Words Poorly Used #118 — Probable Cause

Today I attended my fourth session of a completely engrossing course of lectures on the Bill of Rights.  In this instance, we focused on the Fourth Amendment.

After some deliberation, it seems that in general this amendment is more a blueprint in large for violating a person’s castle and or privacy, and that in particular it is a monument to the law and order crowd’s endless impulse to enforce pre-crime.  If the no-knock warrant is intended to catch a felon before they have done a thing (felonious destruction of evidence), then the practice itself admits that since there could be a crime, there is a necessity to violate the Fourth Amendment in advance of any crime that would justify infringement.

Probable cause is a euphemism for the substitution of pre-crime for factual crime.  As my friend, the lecturer points out, “suspicion of probable cause” is not the same as “beyond a reasonable doubt,” but I am not sure that the system processes it that way.

— Kilgore Forelle