kevlar vests they wear on the job. Remember that the district attorneys responsible for prosecuting police for their crimes are the same district attorneys who must defend those officers in civil cases involving the same facts.153 Under the Framers' common law, this conflict of interest did not arise at all because a citizen grand jury — independent from the state attorney general — brought charges against a criminal officer, and the officer's victim prosecuted the matter before a petit jury.154 But the modern model of law enforcement provides no real remedy, and no ready outlet for the law to work effectively against police criminals. Indeed, modern policing acts as an obstruction of justice with regard to police criminality.
Moreover, police work is generously rewarded in terms of financial, pension and other benefits, not to mention prestige. Police salaries may exceed $100,000 annually plus generous health insurance and pension plans — placing police in the very highest percentiles of American workers in terms of compensation.174 The founding generation would have been utterly astonished by such a transfer of wealth to professional law enforcers.175 This reality of police safety, security and comfort is one of the best-kept secrets in American labor.
If the modern model of cop-driven criminal justice has any defense at all, it is its "professionalism." Private law enforcement of the type intended by the Framers was supposedly more inclined toward lax and arbitrary enforcement than professional officers who are sworn to uphold the law.182 Upon scrutiny, however, the claim that professional police are more reliable, less arbitrary, and more capable of objective law enforcement than private law enforcers is drastically undermined.
In the absence of police troops to enforce the law, the early criminal justice system was hardly as hobbled and impotent as conventional wisdom suggests. Private watch groups and broad-based advocacy groups existed to enforce laws and track criminals among jurisdictions. Thousands of local antihorsethief associations and countless 'detecting societies' sprang up to answer the call of crime victims in the nineteenth century.185 In Maine, the "Penobscot Temperance League" hired detectives to investigate and initiate criminal cases against illegal liquor traffickers.186 In the 1870s a private group called the Society for the Suppression of Vice became so zealous in garnering prosecutions of the immoral that it was accused in 1878 of coercing a defendant into mailing birth control information in violation of federal statutes,187 one of the earliest known instances of conduct that later became defined as entrapment.188 Although some of these private crime-fighting groups were invested with limited state law enforcement powers,189 they were not police officers in the modern sense and received no remuneration.
Yet death penalty cases are afforded far more due process and scrutiny of evidence than noncapital cases. If anything, the error rate of police in noncapital cases is likely substantially higher. Governor Ryan's words would seem to apply doubly to the entire system of police-driven investigation.
It is largely forgotten that the war for American independence was initiated in large part by the British Crown's practice of using troops to police civilians in Boston and other cities.244 Professional soldiers used in the same ways as modern police were among the primary grievances enunciated by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. ("[George III] has kept among us standing armies"; "He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power"; "protecting them, by a mock trial....").245 The duties of such troops were in no way military but involved the keeping of order and the suppression of crime (especially customs and tax violations).
Much of the importance of the standing-army debates at the ratification conventions has been overlooked or misinterpreted by modern scholars. Opponents of the right to bear arms, for example, have occasionally cited the standing-army debates to support the proposition that the Framers intended the Second Amendment to protect the power of states to form militias.262 Although this argument has been greatly discredited,263 it has helped illuminate the intense distrust that the Framers manifested toward occupational standing armies. The standing army the Framers most feared was a soldiery conducting law enforcement operations in the manner of King George's occupation troops — like the armies of police officers that now patrol the American landscape.
The criminal procedure concerns that dominated the minds of the Framers of the Bill of Rights were created not only before the Revolution but also after it. In the five years following British surrender, the independent states vied against each other for commercial advantage, debt relief, and land claims. Conflict was especially fierce between the rival settlers of Pennsylvania and Connecticut on lands in the west claimed simultaneously by both states.277 Both states sent partisan magistrates and troops into the region, and each faction claimed authority to remove claimants of the rival state.278 Magistrates occasionally ordered arrest without warrant, turned people out of their homes, and even ordered submission to the quartering of troops in homes.279 In 1784, a Pennsylvania grand jury indicted one such magistrate and forty others for abuse of their authority.280 Many agents had to be arrested before the troubles finally ended in 1788 — the very moment when the Constitution was undergoing its ratification debates.281 These troubles, and not memories of life under the Crown, were fresh in the minds of the Framers who proposed and ratified the Bill of Rights.
Now to the Fourth Amendment. The Amendment reads: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."285 This protection was clearly regarded as one of the more important provisions of the Bill of Rights during debates in and out of Congress prior to ratification.286 To this day, the Amendment is probably the most cited constitutional provision in challenges to police action.
The cold, hard reality, however, is that the interest protected by the amendment — security from certain types of searches and seizures — has been drastically scaled back since 1791. In saying this, I am mindful that there are those among the highest echelons of the bench and academy who claim that current Fourth Amendment law is more protective than the Framers intended.287 Indeed, there are those claiming the mantles of textualism and originalism who would decrease Fourth Amendment rights even further.288 The ever-influential Akhil Amar, for example, has argued that the Fourth Amendment's text does not really require warrants but merely lays out the evidentiary foundation required to obtain warrants.289 Amar joins other "originalist" scholars who emphasize that the only requirement of the Fourth Amendment's first clause ("The right of the people to be secure in their persons, papers, and effects from unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated") is that all searches and seizures be "reasonable."290 The warrant requirement pronounced in many Supreme Court opinions, according to Amar, places an unnecessary burden upon law enforcement and should be abandoned for a rule Amar considers more workable — namely civil damages for unreasonable searches after the fact as determined by juries.
Some of the earliest English interpretations of the freedom from search and seizure held the protection applicable to private citizens as much as or more so than government agents.322 Massachusetts and Vermont were apparently the first states to require that search and arrest warrants be executed by sworn officers.323 New Hampshire adopted the same rule in 1826, more than a generation after the Bill of Rights was ratified.324 It is likely that some states allowed private persons to execute search warrants well into the nineteenth century.
Later courts have taken this holding to mean that "a wrongful search or seizure conducted by a private party does not violate the Fourth Amendment." Walter v. U.S. 447 U.S. 649, 656 (1979). See also United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113 (1984) (saying "This Court has also consistently construed this protection as proscribing only governmental action; it is wholly inapplicable to a private individual not acting as an agent of the Government or with the participation or knowledge of any government official.").
As explained in Part I, early constables had powers no greater than those of other individuals, so they needed warrants before engaging in law enforcement activities beyond any citizen's authority. Like you or I, a constable would be thought outside the bounds of good etiquette (and well outside the law) were he to conduct an unconsented search of another's person, property or effects, and should — very reasonably — expect to be jailed, physically repulsed, or sued for such conduct.
This was the constitutional model secured to America by the Framers. The idea of police having special powers was only a seedling, alien to the scheme of ordered liberty and limited government created by the Constitution. Eventually, police interceded between private individuals and magistrates altogether, and today it is virtually unheard of for a private person to seek a search warrant from a magistrate.
