Can a court decision be appealed by a sheriff? A case recently came up in my area of Kentucky in a district court where a man had been convicted of growing and selling marijuana. The sheriff had drove by his residence on a hot day and smelled marijuana emanating from the man's property. The sheriff was able to narrow the location down to a mobile home which was on the man's property. The sheriff then obtained a search warrant to search the mobile home for marijuana, with the smell of marijuana being probable cause. Upon conducting the search, the sheriff found 154 marijuana plants and several firearms in the man's possession. The man is a convicted felon, so they were also seized. When the case went to court, the case was dismissed. The judge said that the smell of marijuana was not probable cause to have issued a search warrant. If the prosecutor will not ask for an appeal of the court's decision, can the sheriff ask for an appeal himself?
Generally, no. The party to the action will be the State (commonwealth). The prosecutor acts as the agent of the state. The sheriff is not a party and cannot appeal.
You are allowed to ask the police whatever questions you like. There is an upper limit that you can't refuse to obey a lawful order on the premise that you want to ask a bunch of questions, but they don't seem to have ordered you to do anything, so you can ask away. They have no obligation to tell you anything or to be truthful, except for certain questions like "am I free to go" when you want to leave and are testing whether you are under arrest. Even then they don't have to answer your questions right away. The police can therefore ignore you, especially if you are asking curiosity questions. It might be that they are restricted from giving information in certain circumstances (pertaining to the privacy of others). If there is an issue of legitimate concern (e.g. Little Billy has been beating up on cats again) and you feel that you need to know this, then you can request the police record on the matter. Certain information will probably be redacted under state law, but you could get a report that states that some [redacted] juvenile was beating up on animals. The Florida records law is one of the first in he nation, dating back to 1909. You can read this, to see if you think the circumstances match one of the exemptions, though all you have to do is make the request and be told that the record is exempt, then you will have some idea what was going on.
While there are certainly statutory and procedural vehicles for sanctions, they are almost never requested or allowed when moved for, and are almost never imposed by judges. Something very severe needs to occur and not just your typical discovery violation ("speaking objections" during depositions, being late with responses, failure to cite to affidavits, affidavits citing conjecture rather than fact, et). It would have to be something quite serious....like misleading the court or directly failing to comply with a direct order or ruling on a motion. It is exceedingly rare. It is most seen in Federal Court.
The courts do not supersede your constitutional rights, although you may believe that you have a constitutional right that isn't actually there. This article discusses the position that "due process forbids convicting an individual of a crime unless the government proves the elements of the charged offense beyond a reasonable doubt". This standard is actually not stated anywhere in the US Constitution, but it has been assumed as an implicit meaning of "due process". It sounds like you were charged with a crime, and there is most likely an applicable statute in your state that is analogous to RCW 26.50.110 in Washington. So you have the right to a trial and the prosecution would have the obligation to prove all of the elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. It also appears that you did violate the applicable law and you were willing to plead guilty, as urged by your attorney. You are correct that you don't technically have to prove your innocence, but there is a practical problem that if the prosecution provides some weak evidence that you violated the law, then the jury might decide that your failure to refute the evidence means that there is no reasonable doubt. The problem is that there is a tendency for jurors to think that the defendant has to create a doubt. States differ somewhat in how they explain the burden of proof to jurors, and you might fare better in a state where the instruction is that "you must be firmly convinced". Since the attorney seems to have said that "the constitution doesn't apply to this", this is a puzzle. I would not assume (though it is possible) that the attorney was incompetent. It is possible that he was speaking of a non-criminal matter, and it is possible that you were talking at cross purposes. There is no legal situation where "the constitution doesn't apply to this", but perhaps "that constitutional limitation doesn't apply to this specific situation". Regardless of what the attorney said, your attorney doesn't violate your rights, even if he gives you bad advice. The actual court might, and then you would have a cause for an appeal. Similarly, if the district attorney reasonably believes that you are a danger to society and is prosecuting you, that is not a violation of your constitutional rights. An improper conviction would be a violation of those rights, although it might take an appeal to get the court to recognize that fact.
The government must have reasonable suspicion to stop you and ask you questions. The government must have probable cause to arrest you. The government cannot question you if you have invoked your 5th Amendment rights The government must release you if you post bail which is set by a magistrate in some cases but can be posted without conferring with a magistrate for many minor offenses for which the amount is set in advance. Also, you can only be constitutionally held for a certain period of time without appearing before a court for an initial appearance at which you are charged and typically you have an attorney assigned for you if you cannot afford one. Generally speaking a lawyer for a defendant will either post bail on behalf of the client, or will seek to invoke the client's 5th Amendment right to silence and 6th Amendment right to counsel (including the right of a lawyer to visit his client in jail) making further detention much less useful, while challenging law enforcement to articulate probable cause for the arrest with the implication that a civil lawsuit and suppression of evidence and loss of credibility with the local judge could follow if they fail to do so. If the client is not brought before a court by the constitutional deadline (unusual, but not unheard of), the lawyer can bring this to the attention of the court and have the court demand that his client be brought before the court. Of course, strictly speaking the defense lawyer can't force the police to do anything. Instead, the defense lawyer persuades the police to do something based upon what a court is likely to do, or has already done, as a result of their conduct so far. Also, of course, it isn't always possible for a lawyer to get his client out of jail. If the police do have probable cause and the offense is not one for which bail is set in advance, it is not possible for the client to be released until bail is set by a judicial officer such as a magistrate and bail (if granted at all) is posted, which may be beyond the client's means in the case of a serious offense, particularly if the client is considered by the magistrate to be a flight risk. On TV and books, the person that the police have arrested is usually someone that the police had no probable cause to arrest but suspect of a crime anyway, and the police usually fold when called on the fact that they lack probable cause by the lawyer. Less commonly, on TV and in books, the lawyer facilitates the payment of bail on behalf of his client.
