here's today's (first?) horrible supreme court decision, Castle Rock, Colorado, v. Gonzales, 04-278.
don't shoot the messenger.
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that police cannot be sued for how they enforce restraining orders, ending a lawsuit by a Colorado woman who claimed police did not do enough to prevent her estranged husband from killing her three young daughters.it's too early for me to be reading such stomach-churning reading, but i can't stop. just look at what our future holds for us:Jessica Gonzales did not have a constitutional right to police enforcement of the court order against her husband, the court said in a 7-2 opinion. [...] Gonzales contended that police did not do enough to stop her estranged husband, who took the three daughters from the front yard of her home in June 1999 in violation of a restraining order. Hours later Simon Gonzales died in a gun fight with officers outside a police station. The bodies of the three girls - ages 10, 9 and 7 - were in his truck.
Gonzales argued that she was entitled to sue based on her rights under the 14th Amendment and under a Colorado law that says officers shall use every reasonable means to enforce a restraining order. She contended that her restraining order should be considered property under the 14th Amendment and that it was taken from her without due process when police failed to enforce it.
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, said,in other words, "it's not in theThe creation of a personal entitlement to something as vague and novel as enforcement of restraining orders cannot 'simply go without saying.' We conclude that Colorado has not created such an entitlement.
okay. i'm going to have to get back to you on this one, because i just woke up and it is making me an angry psychopath to read this.
2 comments:
something from the far reaches of my brain is going off. i think i might have learned something like this by doing pmbr problems, but i could just be trippin'.
something to the effect of: the federal government can't tell local governments *how* to enforce laws, procedurally, that is.
maybe that's the principle they were following? i don't know. i didn't read the case. my brain is tired. =/
and um... police power is state province?
wait, so why did SCOTUS hear this case?
dude, no clue. i think i'm going to go read my constitutional law outline now. or maybe read the case to understand constitutional law concepts that i should have learned but didn't. =P
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