Still Crushing his Enemies
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And hearing the lamentation of their women.
The next time you feel like sending a nasty e-mail to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, consider the case of David Kearby Clements.
In September 2004, Clements e-mailed the governor protesting the lack of enforcement of California's Compassionate Use Act, the voter initiative allowing medical use of marijuana with a doctor's recommendation.
But Clements made the mistake of calling Schwarzenegger a "Nazi" and threatening to physically harm him, according to court papers.
That got the attention of the California Highway Patrol, which is responsible for protecting the governor. So, on Feb. 16, 2005, CHP officers executed a search warrant at Clements' South Lake Tahoe home to obtain evidence that the e-mail originated on his computer.
They found a trove of "child pornography, sexually explicit images of minors, and child erotica," court papers say.
Clements, 50, was sentenced Monday to five years in federal prison for receipt and possession of child pornography. -
The governator p00ns!
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I was under the impression that a search warrant only gives officers the ability to search for the articles they specify in the warrant itself, and if they find something that would incriminate the owner in some other manner, than they can't do anything about it.
Case in point: In college my brother's apartment was searched under suspicion of him hacking his college website (which is laughable because my brother is a hardware junkie and couldn't code anything if he tried -- he was cleared soon after) and they found a ton of pirated movies and such. However, they told him they couldn't prosecute him for the movies because their warrant was for evidence that he hacked the servers.
Maybe this is only true in PA? Or maybe it is only true for less serious crimes? -
I reviewed it and it is the case here too. I think it was a computer search warrant in the first place, because all of this was derived from e-mails. They were searching his computer for evidence of said e-mail, and found other stuff on his comp. So, presumably, anything on your computer is fair game.
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QUOTE (Governor @ Apr 1 2008, 06:00 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>I was under the impression that a search warrant only gives officers the ability to search for the articles they specify in the warrant itself, and if they find something that would incriminate the owner in some other manner, than they can't do anything about it.
Case in point: In college my brother's apartment was searched under suspicion of him hacking his college website (which is laughable because my brother is a hardware junkie and couldn't code anything if he tried -- he was cleared soon after) and they found a ton of pirated movies and such. However, they told him they couldn't prosecute him for the movies because their warrant was for evidence that he hacked the servers.
Maybe this is only true in PA? Or maybe it is only true for less serious crimes?
Actually I thought it was the other way around. For instance, if the police had a warrant to search your room for drugs and found a bloody knife in there, it'd be legal to take the knife. I could be completely off base and remember the law wrong. It's been about 4 years since I even heard of it. -
Nah. The police need to go back and get a separate warrant, assuming they even care.
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If they don't have a warrant and you let them in however they can search all your shit. BUT you can dictate the conditions of the search, like telling them that the floor is lava and they have to sing Tubthumpin for the duration of their search.
It all stems from some sort of legal right to know why police are in your house. It's not about your right to privacy so much as your right to information regarding an investigation involving your criminal ass.
So yeah, this prosecution is suspect, but they probably gave the guy a shitty public defender and who's going to let a guy with kiddy porn off the hook because the pr0n was found illegally? -
I think this opens the floor up to some debate. Which would you rather:
Would you rather have the warrant specify in detail what they can look for,
or
would you rather that the warrant simply say where the police can search.
edit: I think I know what the general response will be, but ... I'm bored...
This discussion has been closed.
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