Check out this passage in Chief Justice John Roberts' recent dissent [pdf] in the case Pennsylvania v. Dunlap. It reads like a page from a detective dime novel:
Officer Sean Devlin, Narcotics Strike Force, was working the morning shift. Undercover surveillance. The neighborhood? Tough as a three dollar steak. Devlin knew. Five years on the beat, nine months with the Strike Force. He’d made fifteen, twenty drug busts in the neighborhood.Devlin spotted him: a lone man on the corner. Another approached. Quick exchange of words. Cash handed over; small objects handed back. Each man then quickly on his own way. Devlin knew the guy wasn’t buying bus tokens. He radioed a description and Officer Stein picked up the buyer. Sure enough: three bags of crack in the guy’s pocket. Head downtown and book him. Just another day at the office.
So was it the clerk who wrote this with the final amused approval given by Roberts? Or, was it Roberts himself who penned this piece of noir? I conjecture it was the clerk in the parlor.
[Via]