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In addition to compromising your safety and the safety of others, driving drunk is one of the stupidest things you can do, and one of the easiest ways to create overwhelming legal problems for yourself. DUI laws vary from state to state, and they have become increasingly harsh over the years...
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No. The courts have made it clear that police officers do not have to tell people that they can refuse to consent to a warrantless search. Also, contrary to the belief perpetuated by popular police television shows, a person will not be read their rights subsequent to being taken into custody. A person only needs to be Mirandized when...
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Unfortunately, many people get fooled by some version of this commonly used police officer's line: "Everything will be easier if you just cooperate". That's true to some extent -- it will make things much easier for the police officer who's trying to arrest you! -- but when it comes to you consenting to searches and answering incriminating questions, it couldn't be further from the truth...
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Your rights do not disappear if the officer threatens to call in the dogs, so don't let this all-too-common tactic intimidate you into consenting to a search. You have several options...
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No. We believe that most police officers are good, hardworking people who are doing a tough job. We need police to safeguard the life, liberty, and property of all people. To do this best, police officers should...
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This is a tricky issue. The simple answer is that citizens who are minding their own business are not obligated to "show their papers" to police. In fact, there is no law requiring citizens to carry identification of any kind. Once you get passed the surface, however, things get much more complicated...
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No. We teach people that they have rights, and that these rights are secured by the principal documents that guarantee our civil liberties -- the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. An informed individual who invokes his constitutional protections is doing exactly what our nation's founders intended. They created these documents to...
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Generally not. The Bill of Rights protections that matter most during police encounters are mandated by the U.S. Constitution as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court, and all states are required to follow them. States can offer more protection of these rights, but not less. There are some variations regarding...
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As a general rule, searches conducted without a valid search warrant signed by a judge violate the Fourth Amendment, but like most rules of law, there are a number of explicit exceptions. In fact, most searches occur without warrants because police take advantage of these exceptions to the Fourth Amendment...
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Traffic stops typically occur as a result of suspected moving violations committed by the driver of the vehicle. Passengers cannot be held responsible for the driver's conduct and are generally free to leave, unless police become suspicious of them during the course of the stop...
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Yes. Police can, will, and often do lie; especially if it helps them make arrests. The rules regarding entrapment usually tip in favor of law-enforcement, so police won't hesitate to trick you into incriminating yourself or others...
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Simply put, the number of arrests an officer makes is a major factor used to determine his job performance. Police officers know that the easiest way to make arrests is to find people in possession of illegal drugs, so they want to search everyone they can find...
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During a legitimate traffic stop, police may order the driver and any passengers out of the vehicle. This rule is intended to protect officers' safety, but it's often used for investigatory purposes...
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Yes. Minors generally have the same rights as adults. For example, minors can refuse searches and decline to answer questions without an attorney present. Nevertheless, minors face unique challenges when attempting to exercise these rights...
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Unfortunately, police may sometimes search you even if you refuse consent. If they find anything illegal, you'll have to get a lawyer and fight it out in court, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the search will hold up...
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Florida Voting Rights Report |
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Written by Muslima Lewis, ACLU of FLorida
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Page 1 of 7
"Dignity, justice, honor; at what point do[ ] the punished have the right to a simple chance to come back to society []....Those whose lives we discuss today have served a sentence, as they should have; but what right have we here to add to that sentence []"
- Excerpts from Governor Charlie Crist's Clemency Board Notes on the Restoration of Civil Rights, 2007
Forward
Ending Florida's system of lifetime felon disfranchisement is the unfinished business of the civil rights movement.
This shameful system of lifetime disfranchisement puts the Sunshine State out of step with the majority of states in the U.S. and the world's democracies. Although we pride ourselves on holding free and fair elections, in reality America's disfranchisement policies shut out more citizens from the democratic process than any other nation in the world. Disfranchisement policies bar over 5 million U.S. citizens from the polls - many of whom have fully served their sentences. Almost 20% of these citizens reside in Florida.
U. S. disfranchisement policies also disproportionately affect African Americans and other minorities. Although these policies have been in effect for many years, they were significantly expanded and flourished during Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era. Their purpose has been to deny the franchise to as many of the freed slaves as possible. (One might argue that the disfranchisement policies worked precisely as intended.)
Now in the 21st Century they affect a growing segment of the population, as the United States' criminal justice system convicts and imprisons more people than ever before, and now has the world's highest rate of incarceration.
This report describes alarming problems, including how widespread confusion among Florida election offi cials about the restoration of civil rights process contributes to disfranchisement. This report also identifies a new problem -- the perception that, in April 2007, Florida Governor Charlie Crist resolved Florida's mass disfranchisement crisis by engineering reforms in the Florida Rules of Executive Clemency through the Board of Executive Clemency, composed of the Governor and Florida's Cabinet officers. That inaccurate and unfortunate perception has become a barrier to effectively eradicating our state's shameful Civil War era legacy.
Thanks for this important report go to Muslima Lewis, Senior Attorney and Director of the Racal Justice and Voting Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, Project staff members, volunteers and interns, and our partners in Florida and elsewhere, who are all dedicated to ending barriers to the exercise of the most precious right in a democracy -- the right to vote.
Documenting the gap between the oft-repeated misimpression of policies that were adopted in April 2007 and the actual limited effect of those changes should spur the State's chief officers, sitting as the Board of Executive Clemency, to remove impediments to the full integration of former offenders into civil society.
The Florida clemency process can, and should, be reformed to make the restoration of civil and voting rights virtually automatic. What is truly required for Florida to re-join the majority of other states, and the world's democracies, is the removal of the provisions that mandate lifetime disfranchisement from our State's Constitution.
HOWARD SIMON
Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union of Florida
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The 4th Amendment Podcast
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