The Rule Of Whose Law?

The “Rule of Law” is constitutionally understood to mean that the government must apply the principles of due process before applying force, or any other type of legal process, on anyone falling under the protection of due process. A closely related legal principle is probable cause. I still remember the bar-exam definition:

Probable cause is facts and circumstances which, in themselves, would cause a reasonable person to believe that 1) a crime had been committed; and 2) a particular person had committed that crime.

We see this on police TV shows and in cop movies all the time. “Yeah, but is it enough to take it to the judge?” They need evidence to back up their request for a warrant. The trouble is that now, in our crazy-quilt Never-Neverland of a country, probable cause means different things depending on the location of that jurisdiction and/ or the status of the alleged perpetrator.

The DA thinks: who is looking over our shoulder? The judge thinks: can I get yelled at if I sign this warrant? This same kind of variable thinking goes into the decision to indict someone for a crime. “Is it enough to take before a Grand Jury?” Location and status rule.

Let's say some famous snitch gets picked up with a couple of grams of coke in his pocket out in kickstump somewhere. Cops know him. “Fucked up again, 'eh Robbie? Got anything good for us this time?” Robbie, a duskie gentleman and a fine witness with plenty of experience, spins them a tale about two guys he knows that are planning to buy a half pound of powder cocaine, turn it into crack, and sell it forward. What's more, one of the guys has a sister that has a carry-permit for a gun, and sometimes she lets the brother borrow it.

What do you think? Do those police have probable cause to arrest the two black guys, and the sister, and charge them all with conspiracy to traffic in narcotics, including crack, backing up the conspiracy with a gun? In many jurisdictions they certainly do. Federal police in Washington DC did, in this matter.

They pick the three of them up for questioning. They're just in a bar having some laughs. The sister is not carrying her legal gun, that's at home locked up like it's supposed to be. The guys deny everything, and the girl doesn't have any idea what's going on. The bartender says, “everybody in this place is looking to make money off coke.” All three were placed under arrest.

Who that does coke occasionally doesn't just talk about it sometimes? Who that has no money never talks about how we could get some money? The snitch is a famous rat, and talk is cheap. Is this enough to indict the two guys for the conspiracy? One has a prior small coke bust; the other has an old assault rap from when he was a teenager. There's no real act in furtherance of the conspiracy. What about the sister? The sister has a clean record and a good job.

To me, it's all hearsay and the gun is properly licensed and legal.

I read about that one, and the set up was just like that. Very thin on the evidence. All three were charged and found guilty on the conspiracy, with the crack enhancement, and the gun enhancement. Federal; no parole; long bids.

The whole paradigm shifts when the allegations circle around a high-status individual.

Take our whiney little baby of an ex-president. Everybody knows he's been breaking the law on a daily basis since fucking forever. Since he's been out of office, how many times has he been subpoenaed to show up somewhere, or surrender some documents, and he just says, “no.” The New York State Attorney General finally got him to show up for a depo, and he answered the first question, “Fifth Amendment,” and the next 150 questions, “same answer.” And yet, he's still just waving his Schwanz at the legal establishment wherever he encounters it.

They did get a warrant to search for documents at his residence down on the flood plain, and they found a lot of them. They represented proof of a crime, and there was every indication that some of the documents had been sold or otherwise separated from their folders, and evidence that many additional boxes had been moved to other locations.

Where's the indictment? It was a legal warrant, they found the evidence of a crime, then they ran right out of gas.

For any of the crimes that he has been getting away with for decades, a small-timer like me would be in a basement cell in a Federal Penitentiary working on about 100 years. That's the white-privilege sentence; a black defendant would be doing the whole 225 years. Remember that cute little white girl who got ten years for ONE document?

Either I'm missing the point, or there are a lot of “unless” clauses in the Constitution that have escaped my notice.

Here, I've been thinking that the “Equal Protection” clause means that the law as it is written applies equally to white and black, rich and poor, etc. Maybe it actually means that the law applies to all rich, high-status individuals equally, while bearing in mind that it also applies to all low-status black individuals equally, although not in the same way as the high-status individuals, and in a still different way to all low-status white people, etc.

And to certain people, evidently, the law does not apply at all.