Summary
Transcript
I don’t care where you’re from, and I don’t care who your daddy was, I am required and your sheriff is required to protect your God-given rights. And does that mean that he makes arrests for rape and child abuse and shoplifting and bicycle theft and aggravated assault and murder? Of course. That’s all part of the protection. But ultimately, his goal is to preserve the peace. He is the conservator of the peace in the county, and he is the top law enforcement officer. And as a matter of fact, in the Supreme Court case, I studied the case, and Cornell University had the best review of it.
And I studied it for days, and then I put all the highlights in this little booklet. And folks, Justice Scalia wrote this decision for the majority. Anson and Scalia. Yes. And this is amazing. In his introduction of the case, he says this, and this is so astonishing to me. It’s just so powerful. He says, because there is no constitutional text speaking to this precise question, the answer to the Clio’s. Now, you got to stop and ask, what did he just say? The answer to the Clio’s challenge? Well, what’s a Clio? Chief law enforcement officer.
So the sheriff’s that did this lawsuit, nobody else in government did this lawsuit. Only seven sheriffs, out of 3,086, seven sheriffs stood up. And I’m proud to say this, I was the first. The other sheriffs joined with me, and I’m grateful that they did. It made the case to go all the way to the Supreme Court. And if they hadn’t been there, if Coog and Romero had not been there from Texas and Louisiana, our case probably would have stopped, would have died at the Ninth Circuit where we got overturned. But they won in their circuit court in New Orleans, the Fifth Circuit.
And that guaranteed us a trip to the Supreme Court. And indeed, on December of 1996, Sheriff Prince and I were at the United States Supreme Court. And let me tell you, for this small town country, Mumpkin of Southeast Arizona, that was awesome. It was a spiritual experience. And to have my two young high school children there with me just made it all that bigger and better. And I still talk with them about it frequently. And this was a miracle that we got to the Supreme Court. And even more miraculously, we won June 27, 1997, the Supreme Court sided with us telling the federal government that they exceeded their authority, and that they could not tell anyone in the states what to do.
And that they cannot command state officers or state legislatures from the states. They cannot tell us to do anything. Because one, they have no jurisdictional or constitutional authority to tell us to do anything. And the sheriff, again, this is his power, he answers to the people, not to a
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