This Week in Liberal Judicial Activism—Week of October 27

2006—A South Dakota law enacted in 2005 sets forth informed-consent provisions for abortion, including that the woman undergoing abortion be informed that “the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique living human being.”  The law defines “human being” as an “individual living member of the species Homo sapiens.”

In Planned Parenthood Minnesota v. Rounds, a divided panel of the Eighth Circuit affirms an injunction preventing the entire 2005 law from going into effect.  In her majority opinion, Judge Diana Murphy treats as a factual finding the district court’s determination that the statement that an abortion “will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique living human being” is a value judgment, rather than a medical fact, and she relies on a declaration submitted by one of the plaintiffs to provide evidentiary support for that supposed factual finding.  The statements, she concludes, “could be found to violate both the First Amendment rights of physicians and the due process rights of women seeking abortion.”  In dissent, Judge Raymond Gruender points out that the statement is “an unremarkable tautology”—“a restatement of the definition of ‘abortion’”—and is “truthful, non-misleading, and non-ideological on its face.”

In June 2008, the Eighth Circuit, acting en banc, reverses the panel decision by a 7-4 vote, with Judge Gruender penning the majority opinion and Judge Murphy the dissent. 

1972—By a vote of 5 to 4, the en banc D.C. Circuit, in an opinion by Judge J. Skelly Wright in United States v. Robinson, rules that a police officer violated the Fourth Amendment when, in the course of searching a person whom he had lawfully arrested, he opened up a crumpled cigarette package—which turned out to contain heroin—that he found in the person’s pocket.  The D.C. Circuit overturns the resulting conviction for drug offenses.

In dissent, Judge Malcolm Wilkey faults Wright for ignoring “long-established doctrine” and for what Wilkey calls Wright’s “usual flat error regarding the established facts.”  On review, the Supreme Court rules 6 to 3 (with Justices Douglas, Brennan, and Marshall in dissent) that the search and seizure “were permissible under established Fourth Amendment law.”

2004—In a civil-forfeiture proceeding (titled United States v. $242,484.00), Judge Rosemary Barkett dissents from the en banc Eleventh Circuit’s ruling that the government had established probable cause to believe that $242,484 in cash seized by DEA agents from airline passenger Deborah Stanford was connected to illegal drug activity.  The 10-member majority rests its conclusion on the combined force of facts that include:

(1) Stanford was carrying 18,362 bills worth nearly a quarter of a million dollars and weighing some 40 pounds.  Legitimate businesses generally find better, safer means of transporting large quantities of cash than stuffing it in a backpack.  But other means would have generated a currency-transaction report.

(2) The bills were bundled in rubber bands in various denominations in a manner associated with drug organizations, and they were wrapped in a cellophane-type material known to be used by drug dealers to prevent discovery by drug-sniffing dogs.

(3) Stanford was traveling between New York and Miami, a known flight corridor for drug proceeds.

(4) As drug couriers often do, Stanford purchased her tickets with cash and changed her return date twice.

(5) Stanford insisted that she was unable to identify the people who gave her the cash, and she claimed not to know where she had met them and where she had stayed in New York.

(6) Stanford told conflicting stories about why she had traveled to New York, and she had no documentation to support her stories or the transfer of cash.

(7) A dog trained to detect narcotics identified the smell of narcotics from the cash in her backpack (after a hole had been poked in the cellophane wrapping).

Purporting to apply a “common sense view to the realities of normal life,” Barkett opines that these circumstances “are insufficient to find that the seized money was tied in a substantial way to an illegal drug transaction.”  Alas, Barkett merely provides further compelling evidence that she has little sense, common or otherwise.