The rationale for the felon exception to the warrant requirement in 1791, for example, was that a felony was any crime punishable by death, generally thought to be limited to only a handful of serious crimes.340 Felons were considered "outlaws at war with society,"341 and their apprehension without warrant qualified as one of the "exceptions justified by absolute necessity."342 By the late twentieth century, however, many crimes the Framers would have considered misdemeanors or no crime at all had been declared felonies and the rationale for immediate community action to apprehend "felons" had changed greatly.343 The courts, however, have been slow to react to this far-reaching change.344 In any case, the vast majority of arrests (seventy to eighty percent) are for misdemeanors,345 which would have been proscribed without warrant under the Framers' law.
POLICE AND THE "AUTOMOBILE EXCEPTION"
ONE EXCEPTION: THE EXCLUSIONARY RULE?
Yet the dire predictions that followed the Miranda and Mapp decisions were ultimately proved false.410 Rather than returning to what Justice White decried as "violent self-help" (as the Constitution's framers truly intended), America continued its slide into increased dependence upon police for the most mundane aspects of law enforcement. If anything, reliance upon police for personal protection has increased since the 1960s.
I propose an altogether different interpretation of Mapp, Miranda, and some of the Warren Court's other criminal procedure decisions. While I concede that this jurisprudence grossly violated certain constitutional principles (most importantly, principles of federalism), I submit that such rulings were attempts to bring constitutional law into accord with the alien threat posed by modern policing. Professional policing's arrival upon the American scene required that the Court's Bill of Rights jurisprudence splinter a dozen ways to accommodate it. Thus, Mapp and Miranda were an application of brakes to a foreign element (modern policing) that is itself without constitutional authorization.
In a previous article, I described the limitation of common law grand jury powers by Rule 6 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure as an unconstitutional infringement of the Fifth Amendment Grand Jury Clause.420 The fact that most criminal charges are now initiated not by crime victims but by armed state agents who serve the state's interests represents a drastic alteration of Founding-era criminal procedure.421 The suppression of grand jurors' lawful powers belies the intent of the Constitution that law enforcement officials be subject to stringent oversight by the citizenry through grand juries. Modern policing, in effect, acts as a middleman between the people and the judicial branch of government that was never contemplated by the Framers.
The Fifth Amendment also prohibits the compulsion of self-incriminating testimony.422 Various competing interpretations ebbed and flowed from this provision until 1966, when the Supreme Court held that police are required to actually tell suspects about the Fifth and Sixth Amendments' protections before interrogating them.423 The sheer volume of criticism by police organizations of the Miranda ruling over the next three decades indicates the strong state interest in keeping the Constitution's protections concealed from the American public.
Modem police interrogation could scarcely have been imagined by the Framers who met in Philadelphia in the late eighteenth century. Police tactics such as falsifying physical evidence, faking identification lineups, administering fake lie detector tests and falsifying laboratory reports to obtain confessions are methods developed by the professionals of the twentieth century. 424 Against such methods a modern suspect stands little chance of keeping his tongue. Like the exclusionary rule and the entrapment defense, the Miranda rule operates as an awkward leveling device between the rights of American citizens and their now-leviathanic government.
The Dickerson decision illustrates the increasingly awkward peace between the Bill of Rights and the phenomenon of modern policing. Because the Framers did not contemplate wide-scale execution of government power through paid, full-time agents, modern jurisprudence reconciling the Bill of Rights with today's police practices seems increasingly farfetched. Justices Scalia and Thomas dissented from the Dickerson majority with well-founded textualist objections, arguing that the majority was writing a "prophylactic, extraconstitutional Constitution" to protect the public from police.428 Yet in light of the extraconstitutional nature of modern police, the Dickerson majority opinion is no less consistent with the Framers' constitutional intent.
Abandonment of victim-driven, mostly private prosecution has led to consequences the Framers could never have predicted and would likely never have sanctioned. Even in the most horrific examples of colonial criminal justice (and there were many), defendants were rarely if ever entrapped into criminal activity. The development of modern policing as an omnipotent power of the state, however, has necessitated the simultaneous development of complicated doctrines such as entrapment and "outrageous government conduct" as counterweights.
The United States of America was founded without professional police. Its earliest traditions and founding documents evidenced no contemplation that the power of the state would be implemented by omnipresent police forces. On the contrary, America's constitutional Framers expressed hostility and contempt for the standing armies of the late eighteenth century, which functioned as law enforcement units in American cities. The advent of modern policing has greatly altered the balance of power between the citizen and the state in a way that would have been seen as constitutionally invalid by the Framers. The implications of this altered balance of power are far-reaching, and should invite consideration by judges and legislators who concern themselves with constitutional questions.
* Roger Isaac Roots, J.D., M.C.J., graduated from Roger Williams University School of Law in 1999, Roger Williams University School of Justice Studies in 2001, and Montana State University-Billings (B.S., Sociology) in 1995. He is a former federal prisoner and founder of the Prison Crisis Project, a not-for-profit law and policy think tank based in Providence, Rhode Island. He is grateful to Duane Horton of Portsmouth, Rhode Island for his scrupulous proof-reading efforts and thoughtful insights.
1 As of June, 1996, there were more than 700,000 full- and part-time professional state-sworn police in the United States. See BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, CENSUS OF STATE AND LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES, 1996 (1998) available at <http://virlib.ncjrs.org/Statistics.asp>. Figures for earlier decades and centuries are difficult to obtain, but a few indicators suggest that the ratio of police per citizen has grown by at least four thousand percent. In 1816, the British Parliament reported that there was at that time one constable for every 18,187 persons in Great Britain. See Jerome Hall, Legal and Social Aspects of Arrest Without a Warrant, 49 HARVARD L. REV. 566, 582 (1936). Conventional wisdom would suggest that American ratios were, if anything, lower. Today there is approximately one officer for every 386 Americans.
2 The City of Los Angeles, for example, spends almost half (49.1%) of its annual discretionary budget on police but only 17.7% on fire and 14.8% on public works. See City of Los Angeles 1999-2000 Budget Summary (visited Dec. 2000) <http://www.cityofla.org/cao/bud9900.pdf>. The City of Chicago spends over forty percent of its annual budget on police. See Chicago Budget 1999 (visited Dec. 2000) <http://www.ci.chi.il.us/mayor/Budgetl999/sld011.htm> (pie chart). Seattle spends more than $150 million, or 41 percent of its annual budget, on police and police pensions. See City of Seattle 2000 Proposed Budget (visited Dec. 2000) <http://www.ci.seattle.wa.us/budget>. The City of New York is one exception, due primarily to New York State's unique system for funding education. Police and the administration of justice constitute the third largest segment, or twelve percent, of the City's budget, after education and human resources. See THE CITY OF NEW YORK, EXECUTIVE BUDGET, FISCAL YEAR 2000 1 (2000) (pie chart).
3See Carol S. Steiker, Second Thoughts About First Principles, 107 HARV. L. REV. 820, 830 (1994) (saying twentieth century police and "our contemporary sense of 'policing' would be utterly foreign to our colonial forebears").
5See id. at 831 (saying the sole monetary reward for such officers was occasional compensation by private individuals for returning stolen property).
6See CHARLES SILBERMAN, CRIMINAL VIOLENCE, CRIMINAL JUSTICE 314 (1978). The City of Boston, for example, enacted an ordinance requiring drafted citizens to walk the streets "to prevent any danger by fire, and to see that good order is kept." Id.
