A story from my younger days, dear readers. (I mean, it’s supposed to be from my younger days, right?)
When I joined the Marines, I went through boot camp in San Diego, followed by three weeks of additional combat training at nearby Camp Pendleton. After this, I was bussed to 29 Palms, California, in the middle of the desert, for my next round of training. One of the new experiences I had at 29 Palms was being housed in barracks. At boot camp and MCT, everyone sleeps in squad bays – large open rooms with rows of bunk beds. But now we were in a real barracks, with individual barracks rooms. Granted, in the Marine Corps it was common for lower-ranking Marines to be assigned three or four to a single room, but compared to what we had experienced so far, this was an incredible luxury.
The day before, we suddenly woke up at 5am. The Marines conducting the training program had everyone stand in the hallway and one by one they went through each room, calling up the Marines living in that particular room and searching it from top to bottom. They made you remove the locks that kept your locker safe so they could search everything. They were looking for illicit material that someone had in their possession. Underage Marines trying to hide drinking was the most common thing they discovered. These types of searches occurred every now and then as long as I lived in the barracks.
I didn’t think much about it at the time. But later I came to an interesting realization. It’s often said that if you’re in the Marines you have no rights, and that those in command can do whatever they want, etc. But that’s not true. There are actually several rules and safeguards that must be followed during military investigations, thresholds that must be crossed, rules on how evidence must be collected to be admissible, and so on. What was going on here? This was simply a massive search, without any specific probable cause or evidence of wrongdoing to warrant it. So if they discovered that you had a bottle of Jack Daniels hidden in your underwear drawer, wouldn’t that be inadmissible and stop them from charging you?
Well, they would, but only if they actually performed a search. But that morning at 29 Palms and on all other occasions, that was not the case to search the barracks. You see, what they were Actually what I did was carry out a ‘health and comfort inspection’, and there is no special threshold to be crossed to carry out a health and comfort inspection beyond ‘I feel like it’. But when they made you take the locks off your things and started looking to make sure no wasps had set up a nest in your underwear drawer, if they it just happened to find a bottle of Jack Daniels, then in that case it can absolutely be used to recharge you. Because they didn’t find it during a search! They were just trying to ensure your health and comfort!
The upshot of this is of course that while de jure there were rules and restrictions regarding searches and the admissibility of evidence obtained during a search, de facto it was open season and you could be effectively searched at any time without any restrictions. The “health and comfort inspection” provided a shortcut to circumvent any need for cases approaching probable cause or evidence of wrongdoing to warrant a search. And it also showed that when there is a shortcut around any legal protection, that shortcut quickly becomes the main route.
This is one of the reasons why I reflexively oppose anything that might relax or reduce legal protections for those accused of crimes. As soon as an exception arises, or a loophole is created, or a shortcut appears, it will immediately become the main road to take. You shouldn’t leave any of those doors ajar unless you’re willing to have them thrown wide—and you shouldn’t forget to ask to leave that door open if someone who is your worst political nightmare comes to power.