1rudeboy, look, I've read plenty of SCOTUS transcripts and sometimes you are right, especially when it comes to O'Connor. However, in this case, it was obvious where she was going to go. Trust me. Even if we didn't have the transcript to assist us, we know her style. This decision flatly refusing to apply the exclusionary rule to this situation wasn't her MO at all.
"What the knock-and-announce rule has never protected...is one's interest in preventing the government from seeing or taking evidence described in a warrant. Since the interests that were violated in this case have nothing to do with the seizure of the evidence, the exclusionary rule is inapplicable," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the majority opinion in Hudson v. Michigan (04-1360)
Fair enough. I'm just leery of the O'Connor-as-stabilizing-force meme in the media.
O'Connor's style was to come up with complex decisions based on fine-tuned application of minutae. Believe me, she would have ruled for AND against with a series of "tests" that police must follow to differentiate between legal and illegal knocking.
Nice to see Kennedy didn't go wobbly and assume O'Connor's position.