A panel of judges unanimously ruled that having hands at "ten-and-two" is suspicious enough to stop drivers inside the USA.
NEW MEXICO ? A federal appeals court has ruled that driving one?s hands at the ?ten-and-two position? is reason enough to pull someone over for further investigation.? No traffic laws have to actually be broken? Additionally, the court ruled that facial acne is reason enough to suspect the driver is a drug smuggler.
The incident took place on April 18, 2012, at roughly 7:45 p.m.? A border patrol agent driving down Highway 80 saw a white Ford F-150 heading the opposite direction.? This took place roughly 40 miles north of the U.S./Mexico border ? well inside the United States.
Although the truck was witnessed breaking no traffic laws,?Border Patrol Agent Joshua Semmerling claimed he noticed several things that drew his suspicions ? while passing the truck at 60 miles per hour.
First was the driver?s upright posture.? The female driver was sitting up straight with her hands properly located on the upper part of the steering wheel.? This was viewed as suspicious activity.
Secondly, the agent claimed that the truck?s tinted windows were suspicious.? It remains unclear how the agent saw driver?s posture through the ?suspicious? tint.
Lastly was the truck?s rear license plate ? which the agent claims to have observed in his rear-view mirror while traveling at a high rate of speed in the opposite direction.? He claimed that he noticed it was from out-of-state, another suspicious characteristic.
The agent decided to make a U-turn and stop the truck.
The driver identified herself as Cindy Lee Westhoven of Tucson, Arizona.? Agent Semmerling then used his keen crime-detecting skills to justify a search of her truck.?? He saw that Mrs. Westhoven had ?acne? on her face and claimed that it was grounds for suspecting her to be a methamphetamine user.
Mrs. Westhoven had already proven she was a U.S. citizen.? She had no warrants and had broken no laws, yet Agent Semmerling claimed that he believed she might be smuggling illegal aliens and/or drugs.?? When she refused to consent to a search, the agent used a drug K9 to sniff her truck.? The dog turned up a small amount of cannabis.? Westhoven was arrested.
Later in court, Westhoven?s defense tried to overturn the arrest due to the shaky ground which the stop was performed upon.? Her attorney argued that the evidence was obtained illegally.?? She was unsuccessful.
?Driving stiffly, having tinted windows, slowing down when seeing law enforcement, and driving in an out-of-the-way area may be innocent conduct by themselves,? Judge Scott M. Matheson, Jr., wrote for the appellate panel. ?But when taken together along with driving a vehicle with out-of-state plates in a mountainous smuggling corridor 40-45 miles away from the border, we conclude Agent Semmerling had reasonable suspicion Ms. Westhoven was involved in smuggling activity.?
The 3-judge panel on the Tenth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the search, and rejected Westhoven?s motion to suppress the evidence.
The acceptance of such flimsy suspicions in court is the practical acceptance of zero need for any real indication of a crime occurring before any American can be stopped and searched by federal agents.
Source: US v. Westhoven (US Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit, 4/24/2014)
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Judges are not weighing up the probability that a law has been broken , they are RULING the citizen & DICTATING what rights you do or do not have REGARDLESS OF THE CONSTITUTION.
This is modern America today , the most DISFUNCTIONAL democracy on the planet. this is not a democracy. it is a constitutional republic. This is PURE comedy.
Boarder patrol checkstops as far up as the middle of the boarder states.
So the only thing you do is stop citizens while the Hispanic Officers allow Hispanic illegals to sneak right in.
AND if we pushed all these agents down to the boarder, illegals wouldn't be getting in to need those checkpoints.
It's intentional misuse of manpower to pretend we're doing boarder patrol while keeping them as far from the boarder as plausibly believable.
Currently the paranoid drug users and smugglers are now buying pimple cream, keeping the window tint off, learning how to drive like a slacker, and using the main roads. The only suspicious thing was probably that he knows all the local junkies, and they didn't use his friendly neighborhood drug plantation gang to acquire their junk. And with all due respect, are we sure it wasn't something thrown in there, or planted evidence? No we don't. If we quit arresting people for cannabis the police could focus on serious crime.This site contains copyrighted material the use of which in some cases has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for the purposes of news reporting, education, research, comment, and criticism, which constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the DMCA and other applicable intellectual property laws. It is our policy to remove material from public view that we believe in good faith to be copyrighted material that has been illegally copied and distributed by any of our members or users.
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