SCOTUS expands police power in traffic stops

If you haven’t heard, the Supreme Court of the U.S. seems to have purchased a one-way ticket to the land of Government Can Do No Wrong in their criminal law and procedure rulings of late. Two weeks ago, in Herring (PDF), the Court gutted the exclusionary rule, basically holding that evidence obtained by police actions that violate the Constitution should be admitted so long as the police acted “in good faith.” The opinion purported to be more narrow, but as Talkleft pointed out, it’s guaranteed to generate a “but the officer honestly believed he was acting legally!” response to every motion to suppress. Even conservative Instapundit thinks it was a very bad decision. As he notes, we all have to live by the rule that ignorance of the law is no excuse…. unless you’re a cop.

But that was two weeks ago. This week, according to SCOTUS Blog:

In opinions so spare that the Supreme Court did not labor long to produce them, the Justices on Monday unanimously expanded the control that police can exercise at the scene of roadside traffic stops, and, again without dissent, pushed up the chain-of-command in prosecutors’ offices the protection of total immunity to liability for decisions made in preparing criminal cases for trial. The first ruling was an enlargement of “stop and frisk” authority, the second was a reinterpretation of when prosecutors’ supervisors do administrative tasks.

The cases are Arizona v. Johnson (07-1122) and Van de Kamp v. Goldstein (07-854). Read the SCOTUS Blog analysis and weep.