Rumor has it that Placer County’s jailers refused to hold Steve Kubby. If so, let’s hope they escape prosecution.

Brad Spangler provides contact info for the DA of Placer County, whose job it is to persecute Steve Kubby for trying to stay alive by unapproved means.

Alcohol Prohibition Was A Failure, says a Cato paper of 1991. (No kidding?) This is the first time I’ve seen the data so thoroughly laid out. Here’s another survey. (Both cited by Radley Balko.)

Some conservatives, like my old schoolmate Eric Rasmusen, say that rather than excluding tainted evidence (i.e., evidence acquired in violation of the Fourth Amendment) from trials, courts ought to admit whatever credible evidence exists and punish the cops for the illegal search. Eric makes an interesting point about the exclusion policy:

That is a remedy that is useless to someone whose house was searched who was innocent of any crime, since the evidence wouldn’t be useful against them anyway. Rather, our current policy is to only compensate guilty criminals, and, by putting the the compensation in the form of evidence suppression, to compensate them precisely to the extent that they deserve punishment. The compensation has no relation whatsoever to the degree to which the search was illegal.

Radley Balko says:

For my upcoming paper on no-knock and short-notice drug raids, I’ve researched probably close to a hundred examples of botched drug raids, where cops clearly conducted a middle-of-the-night raid on an innocent person or family. Thus far, I haven’t found a single incident in which police themselves were ever charged with a crime for either raiding the wrong home, or shooting someone once inside.

Can this practical immunity be changed by a wave of the wand? What DA will prosecute a cop for bringing in, y’know, someone that the DA wants to prosecute? (Does England still allow private prosecutions?) What jury – routinely screened of anyone likely to question authority – will convict a cop who, like Starsky & Hutch, bends the rules a bit for the greater alleged good?

Wouldn’t it be cool if the blogosphere could save a life? Radley Balko is on the case. (Cited by Gene Healy.)

It is disputed whether the warrant authorized a no-knock entry into Maye’s apartment, but why should that have any bearing on the case? The criterion for self-defense is whether Maye reasonably believed that grave danger existed, and by definition if the cops broke in without warning Maye necessarily could not know whether or not they were “authorized”.

Cops need to recognize that, when they execute a no-knock warrant, they are deliberately making themselves look like felons.

Larry Elder lists some policies that harm people of color, sometimes intentionally.

Jacob Sullum observes:

As I read the relevant Supreme Court decisions, if the [New York] police said they would randomly search bags [on the subway] for drugs, unlicensed guns or other contraband, mentioning in passing they would, of course, arrest anyone they happened to find with a bomb, the searches would be unconstitutional. But since they’ve said they are randomly searching bags for bombs, mentioning in passing they will also arrest anyone found with drugs, an unlicensed gun or other contraband, the searches probably will be upheld.