7C.f. id. (mentioning that cops' role of maintaining order predates their role of crime control).
8But see, e.g., Steiker, supra note 3, at 824 (saying the "invention ... of armed quasi-military, professional police forces, whose form, function, and daily presence differ dramatically from that of the colonial constabulary, requires that modern-day judges and scholars rethink" Fourth Amendment remedies).
9See, e.g., ROBERT H. BORK, SLOUCHING TOWARDS GOMORRAH: MODERN LIBERALISM AND AMERICAN DECLINE 104 (1996) (criticizing Supreme Court rulings that have "steadily expanded" the rights of criminals and placed limitations upon police conduct).
10Cf. E.X. BOOZHIE, THE OUTLAW'S BIBLE 15 (1988) (stating the true mission of police is to protect the status quo for the benefit of the ruling class).
11 As a textual matter, the Constitution grants authority to the federal government to define and punish criminal activity in only five instances. Article I grants Congress power (1) "[t]o provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States," art. I, § 8, cl. 6; (2) "[t]o define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations," id, cl. 10; (3) "[t]o make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces," id. at cl. 14; (4) "[t]o exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over" the District of Columbia and federal reservations. id. at cl. 17; see also Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. (6 Wheat.) 264, 426 (1821) ("Congress has a right to punish murder in a fort, or other place within its exclusive jurisdiction; but no general right to punish murder committed within any of the states"). Likewise, (5) Article III defines the crime of "Treason against the United States" and grants to Congress the "Power to declare [its] Punishment...." U.S. CONST. art. III, § 3.
12 Several early constitutions expressed a right of citizens "to be protected in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property," and therefore purported to bind citizens to contribute their proportion toward expenses of such protection. See DELAWARE DEC. OF RIGHTS of Sept. 11, 1776, § 10; PA. CONST. of Sept. 28, 1776, Dec. of Rights, § VIII; VT. CONST. of July 8, 1777, Chap. 1, § IX. Other typical provisions required that the powers of government be exercised only by the consent of the people, see, e.g., N.C. CONST. of Dec. 18, 1776, § V, and that all persons invested with government power be accountable for their conduct. See MD. CONST. of Nov. 11, 1776, § IV.
13 The constitutions of several early states expressed the intent that citizens were obligated to carry out law enforcement duties. See, e.g., DELAWARE DEC. OF RIGHTS of Sept. 11, 1776, § 10 (providing every citizen shall yield his personal service when necessary, or an equivalent); N.H. CONST. of June 2, 1784, Part I, art. I, § XII (providing that every member of the community is bound to "yield his personal service when necessary, or an equivalent"); VT. CONST. of July 8, 1777, Chap. 1, § IX (providing every member of society is bound to contribute his proportion towards the expenses of his protection, "and to yield his personal service, when necessary").
14C.f. JAMES BOVARD, LOST RIGHTS: THE DESTRUCTION OF AMERICAN LIBERTY 51 (1st ed. 1994) (discussing Revolution-era perception that the law was a means to restrain government and to secure rights of citizens).
15 Originally, all criminal procedure fell under the rule of private vengeance. A victim or aggrieved party made a direct appeal to county authorities to force a defendant to face him.
See ARTHUR TRAIN, THE PRISONER AT THE BAR 120 n. (1926). From these very early times, "grand" or "accusing" juries were formed to examine the accusations of private individuals. Id. at 121 n. Although the accusing jury frequently acted as a trial jury as well, it eventually evolved into a separate body that took on the role of accuser on behalf of aggrieved parties. It deliberated secretly, acting on its members' own personal information and upon the application of injured parties. Id. at 124 n.
16 In the early decades of American criminal justice, criminal cases were hardly different from civil actions, and could easily be confused for one another if "the public not being joined in it." Clark v. Turner, 1 Root 200 (Conn. 1790) (holding action for assault and battery was no more than a civil case because the public was not joined). It was apparently not unusual for trial judges themselves to be confused about whether a case was criminal or civil, and to make judicial errors regarding procedural differences between the two types of cases. See Meacham v. Austin, 5 Day 233 (Conn. 1811) (upholding lower court's dismissal of criminal verdict because the case's process had been consistent with civil procedure rather than criminal procedure).
17See Respublica v. Griffiths, 2 Dall. 112 (Pa. 1790) (involving action by private individual seeking public sanction for his prosecution).
18See, e.g., Smith v. State, 7 Tenn. 43 (1846) (using the term prosecutor to describe a private person); Plumer v. Smith, 5 N.H. 553 (1832) (same); Commonwealth v. Harkness, 4 Binn. 193 (Pa. 1811) (same).
19See Harold J. Krent, Executive Control Over Criminal Law Enforcement: Some Lessons From History, 38 AM. U. L. REV. 275, 281-90 (1989) (saying that any claim that criminal law enforcement is a 'core' or exclusive executive power is historically inaccurate and therefore the Attorney General need not be vested with authority to oversee or trigger investigations by the independent counsel).
20See Respublica v. Griffiths, 2 Dall. 112 (Pa. 1790) (holding the Attorney General must allow his name to be used by the prosecutor).
21 Private prosecutors generally had to pay the costs of their prosecutions, even though the state also had an interest. See Dickinson v. Potter, 4 Day 340 (Conn. 1810). Government attorneys general took over the prosecutions of only especially worthy cases and pursued such cases at public expense. See Waldron v. Turtle, 4 N.H. 149, 151 (1827) (stating if a prosecution is not adopted and pursued by the attorney general, "it will not be pursued at the public expense, although in the name of the state").
22See State v. Bruce, 24 Me. 71, 73 (1844) (stating a threat by crime victim to prosecute a supposed thief is proper but extortion for pecuniary advantage is criminal).
23See Plumer v. Smith, 5 N.H. 553 (1832) (holding promissory note invalid when tendered by a criminal defendant to his private prosecutor in exchange for promise not to prosecute).
24 Shaw v. Reed, 30 Me. 105, 109 (1849).
25See In re April 1956 Term Grand Jury, 239 F.2d 263 (7th Cir. 1956).
26See Goodman v. United States, 108 F.2d 516 (9th Cir. 1939).
27See Krent, supra note 19, at 293.
28C.f. Ellen D. Larned, 1 History of Windham County, Connecticut 272-73 (1874) (recounting attempts by Windham County authorities in 1730 to arrest a large group of rioters who broke open the Hartford Jail and released a prisoner).
30See Buckminster v. Applebee, 8 N.H. 546 (1837) (stating the sheriff has a duty to raise the posse to aid him when necessary).
31See Waterbury v. Lockwood, 4 Day 257, 259-60 (Conn. 1810) (citing English cases).
32See Jerome Hall, Legal and Social Aspects of Arrest Without A Warrant, 49 HARV. L. REV. 566, 579 (1936).
33 Barrington v. Yellow Taxi Corp., 164 N.E. 726, 727 (N.Y. 1928).
34See Eustis v. Kidder, 26 Me. 97, 99 (1846).
