Cool.
But I am not 100% sure. I don't sweep my car everytime I use it. I let other people (rarely, though) use my car -- and I don't search the car when I get it back. Although I never lend my car (or give rides to people in my car) that I don't trust, well, you never know -- that's why I said 100% sure, not 99.9% sure.
But -- and to me this is the most important thing -- I can't even say for sure what is and what isn't legal anyway. There are so many different laws on the books, I am not sure anyone who doesn't work with them day in and day out can say, for certain, what might be technically legal or illegal. I know that I don't ever
knowingly carry anything illegal in my car -- but I also know that I don't know all of the laws and ordinances and regulations out there.
I read somewhere that there are over 10,000 pages of
federal criminal statutes on the books, not to mention all of the state and local statutes and ordinances. I was watching a lecture where the prof brought up a federal statute that makes it a felony to possess
in the United States a fish, animal, or plant that was illegal to possess in the country in which it was obtained.
This may be a stretch, but consider if you traveled to Canada, picked a flower that you liked, came back into the U.S., get stopped by a cop, they ask to search, you say yes, and you happen to hit the one cop in the U.S. that knows that statute, and knows that this particular flower is illegal to pick in Canada. You are now a felon, even though you would likely have sworn up and down that you were 100% sure that there was
nothing illegal in your car at the time of the stop.
Maybe JPM and the other officers on this board can say with 100% certainty that there is
nothing illegal, even "technically" illegal, in their cars -- but I know I can't, because I can't even say for 100% sure what it, and what is not legal -- there are just too many laws on the books to know
for sure. And I am saying this as a lawyer -- I don't practice criminal law, but even in my practice, I don't know ALL of the laws, there are just too many to keep in your head.
And that's the reason why, for me, it's important to preserve whatever rights I might have, because I just don't know. I am pretty confident that if I were to get stopped and searched, all would be well -- but I don't
know for sure that, if someone nitpicked everything in my car and had knowledge of some arcane statute, that they couldn't find
something. So I will preserve the right to challenge the search later by refusing consent.
