Paul Secunda has an interesting guest post on the ACS Blog regarding the role of the Ricci case in the confirmation hearings. Meanwhile, over at the Federalist Society website, our former colleague Scott Moss is part of a lively ongoing debate on the hearings.
Part of my job is to be engaged on issues of law and public policy, so I am usually happy to talk to the media and pleased when the law school’s clipping service picks up some brilliant comment that I have made and posts it to the school’s website. They miss most of them so I guess that I’m not as brilliant as I think. (But I knew that.)
But there is one up there as we speak from the Lehighton (Pa.) Time-News reporting my comment on the Supreme Court’s decision in Ricci v. DeStafano. I did issue some comments on Ricci through the Heartland Institute where I am a Policy Advisor.
But I didn’t say what was quoted in the article.
In 2006, Jarrett James robbed the same bank in Middleton, Wisconsin, on two different occasions, getting away with about $120,000. He was later apprehended, convicted in federal court, and sentenced to 42 years in prison. His appeal centered on the government’s warrantless seizure of a safe from his mother’s home. The safe contained a gun matching a description of the weapon used in one of the robberies. When the government sought to use the gun as evidence against him at trial, James argued unsuccessfully that the gun should be suppressed because it was obtained in violation of his Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.
In United States v. James (No. 08-3327), the Seventh Circuit (per Judge Flaum) also rejected the Fourth Amendment claim and affirmed James’ conviction. Specifically, the court held that the seizure complied with the Fourth Amendment because James’ mother consented to a police officer taking the safe. The holding is notable because James’ mother never expressly agreed to the seizure; the case thus illustrates circumstances in which Fourth Amendment consent may be inferred from silence. The case also raises interesting questions regarding the mother’s motivations and the underlying parent-child dynamics.