Roberts once upheld the arrest of a 12 yr old kid for eating French Fries

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

http://www.channel3000.com/irresistible/4751485/detail.html

Supreme Court Nominee's French Fry Stand Clear

POSTED: 7:40 am CDT July 21, 2005
UPDATED: 7:49 am CDT July 21, 2005

WASHINGTON -- People are still guessing where Judge John Roberts stands when it comes to abortion, but there's no question about his views on eating french fries at a subway station.

As an appellate judge for the District of Columbia, Roberts wrote a decision last year upholding the arrest of a 12-year-old girl who was caught munching fries at a Washington Metro station.

While he supported the arrest, he also chided the transit police for their handling of the case.

Roberts suggested they overreacted by taking the girl into custody, removing her shoelaces, transporting the child in a police vehicle and taking her fingerprints -- "all for eating a single french fry."

http://www.channel3000.com/irresistible/4751485/detail.html

[NJ Democrats]

1. WTF!?

You arrest a 12 year old for eating a frie???

[lakeguy]

2. ummmmm, that's "freedom" fry now. that's reason alone

not to confirm this traitor!

[ArkDem]

3. It's very obvious that he is anti-child/pro-fetus.

[rodeodance]

14. but he is right--overreaction by police is a mild statement for this 12 yo

CHILD!!

[LiberalFighter]

57. That type is likely to have porn on his computer

[MrBenchley]

4. Judge Frenchfry....

He's also the guy who blocked tortured American prisoners of war from collecting damages from the people who tortured them AFTER the torture victims had won their case in court!

Wonder how that verdict plays with the American public?

[ArkDem]

48. He has tortured logic.

[MrBenchley]

53. I doubt most Americans think that sort of "justice"

is anything they want to live with...and I think both of those odious verdicts should be mentioned loudly and often.

From now on for me he's Judge Frenchfry....I'm not going to use his real name.

[getmeouttahere]

5. But he still upheld the arrest....

who cares if he comments that they overreacted AFTER the fact...extreme doesn't begin to describe this incident!

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

6. I'm actually okay with that.

The law says the police CAN arrest someone for eating on the Metro, even a 12 year old girl. It's an absurd lack of judgement to actually do so, but it is legally correct.

[LiberalFighter]

58. What if it was an emergency?

Diabetic?

Hadn't eaten in a while and needed something in her system for some other medical reason?

[election_2004]

7. Was there a no-eating ordinance in the subway?

Otherwise, I don't understand why the girl was even arrested in the first place?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

9. There Was A Crackdown

somebody has a link...

[Comicstripper]

46. Yes

The DC Metro (which I use all the time) has a no-eating policy. In this instance (I remember eharing about it), they were cracking down on snackers to prove the legitimacy of the rule. Dumb? Yeah. But also kinda funny.

[bushisanidiot]

8. Yes, a criminal's life of crime begins with eating french fries at

the subway station.

thank GAWD Robertson was on the case!!

who knows how many lives he saved with his heroic act of keeping that 12 year old, french fry eating hoodlum in jail!!!

praise jeezus!!

[DemocratSinceBirth]

10. the idiot cop who arrested her was as much as fault...

nt

[bushisanidiot]

11. I wouldn't say "as much at fault". it's up to the judge to decide whether

the punishment was just and reasonable. unfortunately, cops go overboard far too often.. the judges should provide a voice of reason. roberts clearly has no common sense and is an extremist right wing nutjob.

[LiberalFighter]

59. That's because he was using Hoosier common sense which is better...

than Midwest common sense.

He did graduate at the top of his high school class. (Out of 22 students)
:sarcasm:

[dsc]

13. No, there was a zero tolerence policy which the cop didn't make

the people at fault here were the DC politicians who made the rule, not the cop who actually enforced it.

[dsc]

12. This is a perfect example of what is often done to liberal judges

to label them as soft on crime (obviously in reverse).

He didn't say that DC should arrest people for eating on the subway. He didn't say that DC was wise to arrest people for eating on the subway. The issue in this case was, regardless of the wisdom of arresting people for eating on the subway could DC do so without violating the Constitution. The other issue was could DC only arrest juveniles but let adults off with a citation.

I think the case was at least partially wrongly decided. Since the lack of IDs was DC's given reason for applying this to juveniles and not adults, I think at the very least DC should have been required to request an ID from the girl before arresting her (many schools give out IDs). That said, by the time this case went to court DC backed down due to the bad publicity the arrest generated.

