Gov't Database Errors Leading To Unconstitutional Searches?

Wired is running a story about a case the Supreme Court will be hearing on Tuesday that relates to searches based on erroneous information in government databases. In the case of Herring vs. US 07-513, the defendant was followed and pulled over based on a records indicating he had a warrant out for his arrest. Upon further review, the local county clerk found the records were in error, and the warrant notification should have been removed months prior. Unfortunately for Herring, he had already been arrested and his car searched. Police found a small amount of drugs and a firearm, for which Herring was subsequently prosecuted. Several friend-of-the-court briefs have been filed to argue this case, some calling for "an accuracy obligation on law enforcement agents [PDF] who rely on criminal justice information systems," and others defending such searches as good-faith exceptions [PDF].

Why are such examples always so bad?

I am against erroneous data. I don't think anyone would be for it (except to manufacture evidence).

So what's the big deal with it? I'll tell you.

The big deal is that if Mr. Herring wasn't an unlicensed gun-toting drug user, the detrimental effects of the bad data would be obvious. But since Mr. Herring is actually a "bad guy" and Americans love to see bad guys put away, it makes it hard for anyone to sympathize with him.

The ACLU couldn't have picked a worse poster child in this case.

Re:Why are such examples always so bad?

The ACLU couldn't have picked a worse poster child in this case.

He could have been found with terrorist propaganda and child porn in his car. A fair number of people actually do have sympathy for his kind of case. A lot of people think drug laws are absurd and some people either don't believe in gun control or at least think it has gotten out of hand.

Re:Why are such examples always so bad?

It's really not a bad choice. Most of the people opposed to the ACLU do so because they don't care to admit that they might be wrong in their interpretation of the constitution. Many of them refuse to admit that there's more than one interpretation of the 2nd amendment that comes from reading it. Others want protection from the state intruding on their religion, but want their religion to intrude on the state.

In this case it's important for the basic reason that it's a test case. Is an illegal warrant the basis for a legal search or is it to be considered illegal and the individual allowed a free pass. If you think about it, it is a terribly important issue because of the possibility for abuse.

Re:Why are such examples always so bad?

"I'm opposed to the ACLU because they'll defend some of the nastiest, low-life scum-fucks on the face of the earth so long as the case is in line with their political agenda."

Because if we allow someone's rights to be infringed because they're a "low-life scum-fuck" that's a step towards infringing on Joe SixPack's rights.

Re:Why are such examples always so bad?

Uhhh....If you get rid of the ACLU who exactly is going to help you if you get railroaded? It would be different if even the tiniest bit of common sense was used in government these days,but sadly it is not. After all a rickroll can send you to jail now if the troll links it to whichever fake file server the FBI is using ATM to catch the "child molesters" and as we saw with McMartin and the Little Rascals day care cases all it takes is someone to point a finger at you and scream "child molester" and you can spend years of your life rotting in jail.

So while I agree that the ACLU does defend some seriously scummy people,I for one am GLAD that they do. Because in this age of "get the perv" witch hunts it really doesn't take much for any of us to be labeled a scumbag and have our rights taken away. Of course living in a day and age where folks make "don't tase me bro" jokes and everyday you see yet another police "misuse" of force(torture) I want as many protections between me and them as I can get,thank you very much.

Indeed, the 2nd is easily understood

Quite simply, the point of the second amendment is for self protection, both against bad guys and against a government which is literally out of control. Anyone who argues otherwise is quibbling over nothing because the truth scares them. The arms protected are exactly what a policeman or ordinary infantry soldier carries. Indeed, it is quite reasonable to allow cannon, since merchant ships of the time had cannon not owned by governments, and so did individuals for the common protection.

If gun haters want to argue whether it is still useful to think of an armed uprising against a government, or even whether it makes sense to allow guns in crowded cities, the solution is not to circumvent the constitution in sneaky ways, the solution is to *change* the constitution. There is even a procedure for that which has been used a couple dozen times.

If the restrictions put on the second amendment were applied to freedom of the press, the only press protected would be manually powered flat bed presses. No power presses, no rotary presses, no newspapers with circulation over a few thousand, no internet, no copy machines, no private printers on private computers. Is that what you want?

