EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW
This week’s editorial pages of the East Hampton Star called for East Hampton officials to “restore law and order” and listed, as a top issue facing the Town, “restoring even-handed rules of law.”
Many courts struggle with this issue. This is strange because equal protection under law is one of our most fundamental rights. This right is so fundamental it is guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, in the Equal Protection Clause.
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That clause states that no State may “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” This means that everyone in the United States is guaranteed to be protected by our state, federal, and local laws, no matter what the color of skin, language spoken, affiliation, religion, orientation, or whether a party is a person, a group of people, or an organization.
Courts must often go to great lengths to protect this right, no matter who the parties are.
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I can recall a matter that I handled as an Assistant District Attorney. The defendant was particularly unscrupulous. However, the protections of law applied to him, too. The detectives and I doggedly pursued the matter until we found the evidence we needed. Despite the urge to simply raid the defendant’s home and car, our law protects the privacy of everyone’s home, person, or car. It doesn’t matter who you are. As the saying goes, Justice is blind.
We applied for numerous search warrants to obtain evidence hidden in his home, a safe, and two different secret traps hidden in his car. In the end, we had a lot of evidence and the defendant pled guilty.
Coincidentally, I ran into his attorney in Riverhead a few months ago, and we reminisced about that case. Though it had been about 6 or 7 years since, he remembered the case, and later even referred another case to me.
This is an illustration that giving all parties Equal Protection under law takes effort. The Court always needs to have the energy to ensure that these protections are applied to each and every one of us.