35 By the early 1900s, courts held that civilians called into posse service who were killed in the line of duty were entitled to full death benefits. See Monterey County v. Rader, 248 P. 912 (Cal. 1926); Village of West Salem v. Industrial Commission, 155 N.W. 929 (Wis. 1916).
36 United States v. Rice, 27 Fed. Cas. 795 (W.D.N.C. 1875).
37 The Constitution is not without provisions for criminal procedure. Indeed, much of the Bill of Rights is an outline of basic criminal procedure. See LAWRENCE M. FRIEDMAN, A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LAW 118 (2d ed. 1985). But these provisions represent enshrinements of individual liberties rather than government power. The only constitutional provisions with regard to criminal justice represent barriers to governmental power, rather than provisions for that power. Indeed, the Founders' intent to protect individual liberties was made clear by the language of the Ninth Amendment and its equivalent in state constitutions of the founding era. The Ninth Amendment, which declares that "[t]he enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people," provides a clear indication that the Framers assumed that persons may do whatever is not justly prohibited by the Constitution rather than that the government may do whatever is not justly prohibited to it. See Randy E. Barnett, Introduction: James Madison's Ninth Amendment, in THE RIGHTS RETAINED BY THE PEOPLE 43 (Randy E. Barnett ed., 1989).
38See JAMES S. CAMPBELL ET AL., LAW AND ORDER RECONSIDERED: REPORT OF THE TASK FORCE ON LAW AND LAW ENFORCEMENT TO THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE CAUSES AND PREVENTION OF VIOLENCE 450 (1970) (discussing survey by the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice).
39 The term "policing" originally meant promoting the public good or the community life rather than preserving security. See Rogan Kersh et al., "More a Distinction of Words than Things": The Evolution of Separated Powers in the American States, 4 ROGER WILLIAMS U. L. REV. 5, 21 (1998).
40See, e.g., N.C. CONST. of Dec. 18, 1776, Dec. of Rights, § II (providing that people of the state have a right to regulate the internal government and "police thereof); PA. CONST. of Sept. 28, 1776, Dec. of Rights, art. III (stating that the people have a right of "governing and regulating the internal police of [the people]").
41See Police Jury v. Britton, 82 U.S. (15 Wall.) 566 (1872). The purpose of such juries was 1) to police slaves and runaways, (2) to repair roads, bridges, and other infrastructure, and (3) to lay taxes as necessary for such acts. Id. at 568. See also BLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY 801 (abridged 6th ed. 1991).
42 When Blackstone wrote of offenses against "the public police and economy" in 1769, he meant offenses against the "due regulation and domestic order of the kingdom" such as clandestine marriage, bigamy, rendering bridges inconvenient to pass, vagrancy, and operating gambling houses. 4 WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES 924-27 (George Chase ed., Baker, Voorhis& Co. 1938) (1769).
43See, e.g., Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25,27-28 (1948) (proclaiming that "security of one's privacy against arbitrary intrusion by the police" is at the core of the Fourth Amendment (clearly a slight misstatement of the Founders' original perception)).
44See Roger Lane, Urbanization and Criminal Violence in the 19th Century: Massachusetts as a Test Case, in NATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE CAUSES AND PREVENTION OF VIOLENCE, VIOLENCE IN AMERICA: HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES 445, 451 (Graham & Gurr dir., 1969) (saying citizens were traditionally supposed to take care of themselves, with help of family, friends, or servants "when available").
45See, e.g., Kennard v. Burton, 25 Me. 39 (1845) (involving collision between two wagons).
46 Lane, supra note 44, at 451.
47 ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA 96 (J.P. Mayer ed., Harper Perennial Books 1988) (1848).
50See Pauline Maier, Popular Uprisings and Civil Authority in Eighteenth-Century America, 27 WM. & MARY Q. 3-35 (1970).
51 DE TOCQUEVILLE, supra note 47, at 72.
52 Lane, supra note 44, at 450.
56See, e.g., Lamb v. Day, 8 Vt. 407 (1836) (involving suit against constable for improper execution of civil writ); Tomlinson v. Wheeler, 1 Aik. 194 (Vt. 1826) (involving sheriff's neglect to execute civil judgment); Stoyel v. Edwards, 3 Day 1 (1807) (involving sheriffs execution of civil judgment).
57 If the modern police profession has a father, it is Sir Robert Peel, who founded the Metropolitan Police of London in 1829. See SUE TITUS REID, CRIMINAL JUSTICE: BLUEPRINTS 58 (5th ed. 1999) (attributing the founding of the first modern police force to Peel). Peel's uniformed officers — nicknamed 'Bobbies' after the first name of their founder — operated under the direction of a central headquarters (Scotland Yard, named for the site once used by the Kings of Scotland as a residence), walking beats on a full-time basis to prevent crime. See id. Less than three decades later, Parliament enacted a statute requiring every borough and county to have a London-type police force. See id.
The 'Bobbie' model of policing caught on more slowly in the United States, but by the 1880s most major American cities had adopted some type of full-time paid police force. See id. at 59 (noting that the county sheriff system continued in rural areas).
58See LAWRENCE M. FRIEDMAN, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY 151-52 (1993) (citation omitted).
60See id. at 152 (describing early police use of station houses as homeless shelters for the poor). This same type of public problem-solving still remains a large part of police work. Police are called upon to settle landlord-tenant disputes, deliver emergency care, manage traffic, regulate parking, and even to respond to alleged haunted houses. See id. at 151 (recounting 1894 alleged ghost incident in Oakland, California). Police continue to provide essential services to communities, especially at night and on weekends when they are the only social service agency. See SILBERMAN, supra note 6, at 321.
61See GARRY WILLS, A NECESSARY EVIL: A HISTORY OF AMERICAN DISTRUST OF GOVERNMENT 248 (1999) (citation omitted).
62See REID, supra note 57, 65 (5th ed. 1999).
63See JEROME H. SKOLNICK & JAMES J. FYFE, ABOVE THE LAW: POLICE AND THE EXCESSIVE USE OF FORCE 129 (1993).
66See E.X. BOOZHIE, THE OUTLAW'S BIBLE 15 (1988).
67 Private prosecution was not without costs to taxpayers. The availability of free courtrooms to air grievances tended to promote litigation. In 1804, the Pennsylvania legislature acted to allow juries to make private prosecutors pay the costs of prosecution in especially trifling cases. Act of Dec. 8, 1804 PL3, 4 Sm L 204 (repealed 1860). Private persons were thereafter liable for court costs if they omitted material exculpatory information from a grand jury, thereby causing a grand jury to indict without knowledge of potential defenses. See Commonwealth v. Harkness, 4 Binn. 194 (Pa. 1811). This protection, like many others, was lost when police and public prosecutors took over the criminal justice system in the twentieth century. See United States v. Williams, 504 U.S. 36 (1992) (holding prosecutor has no duty to present exculpatory evidence to grand jury).
