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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1432 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 1, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Court opinion:

  • A person accused of harassment drives to the police station in order to give a statement. The investigating officer (1) watches from the lobby as the suspect stumbles out of his car after parking, and (2) observes a fresh injection mark on the suspect's arm while taking the statement. The officer tests the subject for intoxication, and arrests the subject after the suspect fails two of three tests. Five officers immediately search the suspect's car, without impounding it* or getting a warrant for the search. They find, not just a second intoxicated person in the passenger seat, but also illegal drugs and a gun with an illegal "large-capacity magazine" (capable of holding more than ten rounds). The suspect is charged with three felonies. (The prosecutors don't bother to charge him with the misdemeanor of driving while intoxicated.)

  • The defendant moves for suppression of the evidence, but the trial judge denies the motion, and the appeals panel affirms. The federal supreme court has ruled that, if there is probable cause that a person has driven while intoxicated, then the "automobile exception" applies—there is no need to get a warrant before searching the vehicle, because vehicles are both readily moved outside the current jurisdiction and so pervasively regulated that their users have a reduced expectation of privacy in them. It is true that the state supreme court chose to significantly narrow the automobile exception, ruling that it does not apply when the vehicle already is at police headquarters and therefore is not at risk of disappearing before a warrant can be obtained. However, when the state supreme court said "headquarters", it meant a secure impound lot at a police station, not an unsecured ordinary parking lot at a police station.

  • The state supreme court reverses. "Headquarters" includes an unsecured ordinary parking lot at a police station, especially when the vehicle is parked close enough to the building that the officers can keep an eye on it from inside. After the second intoxicated person was removed from the car, it was securely under the control of the police, and there was no exigency justifying a warrantless search.

*Under state law, if a person is arrested for driving while intoxicated, the vehicle that he was driving must be impounded for twelve hours.

Interesting idea:

Books should be structured as expandable trees. One-paragraph summary of each chapter, expandable into summaries of component points/stories, expandable into the full text. Can read the whole book in five minutes or five hours.

It was always unlikely that the best format for long-form information in the pre-hyperlink world (books) would continue to be the best format in the post-hyperlink world. Authors should experiment more with different ways of structuring complex and interlinking sets of ideas.

Have I mentioned how awesome HTML is?

So did the defendant end up getting all charges dropped?

In the trial court, he pleaded guilty to the three felonies. The state supreme court now has reversed those convictions and remanded the case back to the trial court. The prosecutors technically are allowed to try prosecuting the three felony charges again, but there wouldn't be much point in doing so with all the evidence of those crimes suppressed, so they probably will just drop the charges. (I assume that, four years after the event, it's too late for the prosecutors to charge him with the misdemeanor of driving while intoxicated, which they previously didn't bother to charge him with.)

Awesome. For as stupid as a person is to walk into a police HQ intoxicated or high on drugs, I find it deeply unfair for the police to throw the "felony book" at him. Particularly when he was there to, presumably, assist the police in an investigation.

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