Courts are not there to protect us from every dumb decision that politicians might make. The Founders rightfully expected us to be viligent in protecting our own rights. Here, after an initial slacking which let the crackdown begin, the system worked exactly as intended. People got outraged and the law was changed.

Again, this kind of yellow journalism is exactly what has convinced so many people that the Bill of Rights is just a legal technicality that guilty people exploit to escape justly deserved punishment.

[meppie-meppie not]

15. and you watch he'll get in with nary a whisper..

[xchrom]

16. ok -- that's just creepy.

[buff2]

17. What else can we expect from a "compassionate CONservative?

Hypocrisy=GOP

[getmeouttahere]

18. Why can't they just issue a citation...

any way you slice it, it's just overboard to the extreme.

[dsc]

20. DC's stated reason for not issuing citations

which the reporter was too lazy to include, was that juveniles don't have ID's and would likely give a false name to police.

[barbaraann]

19. What was her skin color? Her income level?

I have some guesses.

[dsc]

21. African American

and no idea. I read a better report on this case which had her picture.

[barbaraann]

22. That is very significant, IMHO.

I hope the Dems hold up her picture in the hearings. This man went out of the country to adopt tow-headed white children because he did not want to adopt children with dark skin.

He looks like a racist to me.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

23. the guy may or not be a total ass

but to call him a racist based on that scant information seems a bit hyperbolic...

[barbaraann]

26. Oh, I changed it to say "He looks like a racist to me."

n/t

[DemocratSinceBirth]

28. I Don't Like Him...

I have had experience with corporate attorneys and he reminds me of every corporate attorney that has come down the pike but I don't know if he's a racist...

Sadly, there are too many children of color waiting to be adopted because cacucasian folks want to adopt kids who look like them...

But this cuts both ways because some African American groups oppose interracial adoption because they feel the children will be robbed of their heritage...

If its up to me if I had parents who loved me I could give a hoot what color they were...

[dsc]

24. I would be willing to bet

that the original crackdown policy was conceived by blacks too. DC is overwhelmingly black it would have been very ususual if the person arrested weren't black.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

25. He Was Part Of A 3-0 Majority

I guess before we pillory the guy for this we should see who appointed the other two judges....

[barbaraann]

29. Just for example: (a Washington state article)

This whole article is well worth reading, but here are some excerpts.

However, consider the reality of the application of the criminal justice system for people of African descent.
� Nationally, African Americans account for 13% of the population, but nearly 51% of its prison population.
� In the state of Washington, African Americans account for less than 4% of the population, but 25% of the state prison population.
� One in three African American men is under criminal supervision.
� On any given day, one in seven black men (one in four for the age group 20-29) is incarcerated.
� For every 100,000 people in the state of Washington, 161 Caucasians are incarcerated compared to 1,392 African-Americans.
� If the current incarceration rates continue, 28.5% of black men will be incarcerated at least once during their lives which is a rate 6 times greater than for Caucasians.
� African Americans make up less than 4% of Washington State�s population but account for 37% of the 173 felons sentenced under the �3 Strikes� law.
� In Seattle, African Americans account for 8% of the population. However, 57% of the drug arrests were black while they are only 7% of the drug users. This is an arrest rate of 22 times greater than whites.
� Of 338,855 Seattle traffic stops analyzed, it was found that blacks were searched 2 � times more than whites.
...
In the first five years after the passage of the Omnibus Anti-Drug Act of 1986, African Americans accounted for more than 80 percent of the increase in incarcerated drug offenders. In state facilities during that period, the rate of black citizens incarcerated increased by 465.5 percent, compared to a 110.6 percent increase for whites. One may guess that this disparity is due to extremely high drug use by blacks, but according to the US Sentencing Commission, only 13 percent of all drug users are black which matches their percent in the population.
...
http://www.justiceworks.info/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=41&MMN_position=54:4

[dsc]

31. One of the judges was Sentelle I don't know the other

[DemocratSinceBirth]

32. Sentelle Was Jesse Helms's Buddy

The DC Circuit Court is stocked with wingnuts....

That's what happens when you continue to lose elections...

