well, the right to not have your home invaded by the cops and illegally searched are a couple. and given that this was recognized by a judge pretty quickly --that the cops violated those rights in my case recently --they can no longer nail me on a felony. that charge was dropped even at the arraignment. given that they were operating on the basis of hearsay, there's another one. [no reasonable cause buttressed by the fact that there was no crime/evidence found that they came looking for]
so i can sue them for false arrest, police misconduct and brutality for slamming me around for the heck of it. psychological harm to my son and i, blah blah blah. i can sue them because of the constitution. i don't want to get rid of it any more than i want to get rid of food stamps. they're not perfect, but i be up the creek without a paddle right now if it weren' t for the constitution.
btw, long story about the public defender. but since i've dumped him, we got to talking about this and that because he was so disappointed to lose my case [it's a drag because he mostly deals with driving while under the influence cases and mine was a great case, the kind he went to law school for!], we're working on an article about public defenders, the police state, the war on the poor. he's latino, from texas and doesn't have a lot of good things to say about either of those two regimes.
kelley