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The Perspectives series, featuring insightful commentary from members of the community, is heard on KQED public radio in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Long ago and not THAT far away, a young black man stood trembling in an orange jail jump suit. Who is he? We may never know. He stood in front of a judge in a black robe glaring down on him from high on the bench of justice. The young man was accused of selling a small amount of marijuana to someone on a street corner. The accused man quietly plead guilty to the charge.
His lawyer advised him, "Guilty or not, you will get out today if you cop a plea. If not, you’ll spend a couple of months in jail waiting for trial." The choice seemed clear. The man received a suspended sentence from the judge and was released. That is where the story begins...
The suspended sentence, which the prosecutor insisted upon, included a surprisingly harsh requirement that for three years, the police would be allowed to search the young man, his car, his home or his possessions, at ANY time of the night or day, even WITHOUT notice or the required probable cause to suspect him of any crime.
It was the first time a California judge imposed on a convict what is NOW commonly called a "four-way search clause". The search clause is not just a threat but a promise of three years of unmitigated police harassment. Since that day many years ago, thousands and thousands of young men and women, mostly minorities and poor people, have had identical or even lengthier restrictions placed upon their liberty. So what, you're asking yourself? Why not strip a parasitic drug trafficker of his freedoms? In Malaysia, drug dealers receive the death penalty.
Well, this is not Malaysia, it is California, USA. As they say, if you want to live where drug dealers are executed or exiled, move to Kuala Lumpur.
Like Rubin Hurricane Carter, the black New Jersey prize fighter who served 20 years in prison unjustly because of unreasonable police action, the unnamed young man became another vital statistic in the annals of injustice. This process goes on daily in courts across America. A four-way search clause is a loophole around the Fourth Amendment that allows police to act Unreasonably, unconstitutionally. Of course good police will behave themselves in all circumstances. As for the rest, well...
Without the Fourth Amendment protection, we are all East Berliners under Communism.
Prosecutors justify these "4-way search" sentences as a generous second chance for convicts. But they convert an already helpless and vulnerable segment of our population into hopeless victims of oppression. They foster bad habits in our police.
The four-way search clause is a three-year exile to a place in America reserved for the dispossessed, where the U.S. Constitution does not apply, where police have a license to humiliate, to unreasonably invade privacy, and a loophole around racism, ethnic bias and other forms of know-nothing-ism.
To America's judges, I plead, don't sanction unwarranted and UNreasonable governmental action. Set high legal standards for the police.
With a perspective, this is Robert Kroll.
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