Why I Think the SCOTUS was Right in the al-Kidd Ruling

The Supreme Court issued their opinion in Ashcroft v. al-Kidd earlier this week. And as expected, it has generated a lot of buzz among Fourth Amendment activists and Libertarians. On the surface, I would have to agree with the outcry that the Supreme Court was unanimously wrong.

After all, detaining an American citizen not involved in a crime as a "material witness" with no intention of using their testimony in court is wrong. So naturally, Reason must be right in saying that "Supreme Court Says Pretending to Detain People As Material Witnesses Is Constitutional".

But after reading the opinion, I must disagree with the outcry and agree with the SCOTUS on this one. You see, this case didn't even address the Constitutionality of the practice. The Court did not offer an opinion on whether "pretending" to detain material witnesses is Constitutional because that was not the argument being made in the case.

The case was about whether Ashcroft could be held financially liable for al-Kidd's detainment if it were Constitutional. al-Kidd's argument about the Constitutionality was not even about whether or not there was objective reasonableness to his detainment as a material witness, especially since his argument effectively conceded that the warrant itself was valid and contained objectively reasonable individualized suspicions. What al-Kidd tried to argue is that the detainment was not Constitutional due to the subjective motives of the Department of Justice — an argument based on a narrow reading of a select sentence out of context from Whren v. United States, 517 U. S. 806 (1996).

When you cherry-pick out of context "precedents", it's a recipe for losing the battle in any competent court. While I don't agree with the apparent abuse of the Material Witness Statute, I think the Court's opinion was right with respect to the arguments made by the parties involved.

Unfortunately, fixing this abuse of 18 U.S.C. § 3144 will have to wait for another day.