After the verdict was read in the Simpson case, as the jury was leaving, one of them, I was later told, said, 'We think he probably did it. We just didn't think they proved it beyond a reasonable doubt.'
The Constitution defends all of us against unreasonable search and seizure. What constitutes reasonableness depends upon threat.
Asking questions is an essential part of police investigation. In the ordinary sense a police officer is free to ask a person for identification without implicating the Fourth Amendment.
It would not be permissible for you to build a home and not let law enforcement in if they had a search warrant. If they think there's a crime ongoing, they go to court and get a warrant, and they're permitted to come in your home under the Fourth Amendment.
Police officers must act quickly to seize wrongdoers and obtain evidence while protecting themselves and bystanders. It is easy to second-guess their search-and-seizure decisions in a secure courtroom.
A reasonable doubt is nothing more than a doubt for which reasons can be given. The fact that 1 or 2 men out of 12 differ from the others does not establish that their doubts are reasonable.
An arrest is not justified by what the subsequent search discloses.
Officers who use stop and search appropriately, with reasonable grounds and in a targeted and intelligence-led way, will always have my full support.
Rule of law is based on probable cause.
Quality-of-life policing is based on probable cause - an officer has witnessed a crime personally or has a witness to the crime.
It must always be remembered that what the Constitution forbids is not all searches and seizures, but unreasonable searches and seizures.
It wouldn't matter whether you were Latino or Hispanic or Norwegian. If you didn't have proof of citizenship and if the police officer had reasonable suspicion, he would ask and verify your citizenship. I mean, that's the way that it is. That's what the federal law says. And that's what the law in Arizona says.
It all comes down to probable cause: If you think something's up, maybe you gotta take a look.
You can be stopped if a police officer reasonably suspects a crime is about to be committed, is being committed or has been committed. Every law enforcement agency does it. It's essential to policing.
They've just gone over the line in my opinion, and again, there's a proper time for a pat down, there's a proper time for an advanced technology body search, but it has to be done with some thought.
When the police officers knock on your door with a warrant, they don't expect you to give them a tour. It's supposed to be an adversarial process so that it's used in these extraordinary powers are applied only when there's no alternative. Only when they're absolutely necessary, and only when they're proportionate to the threat faced by these individuals.
A person's mere propinquity to others independently suspected of criminal activity does not give rise to probable cause to search that person.
If a police officer is looking for a criminal, he or she might stop a number of people in that particular area and ask to see their driver's license. No one bellyaches about civil rights or privacy issues. We're just happy the cops are trying to find the bad guy.
Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau's example.
So you don't speak English, you have no ID, you can't tell where you're from... that's suspicion, it's lower than probable cause. And then we have a right to call immigration and check you out.
Assessing any possible threat is one thing, but pressing into a full investigation without facts of a crime or national security threat violates standard procedure.
Stop-and-frisk is not something that you can stop. It is an absolutely basic tool of American policing. It would be like asking a doctor to give an examination to you without using his stethoscope.
