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Skeletor:
Supreme Court hears case of Texas grandmother thrown in jail after criticizing city government
Supreme Court justices heard arguments Wednesday in the case of a former Texas councilwoman who was jailed after criticizing a city manager and will now consider whether she can sue city leaders for politically motivated retaliation.
Sylvia Gonzalez is suing Castle Hills Mayor JR Trevino and other officials, alleging they plotted to have her arrested as retaliation for criticizing the city manager, violating her right to freedom of speech. She is represented by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit, public interest law firm.
The city officials invoked qualified immunity, a defense commonly used to shield government officials from liability unless it can be proven that they violated a clearly established constitutional right.
Gonzalez won a seat on the Castle Hills City Council in 2019. The then-72-year-old retiree immediately championed a nonbinding petition calling for city manager Ryan Rapelye's replacement, citing ongoing complaints from residents that he ignored their concerns, particularly when it came to the condition of their streets.
Debate over the issue grew heated, extending Gonzlez' first meeting as a councilwoman through the following day. At the end of the second day, Gonzalez said she straightened up some papers strewn across her dais, put them in her binder, and went to talk to a constituent.
A police officer interrupted to tell Gonzalez that Trevino wanted to speak with her, court documents allege. Trevino asked where the petition was and asked Gonzalez to look in her binder, saying he could see a clip inside.
Gonzalez said she didn't realize she'd accidentally put the petition in the binder and handed it over. Two months later, she was arrested on a charge of tampering with a public document. She spent the day in jail and had her mugshot splashed across the evening news. The district attorney's office later dropped the charge, but Gonzalez' brief political career was over.
Her lawsuit accuses Trevino and former Castle Hills Police Chief John Siemens of using the briefly missing petition to launch a criminal investigation. After two other officers found no reason to arrest Gonzalez, Bidwell said the chief assigned his friend Alexander Wright to take over as a "special detective."
Rather than seek a summons for the nonviolent misdemeanor, the special detective took the unusual step of asking for an arrest warrant and going straight to a judge — instead of the Bexar County District Attorney's Office — to do so, the lawsuit claims.
"They wanted to punish me, and they wanted to make sure I went to jail. And they did a good job," Gonzalez said.
She sued Trevino, Siemens, Wright and the city in 2020, alleging they deprived her of her rights under the First and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.
The Supreme Court is considering whether a previous case, Nieves v. Bartlett, can be used to shield Castle Hills officials. The Nieves case involved police officers making "split-second decisions," Bidwell said, arguing the same protection from First Amendment lawsuits should not be extended to other government officials who, in this case, took weeks before obtaining an arrest warrant.
Yet, much of attorney Lisa Blatt's argument in defense of the Castle Hills officials centered around protecting police officers.
"If you accept the plaintiff complaint, the officer will always lose," Blatt told the justices. The officer "literally can never arrest without worrying about getting sued."
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals previously ruled that Gonzalez could not prove her arrest was retaliatory because she could not cite cases in which other individuals had not been arrested for actions similar to hers.
Some Supreme Court justices pushed back on that logic.
Justice Neil Gorsuch pointed out that there are hundreds of thousands of federal crimes and statutes on the books and that he "can't imagine how many there are at the state and local level."
https://www.foxnews.com/media/supreme-court-hears-case-texas-grandmother-thrown-jail-criticizing-city-government
Skeletor:
That's rich coming from the government whose gangs of uniformed thugs routinely object to being filmed and will attack or arrest people for doing so, all the while their bodycams conveniently "malfunction" when the footage would incriminate them.
How long can law enforcement secretly film the front of your home without a warrant?
Answer: As long as they want.
Turns out, the front of your house is not considered private. A federal court recently ruled that law enforcement officers were within their rights to film the front of a man’s house without his knowledge for two months straight.
The ruling was made in the case U.S. vs. Hay, in which Army veteran Bruce Hay was found guilty of lying about his disability status in order to receive benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). After receiving a tip that Hay was not being truthful about his disability status, VA officers set up a camera across the street from his home and filmed for 15 hours a day for 68 days in a row. They did not have a search warrant.
The video footage was enough to find him guilty on 16 charges, but Hay appealed because the filming had been done without a warrant. However, the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that because “video cameras proliferate throughout society, regrettably, the reasonable expectation of privacy from filming is diminished.” So since cameras are everywhere now, it seems you can only expect privacy inside your home with the curtains drawn.
https://www.govtech.com/question-of-the-day/how-long-can-law-enforcement-secretly-film-the-front-of-your-home-without-a-warrant
Taffin:
Skeletor:
--- Quote from: Taffin on March 30, 2024, 02:12:40 PM ---
--- End quote ---
"This cop was given a 5 day suspension for this incident."
An ordinary person would go to prison if he pointed a gun at someone and threatened them.
Skeletor:
A 15 year girl that was reported kidnapped by her father, was shot dead by the the "trained professionals" despite "complying" with their "commands".
Gunfire From Deputies Killed Teen Who Had Been Reported Kidnapped, Video Shows
Newly released footage and audio recordings from a vehicle pursuit in September 2022 show that a 15-year-old girl who had been kidnapped by her father was fatally shot by gunfire from deputies as she followed their instructions to exit her father’s truck.
The girl, Savannah Graziano, was fatally shot on Sept. 27, 2022, off Interstate 15 in San Bernardino County, one day after the California Highway Patrol issued an Amber Alert that said her father, Anthony Graziano, 45, was believed to have abducted her, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.
The Sheriff’s Department did not initially disclose exactly how Savannah or Mr. Graziano had been killed, and said at the time that it was possible that Savannah might have participated in the shooting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/us/kidnapped-teen-shot-california-police.html
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