tranquility
Senior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? FED, MO
A person traveling on the highway passes a radar set up by the police to catch speeders. To warn drivers heading into the set up, he flashed his lights. Police arrest him for interfering with an investigation. (Later dropped.) ACLU sues anyway. Federal judge says person has a first amendment right to warn other motorists of a speed trap or police.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/02/05/federal-judge-rules-drivers-allowed-to-warn-other-motorists-speed-traps/?cmpid=cmty_twitter_fn
While I agree with this as a general theory, I wonder what the holding actually is specifically. For example, a case in CA had a person validly arrested for the same obstruction-type offense. What happened was a person was about to sell drugs to an undercover officer when the person's friend came up to him and said something to the effect of "That's 5-0" with the clear intent to inform the person the buyer was an undercover officer and warn the person to not sell drugs. I don't know how the judge distinguished such an act here and would want to know how he did so. Theoretically, each act of speech prevented a crime from happening although one gave very specific information to a specific person while the other gave general information to general people. Why would one be protected speech while the other not?
A person traveling on the highway passes a radar set up by the police to catch speeders. To warn drivers heading into the set up, he flashed his lights. Police arrest him for interfering with an investigation. (Later dropped.) ACLU sues anyway. Federal judge says person has a first amendment right to warn other motorists of a speed trap or police.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/02/05/federal-judge-rules-drivers-allowed-to-warn-other-motorists-speed-traps/?cmpid=cmty_twitter_fn
While I agree with this as a general theory, I wonder what the holding actually is specifically. For example, a case in CA had a person validly arrested for the same obstruction-type offense. What happened was a person was about to sell drugs to an undercover officer when the person's friend came up to him and said something to the effect of "That's 5-0" with the clear intent to inform the person the buyer was an undercover officer and warn the person to not sell drugs. I don't know how the judge distinguished such an act here and would want to know how he did so. Theoretically, each act of speech prevented a crime from happening although one gave very specific information to a specific person while the other gave general information to general people. Why would one be protected speech while the other not?