RICHMOND, Va. ? A federal appeals court has refused to reinstate the lawsuit of  decorated Marine Brandon Raub who was seized by a swarm of Secret Service, FBI and local police officials and involuntarily committed for a week because of controversial song lyrics and political views he posted on his Facebook page. The decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Brandon Raub v. Michael Campbell refused to hold the mental health screener liable for Raub's seizure and commitment and the subsequent deprivation of his rights under the First and Fourth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute will appeal the Raub ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. In a related matter, Rutherford Institute attorneys are awaiting a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in Elonis v. United States in which a Pennsylvania man was charged with making unlawful threats and sentenced to 44 months in jail after he posted allusions to popular song lyrics and comedy routines on his Facebook page.

The Appeals Court's opinion in Brandon Raub v. Michael Campbell is available at www.rutherford.org.

"Today's court ruling is part of a recent trend toward granting government officials?be they police officers or health care workers?'qualified immunity' in lawsuits over alleged constitutional violations," stated constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. "Unfortunately, such rulings prevent American citizens from gaining true justice while incentivizing government officials to violate constitutional rights without fear of repercussion."

Brandon Raub, a decorated Marine who has served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, uses his Facebook page to post song lyrics and air his political opinions. On Aug.16, 2012, Chesterfield police, Secret Service and FBI agents arrived at Raub's home, asked to speak with him about his Facebook posts, and without providing any explanation, levying any charges against Raub or reading him his rights, handcuffed Raub and transported him to police headquarters, then to a medical facility, where he was held against his will for psychological evaluation and treatment.

In coming to Raub's aid, Rutherford Institute attorneys challenged the government's actions as a violation of Raub's First and Fourth Amendment rights. On Aug. 23, Circuit Court Judge Allan Sharrett ordered Raub's immediate release, stating that the government's case was "so devoid of any factual allegations that it could not be reasonably expected to give rise to a case or controversy." Rutherford Institute attorneys filed a lawsuit in May 2013, challenging the government's actions as procedurally improper and legally unjustified. In February 2014, a U.S. District Court judge dismissed the lawsuit, rejecting concerns over government suppression of dissident speech as "far-fetched." In appealing to the Fourth Circuit, Institute attorneys claimed that the Chesterfield County mental health screener who recommended Raub's seizure and commitment failed to exercise reasonable professional judgment in interviewing and in wrongly determining that Raub was mentally ill and dangerous, thereby violating Raub's rights under the Fourth Amendment. The lawsuit also asserted that Raub's seizure and detention were the result of a mental health screener's dislike of Raub's "unpatriotic" views on federal government misconduct, thereby violating the ex-Marine's First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

Attorneys William H. Hurd and Stephen C. Piepgrass of Troutman Sanders and Anthony Troy and Charles A. Zdebski of Eckert Seamens Cherin & Mellott are assisting The Rutherford Institute by representing Brandon Raub.

This press release is also available at www.rutherford.org.

WASHINGTON, D.C. –Rejecting the idea that some violations of the Constitution are insignificant, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that police may not extend the time needed to conduct an ordinary traffic stop in order to subject the vehicle and its occupants to an examination by a drug-detecting dog unless they have specific reasons to suspect the car is carrying contraband. In its 6-3 ruling in Rodriguez v. United States, the Court held that a police officer violated the Fourth Amendment rights of motorist Dennys Rodriguez and his passenger when, after giving Rodriguez a written warning for a minor driving infraction, he continued to make them wait while a drug-sniffing dog patrolled the exterior of the vehicle.

The Supreme Court's opinion in Rodriguez v. United States is available at www.rutherford.org.

"While this ruling is certainly a step in the right direction, as long as the courts continue to bend the Constitution to favor the police, there is little to celebrate. After all, the police are still empowered to stop cars based on anonymous tips, carry out warrantless searches of cars using drug-sniffing dogs, and subject Americans to virtual strip searches, no matter the offense," said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. "Whether it's police officers breaking through people's front doors and shooting them dead in their homes or strip searching innocent motorists on the side of the road, these instances of abuse are continually validated by a judicial system that kowtows to virtually every police demand, no matter how unjust, no matter how in opposition to the Constitution."

