Gutting it out

I Respectfully Dissent sets and Crim Law spikes the infalibility of your local law enforcement officer's gut instincts.

Bryan Gates quotes a North Carolina cop - “You can talk to most detectives. They can sit right in front of a suspect. They have a gut feeling. ‘This is the man. Now how am I going to prove it?’” - and observes, "The only flaw in the "trust your gut" credo is that a gut can be wrong...What hope is there for someone when an officer's gut says he is guilty and the suspect has no alibi?"

Ken Lammers does a fine job of portraying the legal world where our clients live, where "(a) 15 minute stop and search is just not all that uncommon... The violations of the rights of several citizens based upon "gut feelings" lead to the arrest of one." And at least in my jurisdiction, there's no way of tracking the inconvenience or indignity visited on the several citizens who were stopped, sniffed, searched, and told they were "free to go." In all my years talking to the Junior Chamber about pretext stops, this is a point I haven't got across. Maybe Ken could come out here and take my place on the panel next year:

"Of course, they are miles outside of the meaning of the constitution but they are the good guys so we'll let them get away with technicalities."

We might be just a few years from the time when the Supremes let cops tell juries their gut instinct as to the Defendant's guilt or innocence...