Posted on 06/15/2006 7:53:40 AM PDT by NinoFan
Breaking... Major 5-4 decision. This case was reargued and apparently Alito cast the deciding vote.
I agree that what we have is NOT perfect, but it's the best we can do until we can clearly see through walls and all that. :-)
No.
Under some conditions, it may be.
Under what conditions would it be reasonable at YOUR home?
If it's not there then it is up to the states to determine if they want midnight raids being conducted on it's citizens...where mistakes are made time and time again where innocent men women and children are killed as they sleep.
Perhaps you dont have a family or simply don't care about protecting your family, but most of us do. If you make a mistake and bust in my door as I sleep there are going to be a lot of dead bodies strewn about.
No knock home invasions are conducted by thugs all the time...and now we have the police legally in the same business. Are you going to hestitate to determine in your partly conscious sleep state whether it's thugs or the police making a huge mistake? Not reasonable.
Like me , millions of Americans are armed and ready to protect our families and our homes. And you can't guarantee me nor my family that it will never concern us because the police get the wrong address all the time.
The 4th amendment requires a sworn oath regarding who's there, who they are looking for, and what they expect to find. Guess what? Often swat teams are so eager to bust some heads and doors that they'll take some crack head informants word operating only on that single unreliable tip to invade a residence...and often the wrong address. You believe this ok...I do not.
No knock home invasions are unreasonable and risk the lives of the police and the occupants of the home. If your police dept is too scared to knock on the door, then get some help and surround the place with no room for escape and order your suspect out...If your evidence is so skimpy that it can be flushed down a toilet, then cut the friggin water off before you knock...still if it is that small, then why are you wasting my tax dollars and risking all sorts of lives for some sample of a "controlled" substance?
That doesn't seem anywhere near reasonable to me...
Now read the 4th again, and again try to comprehend it. If you don't get it by now, chances are you never will. But do you have any idea why the 4th was placed in our bill of rights in the first place?
So, if strangers break down your door unannounced, you won't shoot at them just because they might be cops? If that becomes the message, expect lots of home invasions by the bad guys as a result.
If the cops are invading the wrong house, then it's the cops who will have legal problems. And if I'm on the jury, the cops will have more to fear from the justice system than the residents of the house--unless the cops properly announced themselves ("knocking" isn't the only way to do that, of course.)
"49 of the states adopted English common law. Louisiana's Constitution is based on codified, or Roman law (sometimes erroneously called French law.)"
Why do you say it was erroneously called French law? It was French, as well as Spanish, which I believe were derived from Roman Law.
Perhaps before getting arrogant you should learn to read. Breyer did not reference common law - he said it was IN the Constitution - and the person you are insulting directly quoted him!
That's interesting. I have read before that Louisiana was based on "Napoleonic Code" originating from the time the territory was controlled by France.
It wouldn't, but then again, I don't engage in the sort of activities that would give probable cause for such a warrant.
Now, conversely, if you are engaged in activities of the sort that would earn a no-knock warrant, that's your problem, not mine. Being a criminal has always been perilous.
It IS part of the Constitution.
I'm sure you have exact figures of "innocent men women and children are killed as they sleep."
(You do, right?)
Perhaps you dont have a family or simply don't care about protecting your family, but most of us do.
And I protect myself by not engaging in the sort of conduct that would give probable cause to a dynamic entry warrant.
If you make a mistake and bust in my door as I sleep there are going to be a lot of dead bodies strewn about.
No there wouldn't. You'd just end up having to change the sheets on your bed and your pajama bottoms.
Like me , millions of Americans are armed and ready to protect our families and our homes. And you can't guarantee me nor my family that it will never concern us because the police get the wrong address all the time.
So, you're now stating that no such warrant is ever served at the correct address.
You can provide evidence to support that claim, right?
Really? Huh. Must be my inability to read, but I thought for sure that I saw the following quote in Breyer's dissent:
"[W]e held that the “common-law ‘knock and announce’ principle forms a part of the reasonableness inquiry under the Fourth Amendment.” (BREYER, J., dissenting op. at 2).
.. Detroit police, who called out their presence at a man’s door then went inside three to five seconds later.
Not really. Step 1: show up at suspected drug house. Knock on door. Wait for people inside to flush drugs. When someone finally does answer, ask them for information about some recent crimes, etc. Note: no need for a warrant for any of this.
Step 2: Repeat this procedure, after the dealer has had to explain to his leaders why he flushed thousands of dollars of drugs down the toilet. Again, give the dealer plenty of time to destroy his inventory and then make another social call.
Step 3: Get warrant, then start procedure the same way. But this time, dealer might not want to waste all his drugs. If he doesn't, THEN search the place.
Simple and easy. What's the problem?
Tell that to Cory Maye.
No-knock raids, absent demonstrable exigent circumstances, are patently unreasonable since they provide the target of the raid no means to determine within a meaningful timeframe whether the people entering the property are doing so legally, or whether they are dangerous criminals who should be shot immediately.
There are some situations, such as hostage rescue, where the risks posed by such tactics are outweighed by the necessity of rescuing innocents. For the most part, though, no-knock raids subject people to unnecessary and unreasonable danger.
The police should conduct themselves in such a way that a reasonable person could determine their legitimacy prior to surrendering to them. Absent extreme exigent circumstances, the police should not initiate any action that an innocent person could construe as a deadly threat. It is possible to search apparently-unoccupied premises while maintaining such conduct.
agreed
Given a choice between that, and telling citizens that when their home is broken into they should not shoot at the intruders (they might be cops after all), I'd much rather accept the former.
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