Test Question for the Board. Arlo has been reading the Legal Corner and wants your opinion on whether he can sue Office Obie. As Arlo remembers that day, it all began when he went looking for a place to dump the garbage:
"We didn't find one till we came to a side road, and off the side of the side road was another fifteen-foot cliff, and at the bottom of the cliff was another pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile was better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up, we decided to throw ours down. That's what we did.
Drove back to the church, had a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, went to sleep, and didn't get up until the next morning, when we got a phone call from Officer Obie. He said, "Kid, we found your name on a envelope at the bottom of a half a ton of garbage and I just wanted to know if you had any information about it."
And I said, "Yes sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie. I put that envelope under that garbage." After speakin' to Obie for about forty-five minutes on the telephone, we finally arrived at the truth of the matter and he said that we had to go down and pick up the garbage, and also had to go down and speak to him at the Police Officer Station. So we got in the red VW microbus with the shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the Police Officer Station.
Now, friends, there was only one of two things that Obie could've done at the Police Officer Station, and the first was that he could've given us a medal for bein' so brave and honest on the telephone (which wasn't very likely, and we didn't expect it), and the other thing was that he could've bawled us out and told us never to be seen drivin' garbage around in the vicinity again, which is what we expected.
But when we got to the Police Officer Station, there was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon, and we was both immediately arrested, handcuffed, and I said, "Obie, I can't pick up the garbage with these here handcuffs on." He said: "Shut up kid, and get in the back of the patrol car."
Reprinted without permission from Alice’s Restaurant.
You are Arlo’s attorney. What is your next move?
First prize: a bottle of your favorite champagne at the TER CAFE.
I don't know if he was illegally arrested or not (1970's Mass Statutes being very fickle regarding dealing with the hippie dippies), but the other cop should NOT have shoved the pickle down his throat.
His lawyer should have asked the judge to throw out the only direct incriminating evidence: Arlo's confession. He was not read his Miranda rights. The Miranda warnings were mandated by the 1966 United States Supreme Court decision in the case of Miranda v. Arizona. The envelope by itself was not conclusive evidence because anyone could have placed it there.
Officer Obie did indeed violate Miranda, as you point out, Bill but the confession ("I put that envelope under that garabage") was made over the telephone BEFORE Arlo was placed under arrest or detained for custodial investigation.
Miranda applies only to questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way.
since the '85 cost about as much as an overnight with your ATF.
But you can go to the Suggestion and Policy Board and ask the TER sommelier - I believe his name is Dave - to add that vintage to the TER Wine Cellar. Tell him to put it on my tab.
The correct answer is: let my client (Arlo) finish telling the story; transcribe it; have him set it to music; and send it to Warner Brothers Records. The royalties on the album and film (plus sheet music, etc.) would certainly exceed the littering fine. (French White will be fine.)
Arlo's royalty flow has been destroyed by the new technology. Apple will not allow a $.99 download of Alice's Restaurant to your IPOD bc it's too long and wants you to buy the whole album. But nobody wants the entire album (can you remember any other song on that album?) and hence Arlo's interest in suing Officer Obie for wrongful arrest.
Officer Obie has left the LE business and now runs a Boston hedge fund so he has deep pockets.
You may say that the statute of limitations ran on Arlo's claim long ago but Arlo advises he has been stoned since 1969 and the statute of limitations should be tolled on competency grounds.
In re-reading what I wrote, I can't believe I actually said "royalties on the album." What century did I think I was living in.
I say you get Arlo to waive his claims against Obie, and in return, Obie gives Arlo the rights to the whole story in order to develop a new reality show, in which 12 contestants have to perform various stunts (visit draft broad, get up on a table and sing "Alice's Restaurant," with feeling, etc.) with the prize being twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with circles and arrows on the front and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence.
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