("Quid coniuratio est?")
H.R. 666 <== NOTE THE NUMBER!
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What is H.R. 666, you ask? Here is what Mr. Diaz-Balart says:
H.R. 666 would limit the effect of the exclusionary rule, and give Federal judges more latitude to admit evidence seized from those accused of crimes, so long as the search and seizure in question took place under circumstances providing the law enforcement officer conducting the search with an objectively reasonable belief that his actions were in fact lawful and constitutional. Moreover, H.R. 666 establishes a shift in the burden of proof. If a search is conducted within the scope of a warrant, the defendant will have the burden of providing that the law enforcement officer could not have reasonably believed that he was acting in conformity with the fourth amendment.
H.R. 666 builds upon Leon by codifying its holding. A Federal judge may still suppress evidence if it was seized in knowing or negligent violation of the Constitution.
Evidence gathered in violation of any statute, administrative rule or regulation, or rule of procedure would be admissible unless a statute specifically authorizes exclusion of evidence. But, the good faith exception would apply and may render such evidence usable. {1}.
Mr. Diaz-Balart, Member from Florida, goes on to add, "Mr. Speaker, I strongly support the Exclusionary Rule Reform Act of 1995 and urge adoption of this open rule for its consideration." {2}.
Mr. Diaz-Balart, Member from Florida: add him to your list of bad guys.
What's that you say? But this is hard to understand, just like the Andreuccetti Affair! I also am not 100 percent clear on this, so far. Here's what another Member, Mr. Beilenson, says:
House Resolution 61, the provisions of which the gentleman from Florida has well explained, is an open rule. I support it, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.
I am, however, as are others, concerned about the wisdom of the provisions of H.R. 666, the bill for which this rule has been granted. As my colleagues on the Judiciary Committee have written, H.R. 666 "commits affirmative harm to the Constitution."
It breaks our Constitution's promise, as expressed in the fourth amendment, and which has been maintained for over 200 years, that all Americans have the right to be protected from arbitrary and unfounded governmental invasions of their homes.
The protections of the fourth amendment have been enforced through the exclusionary rule, which prohibits prosecutors from using evidence in criminal cases that has been obtained in violation of the constitutional guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures.
We should not only question the provisions of H.R. 666 which allow the use of evidence obtained without a warrant as going beyond permissible police search and seizure powers, but we must also question whether Congress has the power to change the exclusionary rule by simple legislation rather than by a constitutional amendment. Along with many of my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, I am confident that the constitutionality of H.R. 666 will be challenged and, I suspect, successfully. {3}.
Mr. Beilenson: add him to your list of good guys.
The gist of this exclusionary rule business seems to be that, for example, if you are stopped under the pretext of illegal lane change, then they find marijuana in your vehicle, then the original lane change violation gets thrown out, this new "666" legislation will mean you can still be found guilty on the marijuana possession. In practice, this will mean that a police officer can pull you over for anything, search your vehicle (he now has "probable cause" based on whatever he in "good faith" decides is a probable cause), and if he finds contraband, for example, -- this has been a legal search. Even if the original probable cause that precipitated the search turns out to be invalid.
What's that you say? You say that you are law-abiding and have nothing to fear? Wrong. You have to fear detainment, search of your property (and guess what? they don't clean up after themselves after they have torn apart your house), neighbors viewing you askance due to the police raid on your property at 4 a.m., nervous police who may shoot you if you make the wrong move, etc., etc.
And if you are political, man can they go after you now.
Going back to the Congressional Record, Mr. Torricelli notes,
The right of persons to be secure in houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
Today we are told it is an inconvenience, it is in the way of the police... {4}
Breaking in... Remember what Officer Jack McLamb (ret.) of the Phoenix Police said?
...there's been much research, much research, and much documentation to the fact -- and I say fact, fellow police officers (We've got some female police officers here too. Thank you for coming.), -- but I'm telling you, I want you to hear this, I'm talking about fact that we can prove, we've got the evidence -- an evidentiary foundation that would stack as high as I am, the evidence, I've seen it -- that the U.S. government, certain factions of the U.S. government, have been involved in importing the majority of drugs in the United States since the '60s. Since 1960.... {5}.
So we've got the U.S. government importing the drugs, making the drugs illegal, causing crime, then saying "Hey! We need to throw out the 4th amendment because crime is so bad!"
