Posted on 06/22/2006 11:48:11 AM PDT by JTN
Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in its 5-4 decision in the case of Hudson v. Michigan that when police conduct an illegal, no-knock raid, any evidence they seize in the raid can still be used against the suspect at trial, even though the raid was conducted illegally.
I’ve spent the last year researching these types of volatile, highly-confrontational, paramilitary raids for a forthcoming report for the Cato Institute. The decision in Hudson is almost certain to lead to more illegal no-knock raids, more mistaken raids on innocent people, and more unnecessary deaths, both of civilians and of police officers.
Experts on both sides of the ruling have debated the issue for a week now. I’d like to make another point. The Supreme Court split on this case, right down the middle. The four most liberal justices voted in favor of the defendant, while the five most conservative justices voted in favor of the police.
The Court’s "swing voter," Justice Kennedy, filed a middling concurrence that sided with the conservatives, but warned them not to take their line of argument any further, or they’d lose his vote. But the majority opinion in this case, written by Anthony Scalia, was not actually all that conservative. Here’s why:
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
The exclusionary rule has done more to waste tax dollars and endanger the general public than anything else. It was a horrible invention, AFIK not to be found anywhere in common law or the Constitution.
Don't care what you believe, rogue, it is not about you.
The police already have an incentive to break into houses in drug cases. Watch as they get pressure to crack down on immigrants. Mistaken identity, incompetence, negligence, and let's face it, setups, with USSC approved no-knock searches will cost lives.
An excellent two sentence summary of Scalia's opinion. See my post #78.
Bold lettering aside, the original was much more concise and elegant than your retrofit, no offense. It just has been whittled away to nothing. 3/4 of the states alllow you to be stopped while driving down the street minding your own business (Michigan State v. Sitz). Without the remedy of exclusion, all of their other protections of the 4th will vanish. Next will be other illegal searches, and this court will probably allow illegal evidence so your protection against warrantless searches is gone.
Somebody on the court never watched "An Innocent Man", whose producers, by the way, sent me four complimentary copies. (I claimed my real life story was the basis for their movie). Ya really have to be there to understand the value of the fourth amendment. With Roberts and Alito, anything left of the fourth will soon be history.
Are you saying that his dissents in the abortion cases are outcome oriented? Have you actually read them?
Just for example, Scalia is the type [of activist] that would probably OK states banning the sale of condoms to married people because, in his view, such morality can and should be legislated.
Exactly correct, -- the world is full of such 'moral activists', a lot of whom claim to be conservative constitutionalists.
Just ask paulsen.
We simply hold that although a search or seizure of a dwelling might be constitutionally defective if police officers enter without prior announcement, law enforcement interests may also establish the reasonableness of an unannounced entry.Knocking is not a Constitutional requirement and Thomas basically says here that if the police have a good reason for no-knocking, they can do it.Respondent contends that the judgment below should be affirmed because the unannounced entry in this case was justified for two reasons. First, respondent argues that police officers reasonably believed that a prior announcement would have placed them in peril, given their knowledge that petitioner had threatened a government informant with a semiautomatic weapon and that Mr. Jacobs had previously been convicted of arson and firebombing. Second, respondent suggests that prior announcement would have produced an unreasonable risk that petitioner would destroy easily disposable narcotics evidence.
These considerations may well provide the necessary justification for the unannounced entry in this case. Because the Arkansas Supreme Court did not address their sufficiency, however, we remand to allow the state courts to make any necessary findings of fact and to make the determination of reasonableness in the first instance.
Now I'm not a lawyer (law school is too easy), but it seems to me that the petitioner's unlocked screen door in WvA indicates a lack of expectation of privacy or security in one's papers.
Except that the "twelve people" are supposed to determine if there WAS a crime.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with the result 99.99% of the time, but my sole point is, he is intellectually dishonest how he gets there. He wants to legislate from the bench, just like the liberals.
How does any of this relate to the recent USSC ruling we are discussing?
Whatever.
Boring.
That's exactly the point. The SC acknoledged the "knock and announce" rule in principle, but then said that nothing will be done to enforce it. So much for the rule of law.
Oh, Scalia did say the resident would have recourse IF a) someone was hurt because of this "illegal" entry, b) some property damage was done because of this "illegal" entry, and/or c) the resident's privacy or dignity was violated by this "illegal" entry. Nonoe of which, by the way, happened in this particular case.
He said that the proper recourse is a civil suit, but...
In his opinion, Scalia argued that there are better ways to punish police who break the rule, such as suing them. But both the state of Michigan and the U.S. government both acknowledged in their briefs in the case that they couldn’t come up with a single case where such a lawsuit had been successful.So, unless I'm being asked to believe that none of the conditions you listed have ever been met, appealing to a person's right to file a civil suit is kind of disingenuous.
So, it's not a blank check.
In effect, it is.
This is both the most stupid and the most obnoxious thing yet said on this thread. And given that this is a libertaroid jackass spew-thread, that's really saying something!
Actually, most of the time they aren't. Keep reading the thread.
That sounds, unbelievably, as if Justice Thomas is willing to let the police suspend the Constitution, as long as "law enforcement interests may also establish the reasonableness..."
I expect the ACLU will be interested at this point, as the law still exists granting full reimbursement of costs in successful civil rights suits. They might not win much in the formal judgment, but if a PD has to eat $500,000 worth of legal costs that may mean something too.
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