Supremes deal blow to Fourth Amendment

Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Fri, 01/28/2005 - 02:06

Homeland Theater

They did it again. On Jan. 24, the Supreme Court ruled 6-2 that police sending a drug-sniffing dog into a car in a traffic stop is constitutionally permissible, even in the absense of any evidence of drug use. The ruling reverses an Illinois Supreme Court decision in the case of Roy Cabelles, who was stopped for going six miles over the speed limit and now faces marijuana charges.

"A dog sniff conducted during a concededly lawful traffic stop that reveals no information other than the location of a substance that no individual has any right to possess does not violate the Fourth Amendment," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.

And he's supposed to be one of the "liberals" on the court! Dissenting were Souter and Ginsburg, who wrote that the ruling "clears the way for suspicionless, dog-accompanied drug sweeps of parked cars along sidewalks and in parking lots."

Another turn of the screw. One by one, they chip away at our liberties. And now with terrorism-related suspension of habeas corpus and legitimization of torture, things like this are hardly even noticed...