Symmetry wrote:Possibly- I'm not au fait with the US legal terms, My understanding is that if the warrant for the arrest is wrong, then the actual arrest may be legally done, but that the arrest itself maybe illegal.
A crude example- a judge could issue a warrant for their next door neighbour over a noise issue. The police could legally enforce that warrant. It could still be a wrongful arrest based on the warrant.
Wrongful arrest, also known as false arrest, is a legal term with very specific definitions and conditions. This case is in no way anywhere near anything that could be interpreted legally as false arrest.
A recent example of an actual false arrest is a couple of months ago a cop arrested a nurse because she refused to draw a blood sample from a person because the cop didn't have a warrant. The cop arrested her for obstruction, kept her handcuffed in the back of his car for an hour or so before she was eventually released and the cop was suspended. He might have even been fired, I haven't checked back on that recently.
Now that was a case of false arrest. The cop had no warrant, no probable cause and no authority to order a medical procedure let alone arresting a nurse for refusing to perform said medical procedure. The cop had to get a warrant for that first. He overstepped his authority and I'm pretty sure there was a thread about that very incident in this forum back when it happened.
This is just a normal run of the mill court case. It's not rocket science. But she's not going to have any grounds or standing to challenge the warrant from a county because the cops from another county don't like her decal. You do realize that she was arrested by police from a county that didn't even issue the warrant, right?
The argument of "The cops that arrested me don't like the decal on my vehicle" isn't going to mean a damn thing to the court as a defense against the fraud charges. In fact, going that route is a sure way to get the book thrown at you for being a moron and any competent attorney will be explaining that to this woman real soon. Hopefully. The only defense is to refute whatever actual evidence the State has in regards to the alleged fraud. If you can argue that a decal that pisses off the cops two counties over somehow proves that the woman isn't guilty of the alleged charge of fraud in another county, then you should open your own law practice catering to complete morons. Because this person is a moron.
Months from now, after everyone has forgotten all about this, this person on advice from her attorney will have worked out a plea bargain with the court in which she'll either get a suspended sentence for most of the time and have to serve 30 days in jail along with full restitution to the victim(s) of the fraud along with court fees, fines and attorney costs. That's dependent on whether or not the arrested has an extensive criminal record of not. If she's been guilty of fraud or such in the past then she's going to prison for up to a couple of years or so. If she's got a clean record she can get a decent plea bargain and not serve much, if any, time. So long as she can make restitution of course, that's important to the court. As it should be.
The decal and her opinion about Trump are irrelevant.
