The Freedom Bulletin

Here’s an interesting appellate success story for a defendant. Luis Melendez-Diaz, 32 years old and from Jamaica Plain, was convicted of cocaine trafficking in 2004 in Boston’s very own Suffolk County Superior Court. He appealed on the grounds that Massachusetts law allowed proescutors to present forensic experts’ reports as evidence without allowing him to cross-examine the experts, thereby violating his Sixth Amendment right to “be confronted with the witnesses against him.” His case went all the way to the Supreme Court. In 2009, they overturned his conviction and sent his case back to be tried again. Today, in his retrial, he was acquitted.

The message? Appealing one’s conviction can work, although it isn’t statistically likely. Melendez-Diaz is still in prison for a drug trafficking conviction in another county, but it does seem like constitutionally, he had a point. Congratulations to him, I guess!

Source: Boston.com

The Supreme Court ruled today in McDonald v. Chicago that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments in addition to the federal government. The case centered around Chicago’s ban of basically all handguns, which will likely be repealed as a result of the ruling.

The decision is not perfect – it allows some state and local gun restrictions, just not those that ban handguns entirely. Paul Helmke, the head of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Handgun Violence, was “reassured that the Court has rejected, once again, the gun lobby argument that its ‘any gun, for anybody, anywhere’ agenda is protected by the Constitution.” But this is still a victory for liberty because the court has upheld one of our fundamental rights, the right to bear arms, and sent a message to state governments that they cannot trample all over people’s freedoms just because they aren’t the federal government.

Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute wrote as much:

“The Fourteenth Amendment, coming on the heels of the Civil War, says clearly that never again would the Constitution tolerate state oppressions and that all individuals possess certain fundamental rights. And it is equally clear that the right to keep and bear arms is one of those deeply rooted fundamental rights, not least because the Framers thought so highly of it as to enumerate it in the Second Amendment.”

Otis McDonald, the Chicago grandfather and community leader who brought the lawsuit against his city, brought up another positive aspect of the decision, in addition to preserving freedom:

“This will make criminals think twice. If you have the right to have a handgun in your house, even if you don’t have a gun, that will give criminals a second thought, a third thought about breaking in to your house.”

Full text of the decision (PDF)

Gun pictures thanks to Adams Guns

As you probably know, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday to loosen limits on political spending by corporations. Corporations, unions, and other organizations are now allowed to runs ads explicitly supporting candidates at any time they want to during campaigns.

This ruling makes sense – why shouldn’t corporations and non-profits be allowed to explicitly support candidates if they are already allowed to run ads un-explicitly supporting candidates? But after a little thinking, I believe that the whole system of campaigns being financed by private donations is far from ideal.

Here’s an idea that I came up with – it might be radical and other libertarians might not like it, but here goes. What if campaigns weren’t financed by donations at all? Suppose that people and organizations weren’t allowed to donate to campaigns. Instead, TV channels and radio stations could be required to allocate a certain number of ad slots, for free, to each candidate in elections.

Some people might find it unappealing for the government to be able to tell TV channels and radio stations what to do. But now, we have a system in which political influence and ability to win elections depend on money. Campaign finance is collectively self-defeating, like a nuclear arms race. Say, for example, that I donate $100 to candidate A, and you donate $100 to candidate B. Seeing that the candidates are now tied again, I give $100 more to A. Then you give $100 more to B to tie up the race again. This could keep going on until we’ve each given $1 million to our preferred candidate, and the outcome – the candidates being tied – would be the same as if we’d given nothing. Doesn’t seem like that was a waste of money? Wouldn’t it be better if we could keep our money for ourselves without having to feel like we are letting the candidate we don’t like win?

Not only does the current campaign finance system limit politics to the well-off, it’s just wrong for anyone – rich or poor – to have to pay money to run for office. The ability to share your views with the world shouldn’t be a commodity, and a candidate’s likelihood of winning shouldn’t depend on the amount of money they and their followers are willing to sacrifice. It’s such a waste for losing candidates who spend millions of dollars on nothing, and even for winning candidates whose victory comes at a huge financial cost.

Another perk of my system: it would greatly help third-party and independent candidates, since TV and radio would have to give the same amount of ad time to all candidates.

Further reading:

• CNN: Supreme Court eases restrictoins on corporate campaign spending
• Economy Watch: US Supreme Court: No to Campaign Finance Limits

The Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 that it was unconstitutional for a school to strip search a 13-year-old girl out of suspicion that she had aspirin. This is a happy day for the privacy rights of all Americans, and I applaud this decision.

Unfortunately, the court found 7 to 2 that school officials did not have to pay damages to Savana Redding, now 19. I would have had them pay as much money as possible, and maybe even go to jail.

I agree with the majority’s decision that the search violates the 4th Amendment. For reference, the amendment goes as follows:

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 an Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

If this search wasn’t unreasonable, I don’t know what is. The contraband in question was equivalent to two Advil, hardly dangerous. The search was extremely invasive, and there was no warrant. School officials have taken their concern with students’ safety way too far, at the expense of students’ dignity, privacy, and freedom to make their own decisions. I don’t see anything wrong with a 13-year-old being allowed to carry aspirin and make her own decisions about whether she wants to take it. Even worse, though, is the fact that Savana did not even have aspirin on her! She was humiliated and violated for nothing.

This search was borderline sexual abuse. I understand that it was not done for sexual purposes but out of an obsession with safety at the expense of everything else, but being strip searched should be humiliating to people of any age and gender. I am glad the court (with the exception of Justice Clarence Thomas) decided this is not acceptable in America.

Update: Here’s a PDF of the decision.

The Supreme Court is going to hear the case of a 13-year-old girl who was strip searched by her school because of a false accusation that she had aspirin. Savana Redding and her parents sued the school and the assistant principal for ordering her to be strip searched after another student accused her of possessing prescription-strength ibuprofen. She and her parents called the search humiliating and unconstitutional, and who can blame them?

The school’s actions are wrong on so many levels.

• First, it is wrong for a school to ban students from possessing or taking medication. People of all ages have a right to decide what medicines they want to take and to take those medicines whenever and wherever they want. A teenager is plenty old enough to make her own decisions about medicine.
• Second, the school had no warrant for the search. The Fourth Amendment forbids all searches for which there is no warrant. The Supreme Court ruled in 1985 that this protection applies to students, even though such a thing shouldn’t be necessary, since there is nothing in the Constitution that would suggest that students are exempt from the Bill of Rights.
• Third, I really don’t think strip searches should ever be legal, even if there is a warrant. Nothing can justify that kind of humiliation.
• Fourth, Savana didn’t even have the pills that the school had unjustly banned! I think that if you cause another person any kind of pain, inconvenience, or humiliation in order to search for something, and it turns out the person didn’t have the thing you were searching for, you should have to pay restitution to the victim. A strip search is humiliating; therefore it is punishment. Therefore, the school punished Savana even though she did nothing wrong. This is clearly unjust, and the school should have to undo the punishment by paying her a large sum of money.

All in all, the assistant principal and school committed a grievous wrong and flouted the Constitution. They should be punished severely.

Last year the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Savana’s favor, but the school appealed to the Supreme Court, saying that the ruling “would create enormous confusion for school officials in trying to determine when and how searches may now properly be conducted.” Um, how about no warrant, no search? What’s confusing about that?

The Supreme Court will hear the case in April.