Sincere question for those in this post who say we are only getting one side of the story in the Marcus Lattimore situation: what fact or facts could reasonably come to light that would make this not be a violation of the Lattimores’ 4th Amendment rights against unlawful search and seizure?
Setting aside the race and drug dynamic completely, here is what we can reasonably assume are the most basic facts of the situation unless the Lattimores are just totally making the whole thing up:
1) The Lattimores were pulled over.
2) They were detained for a significant period of time while their property was searched. The Lattimores’ reaction to the situation indicates a strong possibility that they either a) didn’t consent to the search; or 2) consented under false pretenses/out of fear.
3) They were not charged with a crime, not issued a traffic citation or issued a warning. Therefore, they didn’t commit any cognizable crime other than the technical/de minimis offense of exceeding the speed limit within a range that is typically “acceptable.”
As I recall (and it’s been a while, so any criminal or constitutional lawyers feel free to correct me on this), even “reasonable suspicion,” which allows stop-and-frisk of pedestrians or open-view search of a vehicle, requires something more than speculation or a hunch that the detainee has or is about to commit a crime. For any more strenuous a search, probable cause is required.
The bar for demonstrating probable cause is significantly higher than for reasonable suspicion, and whatever that bar might be, I’m pretty confident that it would be nowhere near satisfied by two folks of a particular ethnicity sought as persons of interest who are driving what can be assumed to be a common, mass-produced passenger car.
If the Lattimores acted nervous, that wouldn’t establish probable cause. Acting angry or belligerent or self-righteous isn’t a crime, and exhibiting any of those traits wouldn’t have established probable cause either. Weapon in the car? If it was permitted, it certainly wouldn’t add to the totality of the circumstances to establish probable cause, and if a weapon weren’t permitted, it would’ve been a citable criminal offense.
The only reasonable scenario I could see exculpating the responding officers is if the Lattimores freely and without fear or coercion consented to a search (something there’s almost never a good reason to do) and then became angry after the fact that the search took way too long. Otherwise, there seem to be very few reasonably possible circumstances that would have made the detainment and search righteous. Even if race played no role in the incident, very little about this situation seems right from a constitutional perspective regardless of what other side might come out.
