Well, this is a bit of a doozy. This case — via the Institute for Justice — involves a possible First Amendment violation but somehow ends with a judicial blessing of cops who make things up after the fact to justify an arrest that has already taken place.
That’s literally what happened here. Mason Murphy was walking down a Missouri road when he was accosted by Officer Michael Schmitt. From the opening of this very unfortunate decision [PDF]:
Schmitt stopped his car, approached Murphy, and asked Murphy to identify himself. Murphy refused to identify himself, and Schmitt put Murphy in handcuffs after nine minutes of argument. Murphy asked why Schmitt arrested him, and Schmitt refused to answer.
So far, it would appear no criminal act was committed and that the cuffing of Murphy by Schmitt was in retaliation for Murphy’s refusal to identify himself and, First Amendment-wise, his refusal to shut up.
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So now cops can arrest you just because and figure out some law you broke later (since the gargantuan bureaucracy of the government means you’re always breaking some law, however minor). Anyone can be arrested at the whim of any cop.
But I guess we already knew that, since you can be charged and found guilty of resisting arrest while being charged with nothing else that would be a reason for you being arrested.
Laws are also written as vaguely as possible so you’d need a lawyer to explain it to you and can be argued in court that it actually encompasses more than what was intended.
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It’d be interesting to see if there’s data on this. It certainly seems like this should be true.
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This isn’t remotely true, yet somehow people keep repeating it. There are very few laws, be it federal, state, or local, that can plausibly be used to just randomly arrest someone who was unaware of the law.