Courtwatch – Sam McGee

A box of cocain shipped on Federal Express ran afoul of an ion mobility spectrometer – like an electronic “dog sniffer” without the bark and the tail. In the Alaska Court of Appeals case – Sam McGee versus the State of Alaska – McGee argues that Fairbanks police did not have reasonable suspicion to remove the package from the normal flow of commerce and test it with the spectrometer. Forgive our puns, but we could not resist comparing this Sam McGee to the Robert Service character in “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” Rosemarie Alexander and attorney Julie Willoughby discuss the case, which they call “The Ionization of Sam McGee.” (Thanks to attorney Tom Wagner for his help with our poem.)Related Link: McGee v. State