68 In the American constitutional scheme, the states have 'general jurisdiction,' meaning they may regulate for public health and welfare and enact whatever means to enforce such regulation as is necessary and constitutionally proper. See, e.g., Garcia v. San Antonio Metro. Transit Auth., 469 U.S. 528 (1985), National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U.S. 833 (1976) (both standing for the general proposition that states have constitutional power to provide for protection, health, safety, and quality of life for their citizens). See also Lawrence Tribe, American Constitutional Law, §§ 6-3, 7-3 (2d ed. 1988). State and municipal police forces can therefore be viewed as constitutional to the extent they actually carry out the lawful enactments of the state.
69See infra notes 285-398 and their accompanying text.
70See Silas J. Wasserstrom, The Incredible Shrinking Fourth Amendment, 21 AM. CRIM. L. REV. 257, 347 (1984).
71See Jerome Hall, Legal and Social Aspects of Arrest Without A Warrant, 49 HARV. L. REV. 566, 567 (1936).
73See id. at 567-71 (discussing earliest scholarly references to the distinction). A 1936 Harvard Law Review article suggested the distinction is a false one owed to improper marshalling of scholarship. See id. (writing of "the general misinterpretation" resulting from a 1780 case in England).
74See id. at 575 n.44 (citing the case of Beckwith v. Philby, 6 B. & C. 635 (K. B. 1827)).
75See id. at 571-72. Although official right was apparently considered somewhat greater than that of private citizens during much of the 1700s, the case law enunciates no support for any such distinction until Rohan v. Sawin, 59 Mass. (5 Cush.) 281 (1850). It was apparently already the common practice of English constables to arrest upon information from the public in the 1780's. See id. at 572. The "earlier requirement of a charge of a felony had already been entirely forgotten" in England by the early nineteenth century. Id. at 573. According to Hall, the only real distinction in practice in the early nineteenth century was that officers were privileged to draw their suspicions from statements of others, whereas private arrestors had to base their cause for arrest on their own reasonable beliefs. See id. at 569.
76See Rohan v. Sawin, 59 Mass. (5 Cush.) 281, 285 (1850).
78See 18 U.S.C. § 925 (a)(l) (2000) (exempting government officers from federal firearm disabilities).
79See, e.g., CAL. PENAL CODE § 468 (West 1985) (releasing police from liability for possession of sniper scopes and infrared scopes).
80See, e.g., FLA. STAT. CH. 338. 155 (1990).
81See, e.g., FLA. STAT. CH. 320.025 (1990) (allowing confidential auto registration for police).
82See ARK. CODE ANN. § 20-22-703 (Michie 2000).
83See 18 U.S.C. § 1114 (amended 1994) (providing whoever murders a federal officer in first degree shall suffer death).
84See CAL. PENAL CODE § 832.9 (West 1995).
85See, e.g., CAL. HEALTH & SAFETY CODE §§ 199.95-199.99 (West 1990) (mandating HIV testing for persons charged with interfering with police officers whenever officers request).
86See Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. 2511 (2000); United States v. Leon, 104 S. Ct. 3405 (1984).
87See Williams v. Poulos, 11 F.3d 271 (lst Cir. 1993).
88See, e.g., People v. Curtis, 450 P.2d 33, 35 (Cal. 1969) (speaking of the "[g]eneral acceptance" by courts of the elimination of the right to resist unlawful arrest).
89See HERBERT J. STORING, WHAT THE ANTI-FEDERALISTS WERE FOR: THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF THE OPPONENTS OF THE CONSTITUTION 53 (1981). The statements of James Madison when introducing the proposed amendments to the Constitution before the House of Representatives, June 8, 1789, also support such a reading of the Bill of Rights. House of Representatives, June 8, 1789 Debates, reprinted in THE ORIGIN OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS 1787-1792 647, 657 (David E. Young, ed.) (2d ed. 1995) (stating "the great object in view is to limit and qualify the powers of Government").
90See STORING, supra note 89, at 48.
91See, e.g., MD. CONST. of 1776, art. I (declaring that "all government of right originates from the people, is founded in compact only, and instituted solely for the good of the whole"); MASS. CONST. of 1780, art. I ("All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights"); N.H. CONST. of 1784, art. I ("All men are born equally free and independent").
92See Coyle v. Hurtin, 10 Johns. 85 (N.Y. 1813).
93See Bad Elk v. United States, 177 U.S. 529 (1900).
94See Rex v. Gay, Quincy Mass. Rep. 1761-1772 91 (Mass. 1763) (acquitting assault defendant who beat a sheriff when sheriff attempted to arrest him pursuant to invalid warrant).
95 See Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, 30 n. 1, 31 n. 2 (1948) (citing cases upholding right to resist unlawful search and seizure).
96See Adams v. State, 48 S.E. 910 (Ga. 1904).
97See MD. CONST. of 1776, art. IV; N.H. Const. of 1784, art. X.
98See, e.g., State v. Kutchara, 350 N.W.2d 924, 927 (Minn. 1984) (saying Minnesota law does not recognize right to resist unlawful arrest or search); People v. Curtis, 450 P.2d 33, 36 (Cal. 1969) (holding California law prohibits forceful resistance to unlawful arrest).
99See, e.g., CAL. PENAL CODE § 243 (criminalizing the resistance, delay or obstruction of an officer in the discharge of "any duty of his office"). CAL. PENAL CODE § 834(a) (1957) ("If a person has knowledge ... that he is being arrested by a peace officer, it is the duty of such person to refrain from using force or any weapon to resist such arrest").
100See, e.g., United States v. Charles, 883 F.2d 355 (5th Cir. 1989) (excusing as harmless error the failure of officers executing warrant to have the warrant in hand during raid); United States v. Cafero, 473 F.2d 489, 499 (3d Cir. 1973) (holding failure to deliver copy of warrant to the party being searched or seized does not invalidate search or seizure in the absence of prejudice); Willeford v. State, 625 S.W.2d 88, 90 (Tex. App. 1981) (upholding validity of search and seizure before arrival of warrant). Not only has the requirement that officers show their warrant before executing it been eliminated, but the requirement that officers announce their authority and purpose before executing search warrants has been all but eliminated. See Richards v. Wisconsin, 570 U.S. 385 (1997) (eliminating requirement that officers be refused admittance before using force to enter the place to be searched in many cases).
101See William A. Schroeder, Warrantless Misdemeanor Arrests and the Fourth Amendment, 58 MO. L. REV. 771 (1993) (discussing the erosion of requirements for arrest warrants in many jurisdictions).
102See, e.g., Polk v. State, 142 So. 480, 481 (Miss. 1932) (striking down statute allowing warrantless arrest for misdemeanors committed outside an officer's presence); Ex Parte Rhodes, 79 So. 462, 462-63 (Ala. 1918) (holding statute unconstitutional which allowed for warrantless arrest for out-of-presence misdemeanors).
103See Schroeder, supra note 101, at 793.
104See Thor v. Superior Court, 855 P.2d 375, 380 (Cal. 1993) (saying the developing consensus "uniformly recognizes" a patient's right to control his own body, stemming from the "long-standing importance in our Anglo-American legal tradition of personal autonomy and the right of self-determination.") (citations omitted). "For self-determination to have any meaning, it cannot be subject to the scrutiny of anyone else's conscience or sensibilities." Id. at 385.
