I've long since given up trying to call peak insanity
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camouflaged, and set to drive home from an all-night drinking party
The Washington Supreme Court has overturned the conviction of a man for lying to police, because the man was non-white. If he were white, his conviction for making a false statement would have been upheld, because there was no dispute that he lied, and the questions he was asked by a police officer were typical attempts to gather information.
But the court ruled that the police officer’s questions to him effectively detained him, because his race, in the court’s view, made these questions (such as what his name was) more coercive to him than if he were white. It ruled that the criminal was detained by these questions, regardless of whether he felt detained, simply because, as an Asian or Pacific Islander, he was non-white.
… The Washington Examiner reported that “race should be considered in determining the legality of a police stop,” according to the state supreme court. Its June 9 ruling in State v. Sum declared that “courts must consider the race and ethnicity of the allegedly seized person” when “deciding whether there was a seizure.” The ruling involved “Palla Sum,” who “gave the police a false name and birth date, drove off as law enforcement checked for warrants, and crashed into a nearby yard.” He was then “charged with making a false or misleading statement to a public servant, attempting to elude a pursuing police vehicle, and unlawful possession of a firearm.”
The defendant, Palla Sum, was sleeping in his car when a cop knocked on his window and asked him who we was and what he was doing there. In response, Sum lied about whether it was his car, and “provided a false name and date of birth.” The cop did not take his driver’s license back to the police car, or otherwise prevent him from driving away. So Sum sped away, driving “at a high rate of speed through a stop sign and multiple red lights before ultimately crashing in someone’s front yard,” according to the state supreme court.
Although Sum did not behave as if he were seized or detained — indeed, he drove away — the state Supreme Court ruled that Sum’s subjective perception did not matter: “it is irrelevant that Sum drove away when Deputy Rickerson went back to his patrol vehicle to check Sum’s identity.” “The seizure analysis is not based on the subjective viewpoint of the allegedly seized individual,'” said the court. It also ruled that even if the cop had not intended to seize Sum by merely asking him questions, they still amounted to a seizure of Sum. “The ‘subjective intent of police is irrelevant to the question [of] whether a seizure occurred,” the court said.
