Summary
Professor David Sklansky weighs in on whether there’s case law to support that conversations of police officers which take place during crime scene searches can be assumed to be confidential.
Police officers in Santa Ana, California, have responded after clients of a marijuana dispensary filed a lawsuit accusing them of excessive and unconstitutional actions during a raid in May.
A lawsuit filed last week in Orange County superior court by the officers and the Santa Ana Police Officers Association seeks to curb an internal investigation by the Santa Ana police department that was launched after the release of surveillance video of the 26 May raid on Sky High Holistic, a non-profit marijuana collective.
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David Sklansky, co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center at Stanford Law School, said it was unclear if the penal code applied to the lawsuit. Sklansky said statute could apply if the conversation was confidential or if the conversation was recorded intentionally.
“I’m not sure that there’s a case law on whether police officers can reasonably assume that when they conduct a search of a suspected crime scene, they can expect their conversation to be totally confidential,” Sklansky said.
“In a place with a number of cameras, there’s a strong argument that it didn’t happen intentionally.”
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