Alabama hit by deadly tornadoes OAK GROVE, Ala. (AP) — Knowing this community’s history of tornadoes, Jhan Powers gets nervous anytime violent weather rolls in. While her house was spared this time, a tornado demolished nearby mobile homes — all
Alabama hit by deadly tornadoes
OAK GROVE, Ala. (AP) — Knowing this community’s history of tornadoes, Jhan Powers gets nervous anytime violent weather rolls in. While her house was spared this time, a tornado demolished nearby mobile homes — all of which were just a short drive from a path of destruction cut just last year by a deadly twister.
At least two tornadoes roared across the heart of Alabama on Monday, killing two people and injuring more than 100 others during the night. More than 200 homes were ruined, the Red Cross said, and just as many homes were heavily damaged.
The storm awoke families, and many huddled together as winds howled outside. After the storms passed, rescue teams had to go door-to-door in some places, calling out to residents. The unincorporated community of Oak Grove was hit hard in April and again Monday though none of the same neighborhoods was hit twice.
Rep. Giffords says farewell to backers
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — On a bittersweet day for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the outgoing congresswoman spent her final hours in Tucson as the city’s U.S. representative, finishing the meeting she started on the morning she was shot and bidding farewell to constituents who supported her through a long recovery.
It may not be the end, though. The woman whose improbable recovery captivated the nation promised, “I will return.”
Giffords spent time Monday at her office with other survivors of the shooting rampage that killed six people and injured 13.
She hugged and talked with survivors, including Suzi Hileman, who was shot three times while trying to save her young friend and neighbor, 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green. The little girl died from a gunshot wound to the chest.
Warrant needed for GPS tracking
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a rare defeat for law enforcement, the Supreme Court unanimously agreed on Monday to bar police from installing GPS technology to track suspects without first getting a judge’s approval. The justices made clear it wouldn’t be their final word on increasingly advanced high-tech surveillance of Americans.
Indicating they will be monitoring the growing use of such technology, five justices said they could see constitutional and privacy problems with police using many kinds of electronic surveillance for long-term tracking of citizens’ movements without warrants.
While the justices differed on legal rationales, their unanimous outcome was an unusual setback for government and police agencies grown accustomed to being given leeway in investigations in post-Sept. 11 America, including by the Supreme Court.
The views of at least the five justices raised the possibility of new hurdles down the road for police who want to use high-tech surveillance of suspects, including various types of GPS technology.
“The Supreme Court’s decision is an important one because it sends a message that technological advances cannot outpace the American Constitution,” said Donald Tibbs, a professor at the Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel University. “The people will retain certain rights even when technology changes how the police are able to conduct their investigations.”
A GPS device installed by police on Washington, D.C., nightclub owner Antoine Jones’ Jeep and tracked for four weeks helped link him to a suburban house used to stash money and drugs. He was sentenced to life in prison before an appeals court overturned his conviction.
It’s not clear how much difficulty police agencies would have with warrant requirements in this area; historically they are rarely denied warrants they request. But the Obama administration argued that getting one could be cumbersome, perhaps impossible in the early stages of an investigation. In the Jones case, police got a warrant but did not install the GPS device until after the warrant had expired and then in a jurisdiction that wasn’t covered by the document.
Justice Antonin Scalia said the government’s installation of the device, and its use of the GPS to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constituted a search, meaning a warrant was required. “Officers encroached on a protected area,” Scalia wrote.
Relying on a centuries-old legal principle, he concluded that the police action without a warrant was a trespass and therefore an illegal search. He was joined in his opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor.
All nine justices agreed that the GPS monitoring on the Jeep violated the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure, a decision the American Civil Liberties Union said was an “important victory for privacy.”
But there was a major division between Scalia, the court’s conservative leader, and Justice Samuel Alito, a former federal prosecutor and usually a Scalia ally, over how much further the court should go beyond just saying that police can’t put a GPS device on something used by a suspect without a warrant.
