Reason # 568 not that trust the government

[TheEschaton]

Except he made a choice to drive the car knowing it had drugs in it, he didn't make a choice to drive an illegal car. It's the classic definition of police coercion.

-TheE-

[Trinitis]

Hrm. That changes the idea for me. I had thought they removed the plates from said person car so they COULD pull him over, not knowing they provided said person the car. In that case, dude is a moron and got nailed.

If you're gonna be transporting something via car that you know could get you in deep shit, the first thing you should do is make sure *everything* on the car is cool. Plates, lights, tires, tabs, etc.

Next time I'll read the story, insted of parts of it from peoples responces.

[TheEschaton]

It doesn't matter. It's based on his reasonable belief. His reasonable belief was that the UC was a drug dealer, and would have no reason to take the license plate off the car.

If a cop provided him with a car, and he didn't bother checking it, well, then, yeah, it's unreasonable for him not to expect it to be tampered with.

Edited to add:

An informant gets called to run a load of dope. Fine. He provides the load vehicle, which is driven away to the stash house by a criminal load driver. Prior to the load driver picking up the car, law enforcement removes the front plate, on purpose, so that marked patrol units, working with narcotics task force, will have PC to stop the car.

It was the informant's car, and was driven by the criminal driver. The informant, being an ACTUAL drug dealer (not a UC, the UC comes in later), reinforces the driver's reasonable belief the car was fine.

-TheE-

[Clove]

...Like someone said in the comments, I believe, the seized dope is "the fruit of the poisoned tree", which is basically a legal analogy which says if the first act which directly leads to all the outcomes, is wrong/illegal/violative of rights, then those outcomes are also illegal, and not to be held against a defendant in a court of law. Even the most conservative of Supreme Courts (IE, this one) has upheld that.


-TheE-

Yeah, you shouldn't bother framing a guilty man. If arresting agents were willing to steal a license plate to create probable cause to pull a vehicle over, who is to say they wouldn't also plant drugs etc. etc. etc.? Not that I think this is the case here but that is one of the problems that arise if law enforcement doesn't operate legitimately.

[Sean of the Thread]

Police make up probable cause in traffic stops allll the time.

[Clove]

Police make up probable cause in traffic stops allll the time.

Sure and if your lawyer can prove they did, you win .

[Sean of the Thread]

Good luck proving it. Thus why they do it alll the time.

[Latrinsorm]

His reasonable belief was that the UC was a drug dealer, and would have no reason to take the license plate off the car.

Because if you can't trust drug dealers, who can you trust?

Since when is it reasonable to believe that someone else's car has nothing wrong with it? How would Carfax exist if that was the case?

[Clove]

Because if you can't trust drug dealers, who can you trust?

Since when is it reasonable to believe that someone else's car has nothing wrong with it? How would Carfax exist if that was the case?

I believe that's called splitting hairs.

[Latrinsorm]

Yeah, it's almost like we're having a discussion about fine-print legal issues.