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The Supreme Court just made it A-ok for the police to use evidence found in an illegal stop against you. Even if the stop had nothing to do with whatever they found.

The New York Times reports:

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that evidence found by police officers after illegal stops may be used in court if the officers conducted their searches after learning that the defendants had outstanding arrest warrants.

The case, Utah v. Strieff, No. 14-1373, arose from police surveillance of a house in South Salt Lake based on an anonymous tip of “narcotics activity” there. A police officer, Douglas Fackrell, stopped Edward Strieff after he had left the house based on what the state later conceded were insufficient grounds, making the stop unlawful.

Officer Fackrell then ran a check and discovered a warrant for a minor traffic violation. He arrested Mr. Strieff, searched him and found a baggie containing methamphetamines and drug paraphernalia. The question for the justices was whether the drugs must be suppressed given the unlawful stop or whether they could be used as evidence given the arrest warrant.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority in the 5-to-3 ruling saying that searches such as that do not violate Fourth Amendment rights if the warrant is valid and unconnected to the conduct that prompted the stop.

“Officer Fackrell was at most negligent,” Justice Thomas wrote, “there is no evidence that Officer Fackrell’s illegal stop reflected flagrantly unlawful police misconduct.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor called bullsh*t and wrote a scathing dissent, stressing what anybody with good sense of how America really works would say.

Justice Sotomayor says:

“The court today holds that the discovery of a warrant for an unpaid parking ticket will forgive a police officer’s violation of your Fourth Amendment rights. Do not be soothed by the opinion’s technical language: This case allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your identification and check it for outstanding traffic warrants — even if you are doing nothing wrong. If the officer discovers a warrant for a fine you forgot to pay courts will now excuse his illegal stop and will admit into evidence anything he happens to find by searching you after arresting you on the warrant.”

She continued:

“For generations, black and brown parents have given their children ‘the talk’ — instructing them never to run down the street; always keep your hands where they can be seen; do not even think of talking back to a stranger — all out of fear of how an officer with a gun will react to them. We must not pretend that the countless people who are routinely targeted by police are ‘isolated.’ They are the canaries in the coal mine whose deaths, civil and literal, warn us that no one can breathe in this atmosphere. They are the ones who recognize that unlawful police stops corrode all our civil liberties and threaten all our lives. Until their voices matter, too, our justice system will continue to be anything but.”

So, the “major key” here is if you’re out here “Dealing Recreationally Used Goods and Services” you now have two more things to worry about. One, make sure you don’t have any warrants. Two, don’t walk around with any of that stuff on you. Because sh*t just got realer.

Photo: By Steve Petteway, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States – Clarence Thomas – The Oyez Project, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14719940 – See more at: http://hiphopwired.com/2016/02/29/supreme-court-justice-clarence-thomas-finally-opens-yap-10-years/#sthash.UDPInp3i.dpuf