Hacker News Reader

Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

This is not even the most interesting part of the saga.

> We have now discovered that the probable cause affidavits were not filed with the District Court until three days after the illegal searches were executed. While the affidavits purport to be signed before Magistrate Viar on the day of the illegal searches, no explanation has been provided why they were not filed prior to the execution of the illegal searches.

https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/investigations/breaking...

Small town corruption got caught with their hand in the cookie jar on the national stage.

View on HN

Love it. Put these people on blast on the national stage. This kind of behavior needs to be stamped out.

Absolutely nothing is going to come of this. I would love to be proven wrong however.

Illegal searches, seizures and raids happen too often and they (feds, cops) get away with it more often than not I'd imagine.

There's an entire federal division on public corruption where eager young feds seek to take down public officials to make a name for themselves.

Sure, there's no one to watch the feds, but this isn't that, this is state law...

Technically there's a FISA court to oversee warrantless wiretapping, but they appear to be in the tank with the FBI.

I suspect the that while this typically would see no material remedy it’s so egregious, and exacerbated by the death of the newspaper co-owner as clear suffering, and so notorious on the world wide stage, something will be done to make an example of the police and judge at the federal level.

if nothing else, the death provides a very clear pathway for a civil suit

A big part of what makes this sort of small town corruption possible is that it's really hard to get people from outside the town to actually care. This story managed to get national attention so it's much more likely than usual to have something happen.

My cynicism encourages me to agree with you; however, I think it's worth considering how much political capital is created or conserved by 1) protecting the five-member police force and some random local magistrate vs. 2) taking a hardline stance against Corruption by sending the feds in and prosecuting everybody involved (even/especially if charges are dropped in a couple months)

I assume folks are going to look into this. If she back-dated those affidavits (which, man, sure seems likely), I would hope/assume she can be disbarred? Which would be great, but I hope doesn't prevent fuller accountability for the Sheriff's office as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com