I guess if you can show that other people got away with it, but you didn’t, you can go scot-free. Maybe NFL players can do that, too–if a player got away with holding but you didn’t, the penalty flag goes back in the pocket. From the Chicago Tribune:
The mass arrests of Occupy Chicago demonstrators that city leaders held up as a model for how to respect protesters’ rights has been ruled unconstitutional and tossed out of court by a Cook County judge.
In a 37-page ruling issued today, Associate Judge Thomas Donnelly ruled the October 2011 arrests were unconstitutional because the city routinely chooses not to enforce the curfew for events the city supports, such as the 2008 Election Night rally for President Barack Obama. The judge noted that no arrests were made at that event, even though it went well past curfew.
With the ruling, the arrests of 92 Occupy protesters on charges related to violating the curfew were thrown out.
It sounds to me that it’s more of a matter of not giving the government the power to arbitrarily choose when to enforce the law. That sounds like a good thing to me.
I agree Ethan. It goes further, though: it’s more a matter of not giving the government the power to suppress speech it doesn’t like. These kinds of laws are routinely ignored when favored groups break them but enforced to the letter when others (say, abortion protesters) are in violation.
Aren’t there some laws like jaywalking that aren’t regularly enforced but that are still good to have on the books for the police to use at their discretion? I don’t like it when politicians selectively enforce laws against their enemies, but I think it’s still necessary to have some laws that aren’t meant to be enforced in all cases.
Or take speed limits…
If the concern is discrimination by the government, then the City of Chicago should be prosecuted by the Federal Government for singling out the Occupy protestors (it must be said that it enforces curfew on others also) and ignoring the Obama supporters. If the City broke the law, let them pay for it. Civil damages. But the Occupiers were told by police that they could not spend the night in the park because it is against a standing law, and they refused to comply with law enforcement officers enforcing the law. They still broke the law.