🚀 go-pugleaf

Archive-name: library/legal/bus-searches/1991-06-21
Archive: ftp.cwru.edu:/hermes/ascii/89-1717.* [129.22.8.44]
Original-posting-by: jfw@neuro (John F. Whitehead)
Original-subject: Re: Supreme Court on the Florida Bus Searches
Reposted-by: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti, MSEN)

In article <1991Jun21.154906.17412@inel.gov> whg@INEL.GOV (Bill Gray) writes:
>I can see where this is going.  The police board a bus and announce a
>search;  some people withold permission.  These are then detained for real,
>because witholding permission is by definition suspicious; they are their own
>proximate cause of "probable cause" for the police to obtain a warrant.

No, this is not the case.  Refusing to consent to a search is not probable
cause.  Refusing to answer questions is not probable cause.  Walking away
from an officer so as to avoid answering questions is not probable cause.
The court has upheld this in several different situations.

Of course, it's better to do all of the above politely...

If people are interested in seeing all of the bus decisions in their 
entirety, all Supreme Court decisions are available via anonymous ftp.
For instance, the bus decisions can be found at /hermes/ascii/89-1717.*
at ftp.cwru.edu.  The extensions are generally S.filt (summary), O.filt
(opinion), and D.filt (dissent).

 ________________________________________________________________________
|   John      jfw@neuro.duke.edu          Duke University Medical Center |
| Whitehead   jfw@well.sf.ca.us           Department of Neurobiology     |
|____________ white002@dukemc (bitnet) __ Durham, North Carolina ________|

-- MSEN Archive Service file verification
ftp.cwru.edu
-rw-rw-rw-  1 uucp     daemon      23003 Jun 20 10:13 /hermes/ascii/89-1717.D.filt
-rw-rw-rw-  1 uucp     daemon      19536 Jun 20 10:13 /hermes/ascii/89-1717.O.filt
-rw-rw-rw-  1 uucp     daemon       4730 Jun 20 11:13 /hermes/ascii/89-1717.S.filt
found bus-searches ok
ftp.cwru.edu:/hermes/ascii/89-1717.*