The Associated Press reports:

It’s a common practice among drivers who pass through a speed trap:  Flash your headlights at approaching cars as a warning to slow down.  Now, a federal court judge in Missouri says penalizing drivers for the headlight flash violates their First Amendment right to free speech.

U.S. District Judge Henry E. Autrey in St. Louis on Monday issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the St. Louis County town of Ellisville from citing and prosecuting drivers who flash their lights to warn of radar and speed traps.  Ellisville’s city attorney said there are no plans to appeal.

The order stems from a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri on behalf of Michael Elli.  On November 17, 2012, Elli flashed his headlights to warn oncoming vehicles of a radar set up by Ellisville police.

The New York Times reports that the highest court in New York has declared  “that there are limits to the lies and deceptions the police can employ to get a person to confess to a crime” and ordered a new trial for a man convicted five years ago of killing his infant son.

In a unanimous ruling, the court held that detectives in Troy, N.Y., had gone too far during the interrogation of Adrian P. Thomas, and that his confession, stating that he had thrown his son onto a bed, should never have been revealed to a jury.

Detectives threatened to arrest Mr. Thomas’s wife if he did not take responsibility for the baby’s death. They repeatedly told him he would not be charged with a crime if he confessed to abusing his son. Finally, they told Mr. Thomas that his son’s survival depended on his remembering what he might have done to cause a brain injury, even though the baby was already brain-dead.

Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, writing for the seven-member Court of Appeals, said those techniques, taken together, amounted to psychological coercion that violated Mr. Thomas’s constitutional rights.