This one goes out to Worcester Superior Court Judge John S. McCann.
Lictor would like to express his gratitude to Judge McCann for bravely standing up for his beliefs when he allowed a self-confessed drug dealer back on the street this week, despite being found with something like $40,000 worth of coke in the car.
Now a lot of judges might have taken the presence of the drugs, plus the gentleman's willing admission that he was on his way to sell the drugs, as an indication that here was a man who should be behind bars. Not so the heroic McCann. No sir.
Judge McCann decided, in a ruling that has pretty much the rest of the legal world scratching its collective head, that he was not going to allow the drugs, or the confession to be admitted as evidence. And why? Perhaps the officer who apprehended the drug dealer did so in a way that infringed his rights? Perhaps the rules of evidence were in some way infringed? No. Oh no. Nothing so prosaic for our dear Judge. The reason we are all happy to hear, was that statistically the officer in question searched more Hispanic-owned cars than ones owned by Caucasians.
Now please note that the officer didn't *stop* more Hispanic drivers. He simply searched their cars at a greater rate once he had stopped them. Evidence of bias? Quite possibly. In this instance, however, State Troop Shugrue, the officer in question, didn't need to search the car. The vehicle he stopped on December 21st of 2001 had drugs lying in plain sight on the floor. And the reason he stopped the car? A traffic violation.
So, here we have a state trooper, who pulls over a car for a traffic violation at night, sees drugs just lying on the floor in plain sight, and even gets a confession from the man in question that he fully intended to sell them. Yet because of his previous statistical proclivities in searching completely unrelated vehicles, the whole case is thrown out of court.
Thanks a lot Judge McCann. Nice work there. It's good to know that if I ever intend to move into the drug dealing business I can rely on people like yourself to keep the flow of the blow at a nice steady rate.
Who exactly does this idiot think he's serving? There's no legal basis for his decision. Racial profiling protection only applies if there is no other probable cause which is clearly not the case. Here we have a vehicle actually breaking the law, and yet receiving protection from the courts because the driver was a member of a racial minority.
I can think of only two reasons that Judge McCann, and I use the word 'judge' as loosely as possible, allowed this pond-scum back on the street. One, the dear old man is so hopelessly senile that he doesn't understand what he's doing any more. Or two, that he now knows where he can pick up some cheap nose-candy when he wants it.
Oh and a message to Trooper Shugrue: maybe the cretin in court doesn't appreciate you putting your life on the line every night, but hopefully you know those of us who live in the real world do.