105See Michael v. Hertzler, 900 P.2d 1144, 1145 (Wyo. 1995) (stating if a statute reaches a fundamental interest, courts are to employ strict scrutiny in making determination as to whether enactment is essential to achieve compelling state interest).
106 "[Only] the gravest abuses, endangering paramount interests, give occasion for permissible limitation." Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516, 530 (1945). A "compelling state interest" is defined as "[o]ne which the state is forced or obliged to protect." BLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY 282 (6th ed. 1990) (citing Coleman v. Coleman, 291 N.E.2d 530, 534 (1972)).
107 The American constitutional order grants to every individual a privilege to stand his ground in the face of a violent challenger and meet violence with violence. A "duty to retreat" evolved in some jurisdictions, however, where a defender contemplates the use of deadly force. See WAYNE R. LAFAVE & AUSTIN W. SCOTT, CRIMINAL LAW 461 (2d ed. 1986). But with police, the courts have never imposed a duty to retreat. See id. This, combined with the recurring police claim that an attacker might get close enough to grasp the officer's sidearm, has meant, in practical terms, that an officer may repel even a minor physical threat with deadly force.
The effect of this exception for law enforcement officers has been to grant an almost absurd advantage to police in 'self-defense' incidents. Not only do cops have no duty to retreat, but they seem privileged to kill whenever a plausible threat of any injury manifests itself. See infra, notes 115-147, and accompanying text. Cops — unlike the general public — appear excused whenever they open fire on an individual who threatens any harm — even utterly nonlethal — against them, such as a verbal threat to punch the officer combined with a step forward. See infra, notes 123-147, and accompanying text.
108See James J. Fyfe, Police Use of Deadly Force: Research and Reform, in THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM: POLITICS AND POLICIES 134-40 (George F. Cole & Mare G. Gertz eds., 7th ed. 1998).
109Id. at 135 (quoting Chapman and Crocket).
110See People v. Klein, 137 N.E. 145, 149 (Ill. 1922) (reporting that "numerous" peace officers testified that shooting was the customary method of arresting speeders during trial of peace officer accused of murder).
111See id.; Miller v. People, 74 N.E. 743 (Ill. 1905) (involving village marshal who shot and killed speeding carriage driver).
112See Fyfe, supra note 108, at 137.
114See id. at 141 (table showing fatal shootings per 1,000 police officers, Philadelphia). A study of Philadelphia P.D. firearm discharges from 1970 through 1978 found only two cases that resulted in departmental discipline against officers on duty. See id. at 147 n.2. One case involved an officer firing unnecessary shots into the air; the other involved an officer who shot and killed his wife in a police station during an argument over his paycheck. See id.
115 See Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985).
116 471 U.S. 1 (1985).
117See Fyfe, supra 108, at 136.
118 The Garner decision has been interpreted in different ways by different courts and law-making bodies. See Michael R. Smith, Police Use of Deadly Force: How Courts and Policy-Makers Have Misapplied Tennessee v. Garner, 1 KAN. J. L. & PUB. POL'Y, 100, 100-01 (1998). Smith argues that many of these interpretations stem from inaccurate readings of Garner and that lower courts have failed to hold police officers liable according to the standard required by the Supreme Court. See id.
119 On behalf of modern police, courts have adopted a qualified immunity defense to police misconduct claims. Essentially, where cops can justify by plausible explanation that their conduct was within the bounds of their occupational duties, there is a "good faith" defense. See Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800 (1982); Procunier v. Navarette, 434 U.S. 555 (1978); Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409 (1976); Wood v. Strickland, 420 U.S. 308 (1975). But as David Rudovsky points out, the "good faith" defense is an artificial ingredient to normal tort liability. "The standard rule," notes Rudovsky, "is that a violation of another's rights or the failure to adhere to prescribed standards of conduct constitutes grounds for liability." David Rudovsky, The Criminal Justice System and the Role of the Police, in THE POLITICS OF LAW: A PROGRESSIVE CRITIQUE, 242, 248 (David Kairys ed., 1982). The "good faith" defense for police is thus an artificial layer of tort immunity protection not normally available to other types of litigants. Under the standard rules of tort law, after all, a defendant's good faith, intent, or knowledge of the law are irrelevant. See id. at 248.
120See Smith, supra note 118, at 117.
122 Idaho v. Horiuchi, 215 F.3d 986 (9th Cir. 2000) (Kozinski, J., dissenting).
123 OCTOBER 22 COALITION TO STOP POLICE BRUTALITY ET AL., STOLEN LIVES: KILLED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT 307 (2d. ed. 1999) (hereinafter "STOLEN LIVES") (saying officer shot and killed victim after victim 'made a move' following a foot chase).
124See id. at 207 (listing a 1993 Michigan case).
125See id. at 262 (reporting 1990 Brooklyn case in which cop had shot unarmed teenage suspect in back of head for allegedly reaching into jacket).
126See id. at 250 (reporting 1996 New York case in which man was shot 24 times by police while sitting in car with his hands in the air); id. at 252 (reporting shooting of alleged car thief after motion as if they were going for a gun').
127See id. at 262 (reporting 1990 Bronx shooting precipitated by the decedent turning toward an officer as officer opened door of decedent's cab).
128See id. at 263 (reporting 1988 New York case initiated when a driver made illegal turn and ending with police pumping 16 bullets into her).
129See id. at 262 (reporting 1990 Brooklyn case in which decedent was shot nine times while standing and twice in back while lying on ground).
130See id. at 240 (reporting a 1998 New York case).
131See id. at 232 (reporting 1991 New Mexico case).
132See id. at 220 (reporting 1998 Nevada case).
135Id. at 46. The possession of a wooden stick has cost more than one person his life at the hands of police. See also id. at 68.
138See Detroit Police Kill Mentally Ill Deaf Man, BOSTON GLOBE, Aug. 31, 2000 at A8.
139See STOLEN LIVES, supra note 123, at 57. 140See id. at 60.
142See id. at 206 (listing a 1993 Michigan case). In another Michigan case, a cop shot someone who merely had a VCR remote control in his pocket, claiming he mistook it for a gun. See id. at 205.
143See id. at 305 (saying Houston police surrounded truck and fired 59 times at victim as he sat in truck holding can opener). No civilian witnesses saw the "shiny object" (can opener) police claimed they saw. See id.
144 Police use of throwdown guns has been alleged across the country. Guns which are introduced without a suspect's fingerprints when they should have fingerprints, and guns that are found by police officers after an initial, supposedly complete, search of a crime scene by other detectives, can be said to raise questions about police use of throw-down guns. C.f. Joe Cantlupe & David Hasemyer, Pursuit of Justice: How San Diego Police Officers Handled the Killing of One of Their Own. It Is a Case Flawed by Erratic Testimony and Questionable Conduct, SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE, Sept. 11, 1994, at A1 (raising the issue in a San Diego case).
145See Webster v. City of Houston, 689 F.2d 1220, 1227 (5th Cir. 1982).
147See id. at 1221-23 (describing "damning" evidence of official cover-up and police vindication as a matter of policy).
148See STOLEN LIVES, supra note 123, at 72. In one 1987 Los Angeles case, a man was shot four times and killed when he picked up a discarded pushbroom to deflect police baton blows. See id. 72.