It works the other way too. If the degradations put on searches and habeas corpus were applied to guns, we'd have it worse than nowadays. You think magazine capacity is a problem? Wait until you can't even have a flintlock or cap gun or knives with sharp edges or points.

What really burns me up about those who wish to change the constitution thru backdoor sneaky underhanded methods is that they set a precedent for other sneaky backdoor amendments, such as the recent degrading of protection from search and seizure, habeas corpus, etc.

Dammit, there's a process for amending the constitution! If you don't like it the way it is, change it properly, have a proper discussion, but don't sneak around, because all you do is reduce respect for the process and make it easier for the other guys to do the same thing in ways you don't like.

Every time I hear Republicans defend the degradation of the constitution by the Bush regime, I always wonder what they would think of Hillary having the same power they want Bush to have now. Ditto for Democrats who hate guns -- how would you like it if Reagan / Bush / McCain limited your favorite rights exactly as you have limited the second amendment?

Because there aren't any examples that are "good"

If they HADN'T found anything on Mr. Herring, what do you think would have happened? Maybe a cursory apology. Probably not. His inconvenience for arrest and search? I suppose he could in theory have cause for a civil action, but against who? The cops who arrested him in good faith they had good information? The county clerk who made a minor paperwork error that went undetected for months? Please. Who's going to bring that case? And how does it not get tossed before a court even cares about the question of whether the information was bad?

Like it or not, if there's going to be a test case on whether it's OK to conduct searches based on "oops!" information, it HAS to be someone who had something to lose--where the results of the bad search end up in court. So it has to be something where something illegal was found in the search.

Re:Why are such examples always so bad?

At this point there are so many laws on the books that cover what many people think of as every-day activities that most people are violating laws on a day-to-day basis without even knowing it.

At this point, it's not about finding the person that violated the law, it's finding the law the person violated.

If I make a mistake

If I make a mistake on my taxes, there are penalties. Some of these may be severe, including jail time.

IANAL, so could someone provide to me the list of penalties or sanctions which could be assigned to the decision makers in this case?

It would make me feel better knowing we're all equal under the eyes of the law.

illegally obtained evidence

isn't it customary for the courts to throw out illegally obtained evidence? it's my understanding that this is done so as to discourage prosecutors & law enforcement from doing illegal/warrantless searches.

if the courts routinely allowed illegally obtained evidence/testimony/etc. to be used, then it would encourage law enforcement professionals to encroach on the rights of individuals if they think it will get a conviction. if you don't throw out confessions obtained through torture, then law enforcement will start using torture to gain confessions--it's the same principle.

i know that many people hold personal prejudices against drug users, but a corruption of justice is a corruption of justice, regardless of who it happens to. it just happens to drug users and low income individuals more often because they can't defend themselves, and they have more run ins with the law.

one of my good friends in Chicago was a former heroin addict. he was a really friendly guy and a kind and honest person. however, he started using heroin at a very young age. this inevitably landed him in jail. he's in his late 20's now and has been through the system many times on drug possession charges (never for drug dealing or theft, or anything other than drug possession). and he's recounted to me several occasions where he's been wrongly imprisoned due to clerical error.

one time in particular he'd just finished serving time for a drug offense (i think it was something like a 6 month sentence), and the very weekend he got out he was picked up again and taken back to jail. he hadn't broken any laws, but the patrol vehicle computer showed that he had an outstanding warrant. apparently the warrant was issued while he was doing time for his last sentence. the warrant was for an offense registered in a different county, and so they didn't realize that he was already in prison. he knew that there'd been a mistake, but he couldn't make bail and ended up having to spend another few weeks in jail until it was shown that he'd been falsely imprisoned and the warrant shouldn't have been issued in the first place.

Root Problem

The root problem in this case really boils down to whether the officers should be allowed to treat someone's word that a warrant exists as if that were the actual warrant. The correct course of action would be to have kept him in sight until a copy of the actual warrant was in the officer's possession. This is especially so now that police vehicles are routinely equipped with computer and communications gear that can immediately transfer the warrant to the officer on the scene.

Basically, they jumped the gun (no pun intended) here and ended up executing a non-existent warrant.

Re:Herring was arrested...

The problem is that at the time of search, the warrant was not false. It was a real warrant, it just had not been removed yet. Remember, Warrants don't mean he will be prosecuted, they only allow you to arrest or search, they could choose not to charge him later when the error was found.

