| Is a perp walk defamatory?; interesting lawsuit in Chicago | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Nov 5 2010, 09:19 AM (265 Views) | |
| Quasimodo | Nov 5 2010, 09:19 AM Post #1 |
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| Quasimodo | Nov 5 2010, 09:24 AM Post #2 |
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So what does calling an entire team down to police headquarters for DNA tests, and then alerting the press, and then locking the doors so they will be exposed to media coverage, constitute? Even under the best of circumstances (which these weren't), the police must have known that not all of the players could be guilty. And what were Nifong's press conferences (including those in which he demonstrated a choke hold which never happened, and which by his own claims he could not have known about, since he had never spoken to the accuser about the crime)? And what does the publication of booking mug shots on the front cover of a national magazine amount to? (That's a prima facie example of defamation if there ever was one. And I find it impossible to believe that anyone other than rookie journalists at a high school paper could commit such an obvious "lapse of judgment", let alone one of the two top news magazines in the country, which must have a staff of lawyers handy to render advice on just such topics. IE, was the Newsweek cover deliberate?) (MOO) |
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| Quasimodo | Nov 5 2010, 09:34 AM Post #3 |
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POSTER COMMENT on another site about the story :
And you don't have to convince me--it's a proven fact--that the DPD planned the lacrosse team perp walk to create the impression of guilty players. IE, it was deliberate. And that's actionable. The more so, in that the DPD IMHO knew at the time that the charges were bogus and that the team was innocent. At the very least, it knew that at least some of those being subjected to media exposure were innocent (and hadn't even been in town). Ditto for the release of the wanted poster, which had no other purpose other than to inflame public sentiment against the players and pressure them. (The police needed no help from the public in finding those portrayed.) |
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| Quasimodo | Nov 5 2010, 09:55 AM Post #4 |
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PART I:
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| Quasimodo | Nov 5 2010, 10:07 AM Post #5 |
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PART II In Ayeni, the Secret Service obtained a search warrant for the Ayenis' house based on information that Babatunde Ayeni had engaged in credit card fraud. See id. at 683. When Secret Service agents arrived to search the house, together with a CBS television crew, only Ayeni's wife and young son were home. The CBS crew videotaped Mrs. Ayeni and her son without their consent while they were being questioned about the accusations of fraud. They also videotaped the Secret Service agents searching the Ayenis' home and their personal effects. The Ayenis brought suit against the agents, claiming, inter alia, (1) that their "privacy was invaded by the presence of unauthorized persons in their home," and (2) that "the conduct of the search was excessively intrusive." 30 With respect to the Ayenis' first claim, we held that, as a matter of law, the agents' actions violated the Fourth Amendment, because the presence of the television crew both exceeded the scope of the search warrant given to the Secret Service and lacked any legitimate law enforcement justification. With respect to the Ayenis' second allegation - that "the search was conducted in an unreasonably intrusive manner" - we ruled that the Ayenis were entitled to have that claim considered by a jury. Id. at 689. We explained: 31 The video and sound recordings were unnecessary to the purposes of the search - to discover material related to an alleged credit card fraud scheme. The Government makes no claim that the search was being videotaped for legitimate law enforcement purposes.... Instead, the purpose of the TV crew's intrusion into the Ayeni home was to seize images and sounds of the Ayeni home, and of the Ayenis themselves, that were intended for public viewing by television audiences across the country. We agree with the District Court that the video and sound recordings were "seizures" under the Fourth Amendment, and rendered the search far more intrusive than it needed to be. (snip) 35 Charles contends that there was no invasion of Fourth Amendment interests in this case because Lauro's perp walk, unlike the searches in Ayeni and Wilson, each of which involved a search of a private home, occurred in a situation in which Lauro had no reasonable expectation of privacy. Accordingly, he claims that there is no need to analyze whether the perp walk was reasonable. [But hadn't the DPD promised that there would be no press at the DNA testing site? Didn't this create an expectation that they would not be photographed?] 36 Charles is correct that both [cases] Ayeni and Wilson emphasized the sanctity of the private home, and the particular gravity the Fourth Amendment accords to government intrusions on that privacy. It is not the case, however, that the holdings in Ayeni and Wilson turned solely on the special status of the home, or that the Fourth Amendment's privacy protections end at the door of one's house. Our court recognized, rather, that the privacy interests threatened in Ayeni went beyond those that attach to the inviolability of the home, and concluded that obtaining and broadcasting images of the Ayenis in a humiliating situation itself infringed on their Fourth Amendment privacy rights. In doing so, Ayeni was consistent with long-standing Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, which has declined to set spatial boundaries on the rights protected by that amendment. For, as the Supreme Court has famously stated, "the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places." (snip) 39 In the instant case, Lauro was physically restrained, by handcuffs and by the grip of Detective Charles on his arm. In that humiliating position, he was made to walk outside the precinct house, was driven around the block, and was then forced to walk back into the precinct house, in front of television cameras. The fact that Lauro was lawfully under arrest when these events occurred does not mean that no Fourth Amendment interest of Lauro's was implicated. [How were the accused in the lax case brought to court? In handcuffs? Were they deliberately paraded before the media?] |
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| Quasimodo | Nov 5 2010, 10:12 AM Post #6 |
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PART III 44 The same is true here. The interests of the press, and of the public who might want to view perp walks, are far from negligible. In this case, however, the press and the public were not viewing the actual event of Lauro being brought to the police station, but rather, were offered a staged recreation of that event. Even assuming that there is a legitimate state interest in accurate reporting of police activity, that interest is not well served by an inherently fictional dramatization of an event that transpired hours earlier. We conclude that, like the police actions in Wilson and Ayeni, the perp walk that occurred in the case before us not only intruded upon the privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment, but also lacked any legitimate law enforcement purpose, and hence was unreasonable. [What was the 'legitimate law enforcement purpose' in having the lax players detained outside the DNA collection site so they could be photographed by the media? What was the 'legitimate law enforcement purpose' in releasing wanted posters of them?] (snip) 46 It is important, however, to understand the limitations of our holding. First, we do not hold that all, or even most, perp walks are violations of the Fourth Amendment. Thus, we are not talking about cases in which there is a legitimate law enforcement justification for transporting a suspect. (snip) |
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9:14 AM Jul 11