Judicially Authorized Rape: The Newest Weapon in the Prohibitionist Arsenal
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.se/2012/06/judicially-authorized-rape-newest.html
Under Utah state law, “object rape” consists of the involuntary "penetration, however slight, of the genital or anal opening of another person who is 14 years of age or older, by any foreign object, substance, instrument, or device….” This act constitutes a form of aggravated sexual assault for which the penalty is a prison term of no less than ten years, followed by lifetime enrollment in the
sex offender registry. As 22-year-old Utah resident Stephan Cook discovered, the crime of object rape – like any other offense against person or property—can be transmuted into a policy option when it’s committed pursuant to a government decree.
While attending Snow College in Ephraim, Utah, four years ago, Cook and a friend were smoking cigarettes near a parked car when they were accosted by several police officers. Following the standard script, the officers – who, let us not forget,
were trained to lie – claimed to smell marijuana and demanded to search the car. Cook and his friend emptied their pockets and consented to a pat-down search. They permitted the officers to search the interior of the car several times with a drug-sniffing dog. Eventually a glass pipe was found in the trunk. Rather than arresting Cook, who was a passenger in the car, the officers ordered him to drive to a nearby police station, supposedly to save his friend the expense of an impound fee.
There was neither probable cause nor reasonable suspicion to justify the search the car. By ordering Cook to drive to the station, the police made it clear that they did not believe that he was under the influence of marijuana. Furthermore, Cook didn’t own the car, a fact that severs the thinnest thread connecting him to the glass pipe found in the trunk. Yet the officers persisted in their effort to manufacture an offense. Cook was detained and informed that he would have to undergo a drug test. When the police demanded that he sign a waiver of his rights, Cook – whose parents are police officers -- repeatedly and explicitly demanded access to an attorney.
“I asked for an attorney because I didn’t know if this was right,” Cook
recalled in a television interview. “Once I did that, they said ‘We’re getting a search warrant so we’re going to have your urine by the end of the night.’” A “
bodily fluids warrant” was issued “authorizing” the cops to obtain a urine sample. It did not, however, specify that the sample could be taken by force. Lindsay Jarvis, Cook’s attorney, informed Pro Libertate that the warrant was issued by a judicial “commissioner,” rather than a judge.
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