As McLamb explains,
How do you create anarchy in the streets, now? Well, you've got to do what the dialectic, the Hegelian dialect, said. And the Hegelian dialect was something that was conceived to cause you to do things you wouldn't do unless there was something serious happening in your community.
Here's the dialectic: The Hegelian principle is, revolutionaries in government have created economic chaos; shortages of food, fuel; confiscatory taxation; a crisis in education; and the threat of war, crime, and other divisions, to condition Americans for the New World Order. The technique is as old as politics itself. It is the Hegelic principle to bring about change in a three step process: the thesis, the antithesis, and the synthesis.
The first step, the thesis, is to create a problem. Crime. Let's use that as an example. Drugs. Illegal aliens coming in. Uh, the economy collapses as the illegal aliens come in. The economy gets worse. Whatever the problem is, you create it on purpose, O.K.? That is the thesis.
The antithesis is, to generate opposition to the problem. [CN -- The reaction to the problem.] Fear. Panic. Hysteria.
And then the synthesis is, to offer the solution to the problem created in step one! {6}.
So the "solution" to the problem they themselves have created is to throw out the 4th amendment! And namby-pamby liberals and weekend leftists will staunchly block this awareness! They will lean back, smile knowingly, and tell you that you need to do an "institutional analysis"! The 4th amendment has become "inconvenient", drug dealers have merged with the government, and "666", literally, has arrived. Yet not to worry -- just leave it to the anemic and oh-so-fashionable "intellectuals". Straighten out your turtlenecks, boys, and tell us again: there are no conspiracies.
Amazingly in all this, Pat "turn in your guns" Schroeder appears as a "good guy":
Right now Americans are basically protected from illegal searches and seizures by the fact that, yes, of course, today the FBI or the BATF or the local police could come and go through your house, your car, whatever, without a warrant. But if they find anything, they could not use it against you. Therefore, that is a real inhibitor. Why would you, as a FBI agent or a police officer, go running through, stopping people illegally or searching homes illegally if you could not use it to prosecute? The idea being now, if you want to prosecute someone and you have cause, you go get a warrant and then you go get it. If you take away that, which is what this bill does -- this bill says if they come through your house, if they come through your car, if they do not have a warrant and they find anything, they could still use it -- why would anybody go get a warrant?
So what we are really doing as we adopt this bill is just totally doing away with the requirement to have a search warrant, because there is not penalty paid, no penalty at all paid if they illegally search. {7}.
And you thought this new Congress was supposed to be conservative! Well, like Gomer Pyle used to say, "Surprise, surprise, surprise." With a Congress like this, no wonder people get the wrong idea about conservatives. "It is a great irony that a new conservatism, believing that government robs people of their freedom, believing in the right and the sanctity of private property, would now cause a new exclusion," notes Mr. Torricelli. {8}. But isn't it just Tweedledum and Tweedledee? Isn't it just the same bunch of assholes wearing new masks? Could be. The Spotlight notes that "the Democrat-controlled Houses of the 101st and 102nd Congresses passed bills aimed at doing the same thing -- possibly opening citizens to unconstitutional warrantless searches." {9}.
You may, especially if you are a new reader of Conspiracy Nation, be wondering, "Why didn't I see this H.R. 666 in the newspaper? Why wasn't that nice, smiling Tom Brokaw telling me about this?" Why you silly person! Don't you know that the O.J. Simpson trial is so important to your quality of life and to that of your offspring that the loss of 4th amendment protections must take a back seat!?
But these politicos aren't all slimy scuz. Here are some more quotes from a couple of Members who upheld their oath to defend the Constitution.
MR. STUPAK:
Mr. Chairman, I come down here today. I had no intention of
coming down here today until I started listening to the
debate, and the more I listened to it, the more concerned I
have become and the more convinced I am that we need the
amendment proposed by the gentleman from Michigan [Mr.
Conyers].
There are very few principles in our Constitution or in the amendments in our Bill of Rights that are more sacred than protecting people and their homes from unreasonable search and seizures.
As I was in my office discussing matters with some constituents, the gentleman from North Carolina, who had a very long and distinguished career in law enforcement, came up and spoke in favor of H.R. 666, but what the gentleman said are words to this effect, that the fourth amendment applies only to law-abiding citizens, as he was 2 months ago.
