A GOOD DECISION THAT COULD HAVE BEEN STRONGER

Sunday, April 14, 2002 - Sometimes the best reading lies between the lines,
and by that process, last week's decision by the Colorado Supreme Court
provides some insight into the twisted minds that conduct the War on Drugs
in this country.

This tale started on March 13, 2000, when agents of the North Metro Drug
Task Force looked through the trash from a mobile home in Adams County that
they had been monitoring.

They found evidence of drug operations, as well as a mailing container from
the Tattered Cover Book Store addressed to one trailer occupant. The
envelope bore invoice and customer numbers, but did not indicate the contents.

The task force got a search warrant and searched the mobile home on the
next day. Inside the master bedroom, they found a meth lab, various other
items, and two books about how to make meth.

Even though they had their suspicions, the police did not know which
person, of several possibilities, actually occupied the master bedroom and
presumably cooked the meth.

But there was the mailing container in the trash, plus the books. If they
could get the bookstore records, to show the books had been ordered by a
certain person, they'd have a better case - or so they said. What they were
really doing was something else. Their true purpose was not to gather
evidence to convict someone of a crime. Instead, they were trying to harass
a bookstore that sold material they didn't approve of. And if they had
succeeded, bookstores in the future might well decide that no matter what
the Bill of Rights says, it would be too much trouble to fill certain
customer orders.

How do we know this was harassment instead of a good-faith search for
evidence? By reading between the lines of the state Supreme Court decision.

The court observed that the police had many other ways to establish who was
making crank. "The master bedroom in the trailer appears to have been a
typical bedroom containing clothes, furniture, papers, and other personal
objects. Clothes and shoes could have been examined to see if the sizes
matched . Objects could have been fingerprinted. The bed and flooring could
have been examined for hair or other DNA samples . There are numerous
witnesses that the City likely could have interviewed ."

In other words, the police had plenty of evidence to gather and examine by
the usual methods, but instead decided to harass a store for selling the
wrong kind of book. For further evidence that this was their true purpose,
observe the process they followed.

The usual method would be to ask for the records, and if that didn't work,
to subpoena the records. And upon receiving the subpoena, the Tattered
Cover could have either complied or contested it in a hearing before a court.

But instead of requesting a subpoena that might have led to a hearing, the
task force went shopping for a prosecutor who would request a search
warrant. The Adams County district attorney's office properly refused. So
the task force went to Denver. If Bill Ritter, the Denver DA, has any sense
of shame, this fact has escaped public notice, so his office requested and
got a search warrant from a judge who should have known better.

In general, you don't get to contest a search warrant. This makes sense;
for example, if the trailer occupants had received notice of the search
warrant and the opportunity to contest it, they likely would have destroyed
the evidence.

But the Tattered Cover wasn't a suspect, and there was no reason to fear it
would destroy the relevant records. The search warrant was just another way
to harass places where people might buy books that don't bear the North
Metro Drug Task Force stamp of approval.

Fortunately, the Tattered Cover had attorneys at hand when Ritter's forces
appeared with the warrant, and that led to last week's Supreme Court decision.

The court did not grant an absolute right to privacy concerning book
purchases. It did say that law-enforcement agencies should first exhaust
other means for gathering evidence, and then go through an "adversarial
hearing," rather than just get a search warrant.

And when the request was based on the content of a book, as it was in this
case, then the hurdle should be high, because our state constitution
guarantees that "every person shall be free to speak, write or publish
whatever he will on any subject ."

Since police officers and prosecutors take oaths to support the
constitution of the state of Colorado, and here they acted purposefully
against our constitution by harassing a book seller (i.e., they didn't
pursue other evidence, and they sought a search warrant instead of a
subpoena), I wish our Supreme Court had addressed a proper punishment for
these scofflaws - i.e., does deliberate subversion of our constitution
constitute treason, and if so, would the death penalty be appropriate?

Despite that bleeding-heart omission, though, it was a good decision. If
liberty means anything, it should mean that you can buy any book you want
without ending up on some police list.