Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 16, 2013

Vernal, Utah resident Ben Mahaffey had barely said goodbye to his wife of 58 years before the local police barged into the couple?s bedroom without invitation or permission.

Just minutes after Mahaffey?s wife Barbara died of cancer, the police strode into the house claiming that they had a right to examine the couple?s medicine cabinet. The grieving 80-year-old man was treated as if he were a criminal suspect who intended to sell his wife?s prescription painkillers. One officer claimed that the Utah Controlled Substances Act gave them authority to search the home, even without a warrant or probable cause.

Another case suggests that someone in the Vernal Police Department was acting on ulterior motives. On at least thirty occasions in 2011, Vernal Police Detective Ben Marland Murray visited the home of Russell Wayne Smithey and Candy Jean Holmes to conduct ?pill checks? after they had refilled prescription pain medication. The couple suspected that the officer was secretly stealing their medications, and eventually caught him doing so by way of a hidden camera.

Detective Murray, who has been charged with burglary, illustrates anew the fact that prohibition makes offenders out of innocent people ? and emboldens police to behave like criminals.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.