Now, being liberal, I think that they should throw out the new charges as the warrant should not have been in effect due to no error on the victim's part. However, this will be an interesting one to watch the courts on to see what their logic is.

Re:Herring was arrested...

The real problem is that the potential for abuse is high.

"Oops," isn't a defense if you or I break the law because if it was we would all claim everything we did was accidental. It seems to me the same should apply to rights violations committed by the government. Otherwise we'll see governments "accidentally" forget to remove warrants all the time.

Re:Herring was arrested...

The problem is that at the time of search, the warrant was not false. It was a real warrant, it just had not been removed yet.

If you check out the actual petition to the court you will see the warrant was removed five months earlier. Mr. Herring lived on the border between three different counties so the police sent the warrant to all three counties. When the warrant was recalled there was a "breakdown...someplace within the Sheriff's department".

From the article:

At issue is the case of Bennie Herring, an Alabama man who drove to the police station in July 2004 to try to retrieve items from an impounded pickup truck. A Coffee County cop recognized him, asked the clerk to check the database for outstanding warrant.

None was found, so the investigator asked the clerk to call the neighboring Dale county clerk to see if it had a warrant for Herring.

The Dale county clerk found a warrant for Herring in their database, so the Coffee County cops set out after Herring after asking the other county to fax the warrant over.

When the clerk went to fetch the paper file she could not find the warrant. The warrant clerk called the officer to inform him of the issue but the officer was already on the scene and had made the arrest (despite Mr. Herring informing the officer that no warrant existed).

I think it's also interesting to note how Anderson (the cop) recognized Mr. Herring. From the footnote on page 4 of the petition [abanet.org] (page 13 in the PDF):

Among other things, petitioner had repeatedly alleged to the district attorney that Anderson was involved in the unsolved murder of a local teenager. Shortly before the events leading to petitioner's arrest, Inspector Anderson and another officer had appeared at petitioner's house, pressing him to drop his complaints.

Re:Herring was arrested...

The problem is that at the time of search, the warrant was not false. It was a real warrant, it just had not been removed yet. Remember, Warrants don't mean he will be prosecuted, they only allow you to arrest or search, they could choose not to charge him later when the error was found. Now, being liberal, I think that they should throw out the new charges as the warrant should not have been in effect due to no error on the victim's part. However, this will be an interesting one to watch the courts on to see what their logic is.

The warrant was expired, the currency of it was false. It's current effect was false.

Suppressing the evidence in this case provides several things. First, it removes an incentive to improperly leave warrants in the system deliberately. It also acknowledges that the search should never have happened by making it as if it hadn't (helps to make the victim whole).

Since the officers involved acted in good faith, they shouldn't be sanctioned in any way (including a civil suit). The department that negligently failed to remove the expired warrant from the system should face sanctions including a suit by the victim (for obvious reasons) and potentially a suit by the police department that relied on the bad information (since they spent a non-zero amount of time and money performing a stop and search that will be nullified based on bad information).

Unless all of that happens, there is zero incentive to avoid screwing people over through negligence.

Re:"This is your receipt for your husband...and th

What in the FUCK is this guy going on about? His post looks like damn script automated it and linked to a random picture, and yet some douche bags modded him informative and insightful?

If you wish to troll this thread you must first complete form 27B stoke 6.

Re:Herring was arrested...

I RTFA. Given that this violation is at the constitutional level. The evidence obtained illegally will be thrown out; it may have to go a higher level to do it. In Alabama, guns in cars is "normal", along with fishing rods. As for the "Evidence" found in his car, I'm amazed that law enforcement found so little; for the amount of time, money, and resources spent. To all intents, and purposes, now would be a good time for those involved to say, "I'm sorry", and maybe go find someone like Bin Laden; a real bad guy's bad guy.

"Dead or Alive, You're Coming With Me" - Robo Cop

Re:Herring was arrested...

I don't understand, shouldn't any evidence obtained under a false warrant be unusable?

It wasn't a search warrant; it was an arrest warrant.

Warrants are not required under any circumstances to search vehicles on public property.

Vehicles are only deemed to have minimal 4th ammendment protection; and can be stopped and examined upon any reasonable suspicion of any type of criminal activity.

