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Comment by DaftDank | Hacker News Reader

This is a decent summary of court cases related to the dogs: https://www.nlrg.com/criminal-law-legal-research/bid/84670/C...

I think this part is pretty key, and has always been a big open question in my mind:

"The court further recognized a potential problem in assessing reliability related to handler cuing, as even well-trained dogs could respond to subconscious cues from their handlers. For this reason, the court determined that a critical factor in determining reliability is the record of false positive alerts made by the dog."

The subconscious cues, or even deliberate cues that only the handler and dog know, could allow an officer with ill intentions to make some kind of signal only known to him and the dog, which causes the dog to make an "alert", giving the cop probable cause.

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Some departments deploy dogs that alert on all vehicles when they want an excuse to search. In at least one department, this was referred to as “probable cause on four legs”.

If judges continue to allow this quality of evidence, the police will continue to abuse the legal environment that creates.

Let's face it - most judges are, at least subconsciously, on the same side as the police and prosecutors even though that's not how the system should work.

>though that's now how the system should work.

I'm assuming that's an unfortunate Freudian slip of a typo.

not how the system should work, even though it is now how it seems to work.

You know what you call a judge, a prosecutor, and a cop eating at the same table?

Your average lunch near the courthouse.

I don’t know about that. Judges have front row seats to the 10,000 ways that cops, prosecutors and defense attorneys screw up every day.

If anything, I think the expense of defense and the poor quality of public defenders probably accounts for bias.

Magistrates aren't even required to pass the bar. I had one think that I was calling him prejudiced when asking to dismiss with prejudice (and many other examples with other magistrates, but this one is somewhat funny). I had a judge say that you can't use statements made at a prior trial to discredit the same witness at the current trial if their testimony conflicts. He also denied said that a trial de novo is a "complete do-over" yet denied a petition to dismiss because there's no record of the issues being raised before the end of the trial. So is it a complete do-over? The whole reason they do de novo trials for appeals from the magistrate is because the magistrate doesn't have a court reporter. Not to mention one of the complaints was that the magistrate wouldn't even hear the petition, responding with "That's not gonna happen". Makes sense since he was a retired police cheif. The judge also called me a sovereign citizen when I asked to speak, even though I met the definition of a litigant under the state constitution. There were some minor things too. The main point is, he knew rights had been violated in an irrevocable way as part of that case but decided that it didn't matter.

My impression is that if they do recognize it, they don't care. I also think many dont recognize it. After all, are they going to side with a layman citizen or the police and prosecutor? Even with a defense attorney, it often comes down to the police officer's word vs the accused. Who are they going to believe?

That’s bullshit. Lay magistrates deal with minor issues like traffic infractions, violations and minor misdemeanors.

Misdemeanors can keep people from getting a job. There can be pretrial restrictions, including custody. They also tend to be the ones having preliminary hearings and can issue warrants, even for felonies.

These are not just traffic violations and minor issues. And even if they were, that doesn't mean that people's rights stop mattering, nor is that a valid excuse for gross incompetence.

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