Posted on 11/22/2011 6:38:51 AM PST by marktwain
INDIANAPOLIS | Republican and Democratic leaders of the Indiana House and Senate on Monday endorsed legislation to clarify Hoosier self-defense rights after a controversial Indiana Supreme Court ruling.
The General Assembly's Legislative Council unanimously approved a proposal allowing a person to use force under some circumstances to stop the illegal entry of a police officer into a home as long as the person does not know it is a police officer, the officer does not identify himself or herself as police and the officer is not wearing a badge or uniform.
The right to use force would not apply in domestic violence cases, if the officer believes a person is at risk of physical harm, when police are invited in by another resident, if the officer is in "hot pursuit," when police are tracking a fleeing suspect or if the officer has a warrant.
Approval by the Legislative Council, which consists of the top lawmakers of each party from both chambers, all but guarantees an easy route to passage for the legislation when the General Assembly convenes in January.
I think it would be better to require the police to present a warrant to the homeowner before entering, or at least make a good faith effort to do so.
Cops workaround a la Waco: Flash-bang/tear gas the place, immobilize everyone, sort it out later.
We don’t need no stinking 4th Amendment rights!
—allowing a person to use force under some circumstances to stop the illegal entry of a police officer into a home as long as the person does not know it is a police officer, the officer does not identify himself or herself as police and the officer is not wearing a badge or uniform.
The right to use force would not apply...if the officer has a warrant. —
So, if everything in the first sentence is true, it is trumped by the fact that the officer has a warrant.
That’s stupid.
And these “top lawmakers” are being paid to come up with this lame “self protection” meaninglessness.
Not good enough. Not even close. None of those thing are even slightly difficult for [non-sanctioned] home invaders to do.
If cops want to aggressively break into homes, even on legitimate business, in a way that can easily be duplicated by criminals, in a dynamic situation where there's no time to safely (for the homeowner) verify their identity, why should the responsibility for their safety get improperly shifted to the homeowner?
Plus, so what if it IS a cop? This legislation misses the entire point of the IN Supreme Court decision that prompted it to be drafted. The question wrongly decided in that case is: What are my rights if a state actor tries to enter my home illegally? This legislation turns it into "What are my rights if some unidentified guy breaks into my house and turns out to be a state actor, whether his business there is legit or not?", which does NOTHING to correct the problem decision.
It's so lame I begin to suspect an intentional scheme to defuse enraged citizens and pretend to fix the court's problem without actually doing anything that would correct the thing they're mad about.
—It’s so lame I begin to suspect an intentional scheme to defuse enraged citizens and pretend to fix the court’s problem without actually doing anything that would correct the thing they’re mad about. —
Kinda reminds me of the supercommittee. ;-)
No kidding!
—No kidding!—
Do you get the feeling that, especially lately, things are not what they appear?
Importantly, this seems like a backdoor way to thwart federal Patriot Act laws that have been horribly misused.
That is, a part of the act legitimized warrantless searches at about *any* level, federal, state, or local, theoretically as an anti-terrorism device, but practically, used exclusively by police at all levels for ordinary crime—in a manner repulsive to the 4th Amendment.
Though the Indiana legislature cannot prevent federal officers from still carrying out “gleeful” warrantless searches, this would prevent local and state lawmen from doing so.
As such, hopefully other states will enact similar laws.
Only the ones that look GOOD. Somehow the bad stuff is always real. :(
1) Criminal dressed as cop
2) Rogue cop (special case of 1, above)
3) Government out of control
So-called legislative leaders need to try again.
Correct on all counts. The legislation is completely silent on the actual issue incorrectly decided by the IN Supreme Ct. that no doubt is what caused it to be introduced. It didn’t have anything to do with people entering the person’s home and he didn’t know they were cops. It’s so off target it actually seems like an intentional red herring to call a pissed off public.
I wasn’t aware that the 4th Amendment had been repealed or superseded. (Also note that the 4th mentions the ‘reasonable suspicion’ in reference to OBTAINING the warrant, not as a means of abrogating it.)
The 4th amendment only exists on paper, and has only minimal value of the government feels like following the trivial rules it has set for itself.
To start with, here is much of the history of the 4th Amendment (3 long pages, but interesting).
http://law.jrank.org/pages/2014/Search-Seizure-Fourth-Amendment-origins-text-history.html
But this “death by a thousand cuts” does not come close to a secret DOJ memo issued in 2001, that bluntly said, “Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.”
http://www.aclu.org/files/pdfs/safefree/yoo_army_torture_memo.pdf
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