I say to my colleague, "The fourth amendment applies to everyone in this country, whether you're a law-abiding citizen, whether you are driving down the road and being stopped by the police, or whether you are walking home at night and being stopped by the police. We are all citizens, and we all have the protection of the fourth amendment against unreasonable search and seizures."
Having been a police officer for 12 years, 12 years of having worked the road while I was a police officer, I also went back and got my law degree and was assigned to special investigations. I also taught constitutional law, search and seizure and criminal law at the Michigan State police academies, and I continued to work the road and to do special investigations.
No matter who you are, the fourth amendment applies to you. We do not know when the resources of the State or local or Federal Government will turn their resources on you, and you then become a suspect. You do not suddenly lose your fourth amendment rights. You cannot lose these rights. {10}.
And Congressman Rush, of Chicago:
MR. RUSH:
Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to this
exclusionary rule, this move to enact H.R. 666. Mr. Chairman,
as I sat in my office and listened to the debate, I must tell
Members of this body that I became more terrified about this
piece of legislation than I have been about any legislation
that I have been asked to consider as a Member of this body
since I was elected to this office representing the First
Congressional District of Illinois.
A little over 25 years ago, Mr. Chairman, there was an illegal search and seizure conducted by the Chicago Police Department within the city of Chicago.
As a result of that illegal search and seizure, admittedly illegal search and seizure by the Chicago Police Department, two individuals were killed [Fred Hampton and Mark Clark], seven individuals were wounded. They also, the survivors of that particular raid in the city of Chicago, had the right to sue. They did sue. The county of Cook settled out of court, but it did not bring life back to the two individuals who were killed. That was December 4, 1969.
December 5, 1969, Mr. Chairman, my apartment was also raided illegally, supposedly in search of guns. They did not come with a warrant. They came with weapons pulled, weapons blazing. They shot my door down.
Fortunately I was not at the apartment. My family was not at the apartment at that time. They entered my apartment, did not find any weapons, but yet and still, they justified it, Mr. Chairman, Members of this body, by saying that they, in fact, did find contraband in my apartment; they did find a bag of what they identified at the time [as] a bag of marijuana in my apartment.
Mr. Chairman, upon further research and upon actions by my attorneys at the time, my attorneys took them to court, and in court they indicated that that bag of marijuana, where they had shot my door down, guns blazing, threatening; had I been there, I would have been killed also, and my family would have been killed, wiped out totally, they found that that bag they called marijuana was nothing more than bird seed.
[...]
Mr. Chairman, I must say to you that although at the time, 25 or more years ago, a little over 25 years ago, back in the city of Chicago we felt as though we had no friends. We felt as though the power of this Nation was coming down on our backs as young men who felt, young men and women, who felt that we wanted to challenge the status quo.
I must say that it was Members of this body led by the distinguished gentlemen from Michigan who did come into Chicago, the Congressional Black Caucus, and put the skids, put the skids on the type of police atrocities and police violations of the law and police murder that was occuring in the city of Chicago, put the skids on that. They came in, and they conducted a hearing, and because they did focus national attention on what was happening in Chicago, police forces there backed up and subsequently were found, they admitted, that they had no legal grounds to murder two individuals, and so they had no legal grounds to come into my apartment to seize and to search and seize in my apartment and to charge me with a felony of which it was baseless. It was groundless. It was only an excuse, only an excuse, Mr. Chairman, to take my life away.
I must tell you that today that is the issue that is at stake for many, many Americans, whether or not we are going to have police forces throughout this Nation, any police force, given the arbitrary power for political reasons to invade someone's privacy, to invade their homes under the guise of arbitrary decisions that they want to make. {11}.
-------------------------<< Notes >>-----------------------------
{1} Congressional Record, H1315, Feb. 7, 1995
{2} Ibid.
{3} Ibid.
{4} Congressional Record, H1320, Feb. 7, 1995
{5} Conspiracy Nation, Vol. 2, Num. 63
{6} Conspiracy Nation, Vol. 1, Num. 82.
{7} Congressional Record, H1322, Feb. 7, 1995
{8} Congressional Record, H1320, Feb. 7, 1995
{9} The Spotlight, Feb. 20, 1995, Vol. XXI, Num. 8, p. 1.
{10} Congressional Record, H1324-H1325, Feb. 7, 1995
{11} Congressional Record, H1330-H1331, Feb. 7, 1995
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[Copies of The Congressional Record are normally available for viewing at your local library.]
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"