Comment by dugidugout
11 hours ago
> For example, if police have a "hunch" you're selling drugs but not probable cause, they can just wait for you to ...
Whren doesn't seem to track in this case or am I missing something? In the example provided, the hunch directly ties the target to the crime ("drug selling"), which matches the stop's pretext. Natanson isn't accused of any crime, she's essentially writing about the "selling of drugs", not organizing or committing it.
Adjusting your example, if I'm simply friends (implying history of contact) with a known drug dealer, am I really at risk of my home being raided and communications seized solely because I might have evidence leading to their conviction?
Then extrapolating this to the implications on freedom of press... This doesn't sit well with me.
> Adjusting your example, if I'm simply friends (implying history of contact) with a known drug dealer, am I really at risk of my home being raided and communications seized solely because I might have evidence leading to their conviction?
If the police can convince a judge to give them a warrant for it, sure, but if they were targeting you specifically they probably wouldn't bother with the indirect route of your drug-dealing friend and would just harass you for j walking and not using your blinkers properly until you raised your voice at a cop and charge you with assaulting an officer.
I believe you have the hypothetical confused.
> if they were targeting you specifically
They are not targeting Natanson at all from what I can tell. They're targeting a source she's writing from (to what extent isn't clear to me). This is precisely why I'm positing Whren doesn't apply here.
I get the idea of being 'papered' out of a system, but I'm trying to distinguish a pretext that can be justified (objective probable cause) from one that can't (abuse of process). My boss can easily provide reason relating me to fire me, however fantastic the reality, but those would be refused, for good reason, if they surfaced them through private channels outside the organization.
In the case of drugs, they probably wouldn't have any reason to raid you unless you were suspected of stashing drugs or money or some other evidence. The journalist is reasonably likely to be in contact with the leaker and so the cops have a somewhat valid pretext to seize things they thought contained evidence of the crime. Whether or not the cops should be able to do that is another thing, but the precedents have been long set.
The really strange thing here is the massive raid in the middle of the night rather than a more proportional response. That suggests that the journalist was being targeted specifically.
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