The Supreme Court Sucks

The Supreme Court ruled today, in a 5-4 decision along the usual idiot/liberal lines (Kennedy going with the idiots), that evidence collected by police due to police mistakes can be used against defendants.

The decision came in a case where police mistakenly arrested a man named Bennie Herring of Alabama. During the arrest, they found meth and an empty gun in his car. It turned out, however, that the arrest warrant that the officers used to arrest Herring had been revoked months before. The police's database had not been updated to reflect the change.

I'm no legal scholar, and I'm not saying that Herring is a good guy. I mean, anyone who's driving around with meth and a gun in their car is probably up to no good. But the greater point is that now anyone, including you and me, can be arrested "by mistake" and whatever evidence is collected can be used against us.

The police are powerful enough as it is. We shouldn't be giving them even more power by rewarding their ineptitude. You might hear people argue that "you shouldn't be carrying any illegal stuff on you at all, or keep anything bad in your house." But that's missing the bigger point. This case was about more than drugs and guns. It was about taking away rights from the people and giving it to the government.

In a democracy you can't keep giving government more power at the expense of citizens. That isn't the way democracy should work, and it's contrary to the American idea of individual freedom. Of course you shouldn't be carrying unregistered guns or drugs, but I think it's just as obvious that the police shouldn't be able to hold that against you if they discovered it by mistake.

There are certainly limitations to my argument. If you're kidnapping someone or if you're carrying a bomb, that's an entirely different story. But are we really ready to give up a right as important as the right to a competent police force? Over a small amount of meth and an unloaded gun?