Tag Archives: fourth amendment

The Fourth Amendment Applies to Motorists, Too

24 October 2015By Andy Ostrowski

I attended a hearing on August 24 before a Dauphin County district justice (magistrate) for a “driving with an expired license charge” against a member of the Independent Gazette team. John drives a car with a big “Ron Paul” sticker on the rear window, as seen in the picture below. One day back in July, as he drove up Interstate 283, he was pulled over by a Pennsylvania State Police trooper. The trooper pulled him over for driving with an expired license. How did he know that? He allegedly randomly ran John’s license plate and found that information in one of the databases to which he had access.

PA Supreme Court eliminates 238 years of individual privacy

9 May 2014By John Manko

With 2 Comments

On May 5, 2014, the PA Supreme Court took a huge step towards completely eliminating 238 years of the constitutionally protected right to privacy, ruling in a 4–2 decision that police may now search your vehicle without a warrant. Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille and Justices J. Michael Eakin, Seamus P. McCaffery, and Thomas G. Saylor ruled in the majority, while Justices Debra McCloskey Todd and Max Baer dissented.

Letter to the Editor: Know your rights

14 April 2014By Staff

With 0 Comments

From 1850 to 1950 the government slowly, over time, stopped teaching civil personal rights in the classroom, dumbing down our children and the populace. When you don’t know your rights, you lose them. Here are two civil rights every person should know. All police officers must read to you a Miranda Warning to comply with a preventive criminal procedure rule that law enforcement is required to administer to protect an individual who is in custody (definition of custody: “The care and keeping of anything; as when an article is said to be in the custody of the court. Or under lawful control,” Black’s Law Dictionary) and subject to direct questioning or its functional equivalent from a violation of his or her Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination, Miranda v. Arizona, 1966. This was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court.

Luzerne County sued for alleged civil rights violations

27 October 2013By Emily Rose DeMarco

With 0 Comments

When officers arrived at Zabresky’s house to arrest him, they did not show him a warrant. They did not bring a warrant with them. In fact, they had not even seen one. They had simply been told by the enforcement supervisor that a warrant existed and that Zabresky should be picked up.

Pittston abandons the Fourth Amendment

11 August 2013By Anthony Antonello

With 0 Comments

Knowing how precious freedom is and how difficult it is to maintain, [the Founding Fathers] adopted some measures to try to keep tyranny from ever creeping in again. They attempted to forever bind the power of government with laws specifically stating what that federal, or general, government could not do to citizens.

Assessing votes of area congressmen on the Amash-Conyers amendment

8 August 2013By John Manko

With 0 Comments

On July 24 the House of Representatives had a showdown concerning limiting the powers of the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect and store—en masse—the private communications of all Americans. Representatives Justin Amash (R–MI) and John Conyers (D–MI) introduced an amendment to H.R. 2397, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, which would defund all programs and activities specifically targeting Americans who were not the subjects of an ongoing terrorism investigation.