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John Roberts “channels his inner Mickey Spillane”
Before I read this Washington Post piece, I already hearted John Roberts. Now comes what the Post calls Roberts’s “novel dissent.” Now I heart him even more. When the Supreme Court declines to review a case, the justices usually do so without comment. But Roberts just couldn’t let this one go — and decided to “channel his inner Mickey Spillane.”
Pennsylvania’s top court had thrown out the suspect’s arrest on the grounds that the police officer who saw an apparent exchange between two suspicious men lacked enough evidence to make the arrest.
Roberts wrote:
“North Philly, May 4, 2001. Officer Sean Devlin, Narcotics Strike Force, was working the morning shift. Undercover surveillance. The neighborhood? Tough as a three-dollar steak. Devlin knew. Five years on the beat, nine months with the Strike Force. He’d made fifteen, twenty drug busts in the neighborhood.
“Devlin spotted him: a lone man on the corner. Another approached. Quick exchange of words. Cash handed over; small objects handed back. Each man then quickly on his own way. Devlin knew the guy wasn’t buying bus tokens. He radioed a description and Officer Stein picked up the buyer. Sure enough: three bags of crack in the guy’s pocket. Head downtown and book him. Just another day at the office.”
“Not good enough” for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Roberts noted, which had ruled that a ” ’single, isolated transaction’ in a high-crime area was insufficient to justify the arrest…
“I disagree with that conclusion…” [Roberts wrote] “A drug purchase was not the only possible explanation for the defendant’s conduct, but it was certainly likely enough to give rise to probable cause.”
Any lawyers here wish more judicial opinions were that much fun to read?
back to top7 Comments to “John Roberts “channels his inner Mickey Spillane””
There are other fun opinions, but most judges don’t find them as amusing as the rest of us. My judge truly frowned upon “cute.” No dignity. He even got worked up over a trial transcript where the district court judge interrupted the proceeding to inquire if the intern, who had come to court late, had purchased the vegetables for the meal the judge was going to cook for the “kids” (yes, he had a stove and a full-sized refrigerator in chambers) after the hearing. We also had a Third Circuit judge who wrote a poem opinion (I think it was the Care Bears one). There’s one judge in Texas who has removed cases filed by Columbia to the DC Circuit which would have you rolling on the floor.
Mostly, judges don’t want to give the appearance that they don’t take the whole thing seriously. We laughed over a silly Virgin Islands case where a lady sued because she was injured by a dog when she went into the wrong apartment. The “d” on the “bad dog” sign had worn away so that it said “bar dog” and she felt it was insufficient warning. She did not win, but the judge didn’t make fun of her in his opinion. However, we would look at each other in other situations and say “bar dog” and those two words conveyed a lot of meaning.
You can find amusing opinions at Decision of the Day.
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I hope this dude has low triglycerides and hits the treadmill every day. For a long long time.
“…as the defendant rose slowly, I couldnt help but notice the way the one-size too small outfit she was wearing accentuated every curve. A bishop would kick a hole in stained glass window at just the sight of this gal.”
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I think all those Obama judges most likely won’t be from the Spillane brevity school of legal opinion-writing.
What say you?
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One the funniest opinions I’ve read came from the Georgia Court of Appeals sometime in the 1930s. A woman was staying at a hotel on the Georgia coast and getting ready to go to dinner. She already had her dress on (a long tight-fitting one) when she felt something on her upper thigh…it was a roach. In her panic to get it off, she tripped backwards over the blankets hanging off the hotel bed and broke her arm. She sued the hotel for failure to properly maintain the grounds or some such nonsense. The judge, in his opinion, sets the story up so well that the reader can just the woman twitching and flailing in panic. It’s great.
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Obama judges will be doing creative writing, that’s for sure, Sawgunner. And that’s all I have to say.
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I enjoy a brief and to the point opinion – clear and concise. A little wit or style is an added plus too.
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Robert’s gun is quick.
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