The Secret Service recently paid a visit to 81-year-old Bethlehem, Penn. resident Dan Tilli. His offense? He’d written a letter to the editor of a local newspaper that, referring to the Saddam’s botched hanging, included the line, “I still believe they hanged the wrong man.”

Agents said they determined right away that Tilli wasn’t a threat. But they went ahead and searched his home for weapons, anyway. I’m curious as to what would happen if they’d found an illegally owned firearm, or some marijuana. Is that sentence from Tilli’s letter enough probable cause for a search?

This entry was posted on Monday, January 22nd, 2007 at 11:14 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.