Ever hear of window tint?
without tinted windows, your cars interior is ultimately public knowledge to any passerby purveyor of such things mostly this holds true when parked though.
granted the stop provides the parking of the vehicle required to conduct such peering, and, as a result, the entire stop itself is unlawful due to the stop being conducted with no actual laws broken.
again BAD execution, BAD form, BAD taste.
but in l8ight of the recent crap going on, at least it was an ice cream cone with ice cream and not a bullet ejected from a barrel cause the driver might have been black and the white officer feared for his life. ( facetious sarcasm here)
Omigosh!! What an amazing point!!
Fourth Amendment case law holds that a "plain view" search is legal.* That is to say, if a cop is in a physical location he is legally allowed to be in, then if he see's something illegal, he can seize the contraband, and arrest the individual. To expand, if the cop illegally enters a home with neither a warrant, nor a recognized exception to the warrant clause, and sees something illegal--say a bong still emitting smoke--then he cannot legally seize the bong, nor arrest the smoker. The bong will be thrown out of court as evidence--or should be, anyway. On the other hand, if a cop walks up to a car and sees a nickel-bag of weed on the seat, he can seize the bag and arrest the driver/passenger/etc. (exact details of case law apply as to who in the car can be arrested.) Plain view. If it was in plain view, it did not require a search. No search, no Fourth Amendment requirement for probable cause or a warrant.
But, there is another angle. There are reams of court cases addressing privacy. Would public attitudes hold this or that private? Did the defendant take this-or-that step to ensure others couldn't see (did he consider it private and want to protect his privacy?) Did the defendant abandon his privacy interest in this or that by leaving it open to public view? Reams of court cases on this.
So, along comes our example driver. He's tinted his windows to prevent others from seeing inside his car. He's literally demonstrating that he is protecting the privacy of his car's interior. An angle courts have ruled on regarding
taking steps to protecting privacy and removing from public view.
And, yet!! Over here we have government making it illegal to tint your windows "too much".
They can't have it both ways!! Government can't prevent you from protecting your privacy, rule against you for not protecting your privacy interests, and then at the same time allow a plain view search!! They're having their cake and eating it, too!!
Their own law is against them. Ever hear of something called
collateral estoppel? It is a legal term. Its fancy-pants language for "if you argue this here at this time, then you cannot later contradict yourself by later arguing something over there that contradicts your earlier argument.
Omigosh!! Thank you, Ezek! Thank you! Thank you!!
*There are just way too many court cases on these points to be able to cite. However, even the simplest, most inept google scholar search will produce numerous returns. Heck, if interested, one can just go to Wikipedia and search "plain view doctrine". If other wiki legal articles are any example, there will be a ton of citations at the bottom of the article.