[barbaraann]

37. He might be racist.

I know I wouldn't be friends with Jesse Helms.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

41. Judge Sentelle Was Jesse's Bud Not John Roberts...

nt

[dsc]

38. Yes indeed

[barbaraann]

27. I do not believe racism does not exist in this country.

http://www.prisonactivist.org/factsheets/racism.pdf

http://www.aclunc.org/aclunews/news498/racism-justice.html

There are many, many links about racism in the criminal justice system.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

30. racism is as american as apple pie

but i don't think it was at play in this incident...

i think this was the case of an absurd law taken to a absurd conclusion...


let's oppose this guy on legitimate reasons...

[barbaraann]

34. There is a lot of racism in our justice system.

http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/race/criminal_justice.htm

[dsc]

35. Please point out where I said, implied, or in any other way suggested

that racism doesn't exist in this country. I would like a real quote where I typed words to that effect.

What I did say, was that in this case, since DC is overwhelmingly African American (on the order of 10 to 1) that it is highly likely that the original policy wasn't thought up by blacks and that it would have been very unusual for a random person on the DC subway to not be African American. I stand by both of those statements.

[barbaraann]

42. DC does not have home rule and there is a reason for that.

The reason is racism and racism permeates the city. And the sad truth is that sometimes members of minorities enable white people to control minorities.

I do not believe that having black police officers makes a city non-racist. There are black police officers in all American cities and in my opinion there is a lot of conscious as well as unconscious racism.

I believe that blacks are capable of being tools of racism and one example I see is Clarence Thomas. Another one is Condi Rice.

Honestly, if you Google for racism in the justice system you will have enough articles to keep you busy for a year.

[dsc]

43. actually they do have home rule

on their day to day activities. Congress can, and sadly does, overrule them, but they actually do have home rule. They elect their own mayor who appoints all those board members who would come up with those policies. There is no way this policy came from Congress.

[barbaraann]

52. Regarding home rule:

For example:

Congress wants to Repeal D.C. Gun Laws:
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/guncontrol/a/dcguns.htm

[dsc]

56. I am certainly not saying that they have total home rule

but I think that pretty much every time it has been overruled it has been that DC wanted to do something, like ban guns, and the Congress said no. This would be the opposite. I really would be totally shocked if Congress ordered this crackdown.

[theboss]

36. What does a racist look like?

That's a pretty nasty accusation based on scant evidence.

[barbaraann]

44. My opinion is that many Republicans are racists or closet racists.

Ken Mehlman apologized for GOP racism but I don't think it's disappeared.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

60. Perhaps, but for what it's worth, the Metro police are assholes in general

They really do mean zero tolerance. I can't say if race played a role one way or another, but I've heard of this happening to white friends of mine too.

[theboss]

33. Wasn't this a civil case?

I really wish people understood the difference between civil law and criminal law.

(Of course, I may be mischaracterizing the case myself).

[DemocratSinceBirth]

39. It Was Criminal

Civil cases involve individuals and in in criminal cases its individuals against the state....

[DemocratSinceBirth]

40. well the state against individuals...

in civil cases they can dig into your pockets....

in criminal cases they can put you in the hooskow or worse...

[theboss]

47. I'm an attorney; I know the difference

I'm saying that I seem to recall this decision originated from some kind of civil rights action against the officer. (But I could be wrong about that).

[dsc]

45. I think it was

though of course this lame account doesn't tell us. I think this was a civil suit brought by the girls family after the arrest had already been dealt with.

[theboss]

49. That's what I remember

So, he did not uphold the arrest. He just held that she had no basis for a civil rights complaint, which I begrudgingly admit is probably the case.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

50. If It Was A Civil Case It Would Have Dealt With Equity Questions

Not Constitutional Questions..

[DemocratSinceBirth]

51. I'm Confused

http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200410/03-7149a.pdf

[theboss]

54. Thanks for finding that

That's what always annoys me about newspaper reports of lawsuits. The reporters don't know what the cases are really about, so they say things like, he upheld the arrest when the arrest was never at issue.

[the_spectator]

55. Hey, he's just ahead of the curve -

anticipating the not-to-distant day when we whomp the poor with regressive fat taxes as well as cigarette taxes, when carb consumption becomes a crime, etc.

[leesa]

61. Oh he's got that reasoning thing down cold, eh?

This guy's a real loser. We need to expose his role in the election fraud and his wife's crimes in war profiteering. Why isn't she at home in the kitchen anyway?