Any place in the vehicle where weapons are likely to be stored may be searched freely.

Any other place in the vehicle whatsoever may be searched with probable cause, with no warrant.

Re:Herring was arrested...

That is not actually resolved. There are currently several justices (Scalia, Thomas and Roberts being the big ones) who undoubtedly believe that to be so and have written extensively to that effect, but so far that has not been upheld as "the way it is". There are justices (Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens being the most consistent and predictable) who feel that a vehicle is entitled to the same search protections as a home ("effects" are also covered), regardless of what property it is on... with the caveat that if something is visible in a vehicle from public property without entering or unreasonably examining the vehicle it is (as with one's home) fair game.

In any case, I will be surprised if this even makes it to the Supreme Court. I expect that the evidence will be excluded (and the charges inevitably dropped) long before then. I will be completely shocked if the search is upheld.

United States v. Leon.

I don't understand, shouldn't any evidence obtained under a false warrant be unusable?

Sadly, not necessarily. The "good faith" doctrine says that evidence seized by officers relying on a facially valid warrant that turns out to later be invalid is still usable in court. The warrant must be issued by a neutral, third-party magistrate and the officers cannot have knowingly or recklessly (not negligently) given bad information for purposes of establishing probable cause, but the 4th Amendment is meant to shield against police misconduct and not simple error in the issuance of warrants.

See United States v. Leon [findlaw.com] , 468 U.S. 897 (1984) for the full, gory details. Additionally, the government in this case also relies on Arizona v. Evans, 514 U.S. 1 (1995) which states, basically, that the exclusionary rule did not require suppression of evidence obtained through a police officer's good-faith reliance on an error made by a clerk of the court that had issued a warrant for a person's arrest.

I'm sad to say it, but that latter case is *really* on point for this issue, and EPIC does a miserable job of trying to argue against it. The quality of legal writing between the two briefs is night and day. One takes a line of nearly eighty cases and rigorously applies the facts of the case to the rules found therein, and the other references two cases (one only in the concurrence) and makes a bunch of policy arguments about database systems completely unrelated to that used by the sheriff's office in the case at hand.

EPIC fail.

Re:Being in the database at all

Playing devil's advocate here....

What's to keep the police from having faulty information in the database, either on everyone, or a modifiable "Error" they can just put on people they don't like?

What kind of audits are in place for this information?

I'm sure the jury's still out on whether any country is a member of the "Free world" until the answers are out on this.

Re:Being in the database at all

"already been convicted of a crime."

I have a disorderly conduct charge that I was convicted of. In PA, this is a misdemeanor.

I was pulled over for "running" a stop sign--I had come to a full stop at a 4 way stop, allowed 2 cars to go through the intersection that been at the intersection before me, and I took my turn. An officer ran the stop to my left (where one of the two cars that went through the intersection had taken their turn), I avoided getting slammed in the rear.

The officer subsequently put his lights on, U turned in the middle o the intersection, and pulled me over. He stated I had run the stop in disgust when I asked him what I had done. I stated I had stopped. This went back and forth where I stated I had stopped and he stated I hadn't, and I received a citation for the stop sign "violation" and a disorderly conduct charge; while I was frustrated, I never raised my voice and was respectful the whole time but clearly irritated.

I was found guilty in at the magistrate level and at the county level. I had a passenger in the vehicle who witnessed the whole thing at both hearings. At the magistrate level, the officer claimed I had run the stop sign. At the county level, he stated I had stopped then didn't wait my turn (same traffic code violation under PA law); he had noted on the citation itself that I had "failed to stop." In PA, the county level is de novo, and besides, the magistrate level has no transcript (makes me wonder if it is this way really so prosecution can modify witness claims at the next level on appeal).

So before stupid ass like you states that anyone who has been convicted of a crime is liable for a "good faith" warrant based on past "crimes," you are including in fact people like me who have done nothing wrong.

And in case you meant (but didn't) to only mean "violent" or felony offenders, you might want to look into the 1984 Bail Reform Act and the definition of violent offenses; this is one of the reasons California's 3 strikes law puts minor drug offenders in jail for years, because a "violent" offense is defined legally to include what most people would include non-violent offenses.

Re:IANAL

I would agree with but I don't your point.

