Read Justice Sotomayor's Words on Racial Injustice Before You Go to Sleep Tonight
​The truth about "isolated" incidents.
Charles P. Pierce Jun 20, 2016

WASHINGTON—Madame Justice Sonia Sotomayor seems to have felt her last nerve jumped upon. Earlier today, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Utah v. Streiff. The case involved a man named Edward Streiff, who was stopped without cause by a police officer in Salt Lake City. The officer discovered that Streiff had an outstanding warrant and, upon searching Streiff, discovered methamphetamine. The Utah Supreme Court—that would be the supreme court that works in Utah!—reversed Streiff's conviction because the original police stop had been illegal. By a 5-3 margin, the Supreme Court of the United States reversed the decision of the Utah Supreme Court, the majority arguing that the discovery of the meth made the original stop less illegal. Justice Clarence Thomas opined in a majority opinion that the "deterrent value" of the arrest mitigated the illegality of the stop. (If this sounds like ends justifying means, that's only because it is.)

Madame Justice Sotomayor, writing in dissent, cranked up the Enola Gay.

She summoned up the "suspicionless stops" which were characteristic of Jim Crow law-enforcement. After she paid decent fealty to the universality of Fourth Amendment protections, she made it quite clear that a lot of this is About Race, even though nothing ever is About Race. She even talked about how, sometimes, when people of color are stopped without cause, those people end up being dead.

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