The Boston Marathon attacks have brought to the surface some of the best and the worst in Massachusetts.
On the one side, many news sources reported responsibly and refused to speculate too quickly and without foundation about who the bombers were or why they might have done what they did. There seems at this stage good evidence on which to base the arrest of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Above all, he was taken into custody quickly and alive, and Bostonians will be able to learn more about the motivations behind the attacks.
On the other side, panic, prejudice and the needs of the news cycle fueled an almost certainly unconstitutional search of an innocent Saudi marathoner’s house, an attack on a Muslim doctor in Malden, a call for genocide of Muslims, and a martial law-style lockdown of a vast area of metropolitan Boston.
This is the blog for the Campaign for Digital Fourth Amendment Rights, so unsurprisingly I’m going to focus on some of the Fourth Amendment issues arising out of the attacks; principally, the stop of the Saudi marathoner and the search of his apartment in Revere, and the constitutional issues raised when a householder refuses entry to law enforcement during house-to-house searches for a fugitive.
Follow me below the fold for the first of these!