A low profile but serious case is being held at a courthouse with the aforementioned policy. A particular security guard, without anyone’s knowledge, has an interest in further incriminating the defendant. The security guard plants a weapon on the defendant as they enter the courthouse further creating an even worse situation for the defendant.

Part of the protection of the 4th amendment is at least in principal to provide some kind of protection from situations like that. At a deeper level however it is still a matter of trust. Kind of like with Certificate Authorities in the IT world. At some point in the chain of certificate trusts, someone has to be considered completely trustworthy. The only problem with that is that with that kind of power comes a certain amount of corruptibility. Even if the party in question (the one we are supposed to trust 100%) is genuinely trustworthy, that party also becomes a target for those who would wish to abuse the trust earned by that party. And to further that example, as we get more and more companies that want to be CAs, how do we know that all of them are trustworthy? In many ways, our founders were paranoid about any kind of “chain of trust” and were more concerned with “checks and balances”. Someone has to oversee power and authority. Of course then that creates another level of trust and thus another chain of trust.

My bottom line is that there is confusion between “understandable” with “allowable”. While it may be understandable “given these times”, that does not mean it is allowable under the law of the land or the principle and spirit of the law. Trust is not something that can be granted or passed along.

I am equally concerned with what you write, but I am also aware that powers that wish to destroy us, will target our buildings of government. Where would you draw the line?

But the point is, making someone empty their pockets and letting the deputy pick through things to make sure everything’s “ok,” to get into a courtroom, THAT’S a search.

The thing I don’t get is just that: how come (of all people) defense attorneys don’t understand that when you’re required to empty your pockets and let someone poke through the things you dump into a bowl, that’s a search? Do any of us really think there’s a difference between someone sticking their hands in my pockets and someone making me empty my pockets into a bowl they then paw through to verify that I’m not committing a crime?

After all the rest of the verbiage in the Fourth Amendment, it doesn’t say, “unless there is a possibility that in some alternate universe they actually might be committing, or about to commit, a crime” at the end.

In NY we have an atty ID which allows us to submit to a Police background ck and then we free pass into any state ct house. Feds still require magnometer and scans but I always pass. I wonder what a law suit might do. They have those same fail-safes at SCOTUS.