The situations cannot reasonably be compared legally. In Wynn v. Vilsack, a motion for preliminary injunction was granted (and the program was not ruled unconstitutional). In the ruling, the court found that the evidence &quot;does not support a finding that USDA continues to be a participant, passive or active, in discrimination&quot;, and does find that there were past successful remediation efforts, thus &quot;the Court expresses serious concerns over whether the Government will be able to establish a strong basis in evidence warranting the implementation of Section 1005's race-based remedial action&quot;, moreover &quot;Plaintiff has convincingly shown that the relief provided by Section 1005 is not narrowly tailored to serve that interest&quot;. The court finds that there is a good-enough case that the law fails strict scrutiny. Incidentally, Congress repealed that law. On the other hand, in Evanston, we have no facts or concrete legal allegations (e.g. drafts of a legal complaint). The cited memorandum is a recommendation, not a law. There does exist at least one available council action from 2019 which says that The Chief Financial Officer is hereby authorized to divert all adult use cannabis funds received by the Illinois Department of Revenue for sales of adult use cannabis to a separate fund in a City account for local reparations. SECTION 3: The City may receive donations to this fund from separate organizations, corporations, and individuals established herein by the City Council. The city also has a page referring to Ordinance 102-O-20 (not available) indicating that &quot;The Committee will work with residents, City staff and experts to explore and identify programs and opportunities to be supported by the Reparations Fund&quot;. The Program Guidelines §3 indicates that a person may be eligible for money if they are an ancestor, direct descendant, or &quot;other&quot; who has suffered from a &quot;City ordinance, policy, or procedure that served to discriminate against the Applicant in the area of housing&quot;. It thus does not exclude Asian and Hispanic homeowners, LGBTQIA2S+, Catholic, Muslims or anyone else, except insofar as a Catholic was not demonstrably the victim of such discrimination. The city also provides an extensive historical study of past government discrimination in housing. You may be able to eke out more concrete information on what they have done here, at the reparations committee website. In terms of potential differentia between the USDA program and the Evanston program, the most obvious difference would be in terms of prior remediation efforts. If you sue Evanston for their program, they could defend the program as providing the remediation that justifies the program – which had already been provided in the USDA program.
The Likely Ruling Assuming points 1 and 2 in the question, all the evidence from the trunk would be inadmissible, and if there really is no other evidence against Bob, then Bob would go free. This is highly improbable; the prosecution would find some grounds to dispute the unlawful nature of stop and search, even if ones the court would not accept. A better version might be &quot;The judge rules that the stop and search were unlawful, and is upheld by the appellate court&quot;. That is more realistic and has the same result. Inevitable Discovery The only grounds I can see for any other result is &quot;inevitable discovery&quot;. If other police were, say, already staking out Bob's house with a warrant to search the car, and Bob was on the way to that house at the time of the stop, then the prosecution could argue that they would inevitably have conducted a legal search of Bob's car and found the same evidence. The conditions for invoking this doctrine rarely occur, but it is possible. After the Trial There is no way that Cal's body can be Bob's property, so it would be released to Cal's next of kin or legal executor. Unless Bob was Cal's next of kin, it is hard to see any way that the body would be handed over to Bob. Cal's clothes are almost surely part of Cal's estate, although it is in theory possible that they are Bob's property. No claim of ownership can be used against Bob in a later trial, because any later trial would be barred by double jeopardy. In any case, while evidence from the trunk would all be inadmissible in a trial of Bob, it might be admissible in a possible later trial of Joe, Bob's alleged accomplice. Therefore the police might well retain all the items (except the body) as possible future evidence. Terminology This is actually about the exclusionary rule itself, not about the &quot;fruit of the poison tree&quot; doctrine. What is the difference? If an unlawful search finds evidence, that evidence is inadmissible under the exclusionary rule. If an unlawful search merely finds a lead, evidence later found via the lead is considered as &quot;fruit of the poisoned tree&quot; and is therefore inadmissible. For example, if the murder weapon is found in Bob's car after an unlawful search, the exclusionary rule applies. But if a note saying &quot;stuf at 1234 Elm&quot; is found during the unlawful search, and the police visit 1234 Elm Street, and find the murder weapon there, that is &quot;fruit of the poisoned tree&quot;. Why does it matter? Because if the police find a different lead to 1234 Elm, so that the investigation or search at that address is not based solely on the results of the unlawful search, then the evidence found at 1234 Elm may be admissible, while corroboration will not save the evidence actually found by the unlawful search. It is a subtle but sometimes important distinction.
Yes, there is a good chance. Ordinarily, the law as written is what is enforced. On occasion, the wording of the law is actually ambiguous, or vague, which means that the jury will need an instruction as to how to interpret the law. In fact, juries are not literally read the statute, they are given a set of decision-making instructions so that they can decide "If we find X, we must acquit; if we find Y we may convict". Your attorney will, if he is diligent, note the problem and strive for an instruction that favors the client. (The prosecution will of course object). Eventually, on appeal, a court will decide what the law "really means", and that decision might be strictly based on the letter of the law, or it might be based on a supposed spirit of the law, i.e. what the legislature "originally intended". That outcome is determined in part by the jurisprudential ideology of the prevailing justices of the appeals court. Usually, letter of the law prevails until a higher court rules that a particular "spirit" is what was originally intended.