149See id. at iv. In one particularly egregious case, a police killing was upheld as beyond liability where officers shot a speeding trucker who refused to stop. See Cole v. Bone, 993 F.2d 1328 (8th Cir. 1993). But see, e.g., Gutierrez-Rodriquez v. Cartagena, 882 F.2d 553 (1st Cir. 1989) (affirming verdict against plainclothes officers who shot driver who drove away); Sherrod v. Berry, 827 F.2d 195 (7th Cir. 1987) (affirming verdict against officers who shot driver as driver reached into jacket pocket during questioning); Moody v. Ferguson, 732 F. Supp. 176 (D.S.L. 1989) (rendering judgment against officers who shot driver fleeing in vehicle from traffic stop).
150See Zuchel v. City and County of Denver, Colorado, 997 F.2d 730 (10th Cir. 1993).
151See Alison L. Patton, The Endless Cycle of Abuse: Why 42 U.S.C. § 1983 Is Ineffective in Deterring Police Brutality, 44 HASTINGS L. J. 753, 754 (1993) (saying plaintiffs rarely win absent independent witnesses or physical evidence).
152See Peter L. Davis, Rodney King and the Decriminalization of Police Brutality in America, 53 MD. L. REV. 271, 288 (1994). Prior to the 1900s, it was not uncommon for law enforcers who killed suspects during confrontations to be placed on trial for their lives even when they reacted to violent resisters. See United States v. Rice, 27 F. Cas. 795 (C.C.N.C. 1875) (No. 16,153) (involving deputy United States Marshall on trial for murder of tax evasion suspect); State v. Brown, 5 Del. (5 Harr.) 505 (Ct. Gen. Sess. 1853) (fining peace officers for assault and false imprisonment); Conner v. Commonwealth, 3 Bin. 38 (Pa. 1810) (involving a constable indicted for refusing to execute arrest warrant). Even justices of the peace could be criminally indicted for dereliction of duties. See Respublica v. Montgomery, Dall. 419 (1795) (upholding validity of a criminal charge against a justice of the peace who failed to suppress a riot).
153See Davis, supra note 152, at 290 (noting the hopeless conflict of interest in handling police violence complaints).
154 For an overview of the powers of early grand juries to accuse government officials, see Roger Roots, If It's Not a Runaway, It's Not a Real Grand Jury, 33 CREIGHTON L. REV. 821 (2000).
155See Steiker, supra note 3, at 836 (saying police excesses such as beatings, torture, false arrests and the third degree arc well documented).
156See STOLEN LIVES, supra note 123, at vii.
157See International Secretariat of Amnesty International, News Release, From Alabama to Wyoming: 50 Counts of Double Standards — The Missing Entries in the US Report on Human Rights, Feb. 25, 1999.
158See STOLEN LIVES, supra note 123, at iv.
160 Certain examples demonstrate. FBI agents in Elizabeth, New Jersey shot 38 times inside an apartment to kill an unarmed man who they first tried to say had fired first. See id. at 226. In February 1999, Bronx police fired 41 bullets at an unarmed African immigrant in his apartment doorway. See id. at 234. After this unlawful killing, cops unlawfully searched the decedent's apartment to justify shooting, failing to find any evidence of drugs. See id. In August 1999, Manhattan cops fired a total of 35 shots at alleged robber (who probably did not fire), injuring bystander and sending crowds fleeing. See id.
161 Most states that allow the death penalty require that aggravating factors exist before imposition of capital punishment. See, e.g., IDAHO CODE § 19-2515 (1997) (allowing death penalty for crimes involving "especially heinous, atrocious or cruel, [or] manifesting exceptional depravity" or showing "utter disregard for human life"); TEX. CRIM. P. ANN. § 37.071 (West 1981) (listing factors such as whether the crime was "unreasonable in response to the provocation"); WYO. STAT. ANN. § 6-2-102 (Michie 1999) (allowing death penalty only upon a finding of aggravating factors such as a creation of great risk of death to two or more persons or for "especially atrocious or cruel" conduct).
162 The earliest attempts at professionalization of constables failed in the United States due to insufficiency of public funds. See Steiker, supra note 3, at 831. Some of the earliest U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding police forces involve disputes over municipal police spending. See, e.g., Louisiana ex rel. Hubert v. New Orleans, 215 U.S. 170 (1909) (resolving dispute over debts run up by municipal police district); New Orleans v. Benjamin, 153 U.S. 411 (1894) (involving dispute over unbudgeted debts run up by New Orleans police board); District of Columbia v. Hutton, 143 U.S. 18 (1891) (dealing with salary dispute involving District of Columbia police force).
163See FRIEDMAN, supra note 58, at 362 (1993). Dallas police, for example, arrested 8,526 people in 1929 "on suspicion" but charged less than five percent of them with a crime. See id.
164 The infamous case of Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278 (1936), provides a grim reminder of the torture techniques that have been employed upon suspects during the past century. In Brown, officers placed nooses around the necks of suspects, temporarily hanged them, and cut their backs to pieces with a leather strap to gain confessions. Id. at 281-82.
165 FRIEDMAN, supra note 58, at 151 n.20 (quoting George S. McWatters, who studied New York detectives in the 1870s).
166See TITUS REID, supra note 57, at 122 (citations omitted).
167See Peter B. Kraska & Victor E. Kappeler, Militarizing American Police: The Rise and Normalization of Paramilitary Units, 44 SOC. PROBS. 1, 11 (1997).
168 One-hundred-seventeen federal, state, and local officers were killed feloniously in 1996 — the lowest number since 1960. See Sue TITUS REID, supra note 57, at 123.
169See National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Violence in the Work Place, June 1997.
171 Approximately 40 percent of police deaths are due to accidents. See TITUS REID, supra note 57, at 123.
172See National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Fatal Injuries to Workers in the United States, 1980-1989: A Decade of Surveillance 14 (April 15, 1999); Robert Rockwell, Police Brutality: More than Just a Few Bad Apples, REFUSE & RESIST, Aug. 14, 1997 (describing the "cultivation of the myth of policing as the most dangerous occupation").
174See SKOLNICK & FYFE, supra note 63, at 93.
175See Hall, supra note 71, at 582-83 (describing early constables as "[a]bominably paid").
176C.f. STOLEN LIVES, supra note 123, at v (saying when police arrive on the scene, they often escalate the situation rather than defuse it).
177See STOLEN LIVES, supra note 123, at vi.
178See, e.g., Brandon v. City of Providence, 708 A.2d 893 (R.I. 1998) (finding municipality immune from liability when cops prevented relatives of injured shooting victim from taking victim to the hospital before victim died). See also Stolen Lives, supra note 157, at 305 (saying Tennessee police prevented fire fighters from saving victim of fire in 1997 case). Other notorious examples can be cited, including the 1993 Waco fire (in which fire trucks were held back by federal agents) and the 1985 MOVE debacle in Philadelphia in which police dropped a bomb on a building occupied by women and children and then held back fire fighters from rescuing bum victims. See WILLIE L. WILLIAMS, TAKING BACK OUR STREETS: FIGHTING CRIME IN AMERICA 16 (1996) (saying investigative hearings revealed cops had held back rescuers as a 'tactical decision').