Re:Happened to my Brother-in-law

If I had a killer robot and I just entered coordinates at random, I am sure I would eventually get all the bad guys, however there might not be any good guys left either.

It would seem that like everybody, you should be cautious of how you use the power you have and if you cannot exercise good judgment, you should not have that power.

Clearly these people are not careful with their power and should therefore have less of it. If a person carries a gun, ( and police do ) then they have additional responsibilities of action that include NOT doing more damage than good, whether it is to the rights of individuals or innocent bystanders. Just because they have uniforms and are certified by the ( State, Local, Schoolboard, FBI, ATF ) they can still do damage and what deterrent is loss of income compared to years in jail. It seems that if a policeman kills somebody by accident, they are assumed to have more rights to act blindly than anybody else when it comes to their responsibility for damage.

I was riding with my daughter the other day and a policeman in a small town stopped me for something and I can't even remember his excuse, but he came to the door of my car with his gun drawn and pointed at my head. I got no ticket, but he did so much damage to my opinion of this country that I find it hard to support any police if they are allowed to wander around threatening people with weapons that they should not be allowed to carry. As a citizen, if I walked up to a stranger and pointed a gun at their head, I would likely go to jail for a long time. They are allowed to do that and just say, "oops, my bad".

Re:Only as good as the data...

I have no problem (despite all the "stories" here) of this happening. If you weren't doing something illegal...you wouldn't have the issue. If Joe Blow hadn't had drugs in his car the police wouldn't have found it.

You have far more faith your fellow human beings and modern technology than can be reasonably justified. You might want to re-think your position before a database or clerical error puts you in the hot seat.

Hell, it almost happened to me. I was issued a bad ticket by a fat cop with Coke-bottle glasses who was sitting three blocks away at the time. He claimed I passed a school bus with its sign out. That was physically impossible since I was at a 4-way stoplight, the bus was on my left, and I was turning left. The driver was on a cell phone and waved me on. No stop sign was extended.

So I go to court, and the judge tells me that, because of recent changes in the relevant statute, she could no longer take my driving record into account. Automatic six-month suspension. However, the judge looked over at the cop sitting in the corner (you know, the right to face your accuser in court), looked back at me, and asked the prosecutor if there was anything he could do to help me. He pulled out a thick legal tome, and began poring over the wording of the statue. Turned out that the charge could be plead down to a lesser charge, at the judge's discretion. So I ended up with an illegal left turn, got supervision, and paid the fine. End of story, or so I thought.

Six months later, I'm at the local Secretary of State's office trying to renew my driver's license. The woman behind the counter pulled up my record on her computer, and said she was sorry, but they couldn't help me, and would I please go talk to the officer in the little room off to one side.

So in this room is another fat cop, this one with a moustache. He starts shouting at me, calling me a danger to the public, and that it was people like me that get children killed. I kept trying to get the guy to chill, but he was on a roll. After about ten minutes of abuse, I'd had just about enough of this idiot, and lit back into him at max decibels. Eventually the whole facility went silent, everyone listening to me argue with this fucktard, me still not knowing what the hell was going on. This guy couldn't even tell me, all he knew was that I was supposed to be arrested. Civil servant, my ass. Finally I told him to either arrest me or shut the hell up. Oddly, he chose to shut up and I left.

It turned out that either because of a technical problem with their database system, or an error by the court clerk, that ticket had gone through as a conviction for the original charge, my license had been suspended and an arrest warrant issued. I had been, of course, completely oblivious of this, and was utterly dumbfounded when I found out.

Had I been pulled over for a busted taillight or an expired license sticker, I'd have been arrested on the spot. For half a year I'd been driving on a suspended license with an arrest warrant in my name, and nobody in the system had the decency to tell me. A letter stating that my license had been suspended, something to let me know there was a problem. Nope, just fucking arrest me, print me, and let the courts sort it out.

So don't give me this crap. The system makes mistakes, lots of mistakes, and people get regularly shafted because of them. This "if you weren't doing anything illegal you wouldn't have the issue" philosophy of yours is morally bankrupt, and has no connection with reality whatsoever. People aren't perfect (either us regular citizens or those work work in law enforcement.) Yet, you seem willing to grant government officials a veneer of perfection that they have not earned, and certainly do not deserve.