In March 2012, police officer Morgan Struble was on early-morning patrol in Nebraska when he observed a vehicle momentarily veer onto the shoulder of the highway. Struble, who is a K-9 officer and had his dog with him at the time, pulled the vehicle over and upon approaching it determined that the driver was Dennys Rodriguez and that there was a passenger in the front seat. After Rodriguez explained that he had swerved in order to avoid a pothole, Struble obtained Rodriguez's license, registration and proof of insurance and ran a check to determine if all the paperwork was valid and whether there were any outstanding arrest warrants for Rodriguez. After the officer determined that everything was in order and that neither Rodriguez nor the passenger were wanted, he wrote up a warning ticket for Rodriguez for violating a state law prohibiting driving on highway shoulders. Upon returning to the vehicle and giving Rodriguez back the papers, Struble asked Rodriguez for permission to allow his dog to walk around the vehicle. Rodriguez refused to give permission. Struble then ordered Rodriguez to turn the car off and exit the vehicle. Rodriguez complied and Struble led the dog around the vehicle. Although the dog did nothing during the first pass, on the second pass the dog alerted. Based on this alert, Struble and another officer searched the vehicle and found methamphetamine. This evidence was the basis for a federal indictment against Rodriguez.

Before his trial, Rodriguez moved to suppress evidence of the methamphetamine, arguing that the officer violated the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures by holding him after all matters related to the driving infraction had been completed. However, Rodriguez's argument was rejected by the trial court, which ruled that the additional seizure of Rodriguez for the seven to eight minutes the dog sniff took was a "de minimis intrusion on Rodriguez's Fourth Amendment rights" and was not a sufficient basis to order suppression. The court of appeals affirmed the ruling on Rodriguez's appeal, but the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the case. In reversing the lower courts' decisions, the Supreme Court adhered to prior cases holding that a traffic stop can become unlawful in prolonged beyond the time required to meet the mission of issuing a ticket.

This press release is also available at www.rutherford.org.

DALLAS, Texas–Constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead will appear on a special broadcast of "Glenn Beck Live" on April 9, 2015, to debut his forthcoming book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (due out on April 14) and discuss the constitutional crisis plaguing the nation. Whitehead, who serves as the president of The Rutherford Institute, will also be discussing some of the cases the Institute has handled in recent years which reflect the growing tension over the government's refusal to respect the rights of the citizenry and abide by the rule of law.

In Battlefield America: The War on the American People, (the follow-up to his award-winning book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State), Whitehead paints a terrifying portrait of a nation at war with itself and which is on the verge of undermining the basic freedoms guaranteed to the citizenry in the Constitution. Making the case that the government's policies are dictated more by paranoia, power and control than need, Whitehead warns that it doesn't really matter whether it's a Democrat or a Republican at the helm, because the bureaucratic mindset on both sides of the aisle now seems to embody the same philosophy that has become the driving force behind the American police state.

"The outlook for civil liberties grows bleaker by the day, from the government's embrace of indefinite detention for US citizens and armed surveillance drones flying overhead to warrantless surveillance of phone, email and Internet communications, and prosecutions of government whistle-blowers," writes Whitehead. "The homeland is ruled by a police-industrial complex, an extension of the American military empire. Everything that our founding fathers warned against is now the new norm. The government has trained its sights on the American people. We have become the enemy."

The shocking abuses of power revealed in Battlefield America have rendered Americans:

  • Helpless in the face of militarized police (SWAT team raids, police shootings, roadside strip searches, asset forfeiture, 1033 programs) and routine invasions of privacy
  • Vulnerable to government surveillance (Stingray devices, fusion centers, USA Patriot Act)
  • Defenseless against absurd laws that have them arrested for letting their kids play at a park unsupervised, collecting rainwater and snow runoff on their own property, and growing vegetables in their yard (overcriminalization, National Defense Authorization Act, private prisons)

No matter how dire the outlook appears, Whitehead insists that all is not lost. The freedoms which Americans often take for granted were hard won through the sheer determination, suffering and sacrifice of thousands of patriotic Americans who not only believed in the cause of liberty but also acted on that belief. American colonists suffered under Great Britain's version of an early police state, with armed soldiers crashing through doors to arrest and imprison citizens merely for criticizing government officials. They too were watched all the time, and were stopped and frisked if they appeared even a little bit suspicious. It was only when the colonists finally got fed up with being silenced, censored, searched, frisked, threatened, and arrested that they finally revolted against the tyrant's fetters. Battlefield America is drawing praise on all fronts from presidential contender Ron Paul (who also wrote the introduction), Judge Andrew Napolitano, former ACLU president Nadine Strossen and syndicated columnists Paul Craig Roberts, Lew Rockwell and Nat Hentoff.

This press release is also available at www.rutherford.org.