179See SKOLNICK & FYFE, supra note 63, at 75 (citing U.S. Civil Disorder Commission study).
180See SKOLNICK & FYFE, supra note 63, at 83 (describing police riots at Columbia University and Los Angeles).
181See RIGHTS IN CONFLICT: THE OFFICIAL REPORT TO THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE CAUSES AND PREVENTION OF VIOLENCE xxiii, xxvi (1968).
182See John D. Bessler, The Public Interest and the Unconstitutionality of Private Prosecutors, 47 ARK. L. REV. 511 (1994) (attacking private prosecution as unfair, arbitrary, and not in the public interest).
183See Hall, supra note 71, at 580-85 (detailing inadequacies of private law enforcement).
184See United States v. Wong, 431 U.S. 174 (1977) (holding Miranda requirements do not apply to a witness testifying before a grand jury); United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338 (1974) (holding grand jury witness may not refuse to answer questions on ground that they are based on evidence obtained from unlawful search); United States v. Dionisio, 410 U.S. 1 (1973) (holding seizure of a person by subpoena for grand jury appearance is generally not within Fourth Amendment's protection).
185See Richard M. Brown, Historical Patterns of Violence in America, in NATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE CAUSES AND PREVENTION OF VIOLENCE, VIOLENCE IN AMERICA: HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES 57 (Graham & Gurr, ed. 1969).
186See State v. Walker, 32 Me. 195 (1850) (upholding actions of the private group).
187 See United States v. Whittier, 28 F. Cas. 591 (C.C.E.D. Mo. 1878).
188See supra notes 438-445 and accompanying text for a discussion of the evolution of entrapment as a law enforcement practice.
189See Richard Maxwell Brown, The American Vigilante Tradition, in NATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE CAUSES AND PREVENTION OF VIOLENCE, VIOLENCE IN AMERICA: HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES 57 (Graham & Gurr, dir. 1969).
190See JAMES S. CAMPBELL, ET AL., LAW AND ORDER RECONSIDERED: REPORT OF THE TASK FORCE ON LAW AND LAW ENFORCEMENT 441 (1970) (discussing successes of citizen auxiliary units in Queens, New York and other areas).
191See id. 437-54 (1970) (discussing successes of citizen involvement in law enforcement).
192 American frontier vigilantism generally targeted serious criminals such as murderers, coach robbers and rapists as well as horse thieves, counterfeiters, outlaws, and 'bad men.' See NATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE CAUSES AND PREVENTION OF VIOLENCE, VIOLENCE IN AMERICA: HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES 97 (Graham & Gurr, dir. 1969). Arguably, such offenders qualified as felons and would have faced the death penalty under the common law even if more conventional court processes were followed. That such vigilante movements often followed rudimentary due process of law is attested by historians such as Richard Maxwell Brown, who recounts that "vigilantes' attention to the spirit of law and order caused them to provide, by their lights, a fair but speedy trial." Richard Maxwell Brown, supra note 189, at 164. The northern Illinois Regulator movement of 1841, for example, provided accused horse thieves and murderers with a lawyer, an opportunity to challenge jurors, and an arraignment. See id. at 163. At least one accused murderer was acquitted by a vigilante court on the Wyoming frontier. See Joe B. Frantz, The Frontier Tradition: An Invitation to Violence, in NATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE CAUSES AND PREVENTION OF VIOLENCE, VIOLENCE IN AMERICA: HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES 129-30 (Graham & Gurr, dir. 1969). Many accused were let off with whipping and expulsion rather than execution in the early decades of vigilante justice. See Brown, supra note 189, at 164. Less than half of all vigilante groups ever killed anyone. See id. Ironically, the move by vigilante groups toward killing convicted suspects began in the 1850s, — corresponding closely with the meteoric rise of professional policing. See id.
Vigilante movements occasionally developed to rescue the law from corrupt public officials who were violating the law. The case of the vigilantes who arrested and hanged Sheriff Henry Plummer of Virginia City, Montana in 1864 is such an example. See LEW L. CALLAWAY, MONTANA'S RIGHTEOUS HANGMEN (1997) (arguing the vigilantes had no choice but to take the law into their own hands).
193 "[T]he Western frontier developed too swiftly for the courts of justice to keep up with the progression of the people." Joe B. Frantz, supra note 192, at 128. Vigilante movements did little more than play catch-up to what can only be described as rampant frontier lawlessness. Five-thousand wanted men roamed Texas in 1877. See id. at 128. Major crimes often went totally unprosecuted and countless offenders whose crimes were well known lived openly without fear of arrest on the western frontier. See id. Vigilantes filled in only the most gaping holes in court jurisdiction, generally (but not always) intervening to arrest only the perpetrators of serious crimes. See id. and at 130 (saying "improvised group action" was the only resort for many on the far frontier).
194 David H. Bayley & Clifford D. Shearing, The Future of Policing, in THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM: POLITICS AND POLICIES 150, 150 (George F. Cole & Marc G. Gertz, eds., 7th ed. 1998).
195See id. at 151, 154.
196 Tucker Carlson, Washington's Inept Police Force, WALL ST. J., Nov. 3, 1993, at A19.
197See SILBERMAN, supra note 6, at 297. Silberman points out that New York City police solved only two percent of robbery cases in which a witness could not identify an offender or the offender was not captured at the scene. See id.
198 See id. at 296 (saying clearance rate dropped precipitously between 1960 and 1976 as proportion of crimes committed by strangers increased).
199See id. (citing figures registered between 1960 and 1976).
201See Laura Parker & Gary Fields, Unsolved Killings on Rise: Percent of Cases Closed Drops From 86% to 69%, USA TODAY, Feb. 22, 2000, at A1.
203See BARRY SCHECK, ET AL., ACTUAL INNOCENCE 175 (2000).
204 428 U.S. 153 (1976) (finding death penalty constitutional so long as adequate procedures are provided to a defendant).
205See SCHECK, supra note 203, at 218.
206See Illinois Governor Orders Execution Moratorium, USA TODAY, Feb. 1, 2000, at 3A.
208See SCHECK, supra note 203, at 218 (noting an average of 4.6 condemned people per year have been set free after 1996, while only 2.5 death row inmates per year were freed between 1973 and 1993).
209See id. at xv (noting these 5,000 exonerations came from only the first 18 thousand results of DNA testing at crime laboratories — a rate of almost 30% exonerated).
210C.f. id. at 180 (detailing indictment of four officers for perjury and obstruction of justice in the wake of one DNA exoneration).
211 DNA testing has proven that at least 67 people were sent to prison or death row for crimes they did not commit. See id. at xiv. This number grows each month. See id.
212C.f. Morgan Cloud, The Dirty Little Secret, 43 EMORY L. J. 1311, 1311 (1994) (saying "[p]olice perjury is the dirty little secret of our criminal justice system").
213See BURTON S. KATZ, JUSTICE OVERRULED: UNMASKING THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM 77-86 (1999).

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