John Wesley Hall picks this quote from the Oral Argument in Herring v US, No 70-513, Opinion issued January 14, 2008:
Chief Justice Roberts: I don’t know what the situation is like in Dale County. They probably don’t have the latest version of WordPerfect, or whatever it is. They are probably making do with whatever they can under their budget and doing the best they can. (At Page 20)
Would the case have been decided the other way if Chief Justice Roberts had known that Dale County could have downloaded the latest version of OpenOffice, at no cost to the County’s budget? If the expense of a new word processor was the reason that the County eviscerated Mr. Herring’s 4th Amendment rights, Mr. Herring should have won.
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