Searching Without Consent

[sm]

http://www.kstp.com/article/view/122514/


Conservation officers can once again search boats without permission
Updated: 09-26-2003 12:07:15 AM

(St. Paul-AP) -- The D-N-R is hailing a Minnesota Supreme Court decision that gives conservation officers the authority to search boats without the owner's consent.

The high court today reversed a state Appeals Court decision and said conservation officers may search boats, with or without the owner's consent.

The ruling means the original penalty of 137 dollars will be reinstated,

Conservation officers argued they need that authority to protect natural resources.

Colonel Mike Hamm is D-N-R enforcement chief. He says in the year the Appeals Court ruling had been in effect, anglers had started to regularly refuse access to conservation officers -- especially on waters with experimental regulations.

The case involved a Virginia (Minnesota) lawyer who wouldn't let a game warden inspect his boat on a portage between two lakes in northern Minnesota.

He argued that allowing officers to act without evidence of wrongdoing would infringe on the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

 

[AZRickD]

Is this story written incorrectly? It said that it reversed a decision that said they could search.

Bad reporting.

Bad Court.

The 4th Amendment has no meaning.

Rick

 

[Standing Wolf]

Conservation officers argued they need that authority to protect natural resources.

We don't need no stinkin' Fourth Amendment nohow! Natural resources are way more important than civil rights.

 

[Devonai]

Don't forget that the government grants you permission to use their waterways...

:banghead:

 

[Brian Dale]

Devonai,

and if that's not bad enough for ya,

The case involved a Virginia (Minnesota) lawyer who wouldn't let a game warden inspect his boat on a portage between two lakes in northern Minnesota.

Everybody remembers that a portage is a footpath, right? What 4th Amendment?
:banghead: :banghead:

 

[repsychler]

I was hoping this would go the other way. I hate poachers, but I hate unreasonable search and siezure even more.

The same court ruled last year that conservation officers do NOT have the authority to search ice houses without probable cause. According to a StarTribune article:

The Supreme Court said its ruling doesn't conflict with one it issued last year prohibiting conservation officers from searching ice-fishing houses without probable cause.

Boats and ice houses are different, the court said. Anglers have a reasonable expectation of privacy in an ice-fishing house because they sometimes also eat and sleep there.

 

[geekWithA.45]

So, my reasonable expectation of privacy has something to do with where I eat and sleep? Huh?

At the end of the day, there is precisely one and only one thing _we_ can do about it:

_We_ can assert our rights.

They will either be upheld or infringed, but that's not our karma.

If they are upheld, it is evidence that the mechanisms of freedom embedded into the structure of the Republic are functioning, and all is well.

If they are not, it is evidence that the mechanisms, and arguably the Republic is in the process of derailing.

 

[standingbear]

there goes the 4th,the 2nd on the way...