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BS: Knock, knock - Guess Who?
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BS: Knock, knock - Guess Who? |
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Subject: BS: Knock, knock - Guess Who? From: katlaughing Date: 15 Jun 06 - 04:17 PM Knocking not needed before police search with warrant SUPREME COURT The Supreme Court says police don't have to knock before coming in with a search warrant. The high court has ruled that evidence collected with a warrant can be used in court even if officers don't knock before rushing into a home. Justice Antonin Scalia writes for the majority that suppressing evidence is too high a penalty to pay for errors in police searches. And he says the suspect shouldn't be given "a get-out-of-jail-free card." Justice Samuel Alito broke a four-four tie by siding with Detroit police, who called out their presence at a man's door and went inside a few seconds later. Previous rulings said police armed with warrants have to knock and announce themselves in most cases, or risk violating constitutional protections against unreasonable searches. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the dissent that the decision "weakens, perhaps destroys" constitutional protections. Copyright 2006 Associated Press. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Knock, knock - Guess Who? From: number 6 Date: 15 Jun 06 - 04:21 PM A police officer once told me that when busting a drug distribution outlet (i.e. crack shack) 5 knocks and the dealers have in most cases destroyed the goods (i.e. flushed down the jon). sIx |
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Subject: RE: BS: Knock, knock - Guess Who? From: number 6 Date: 15 Jun 06 - 04:28 PM I should elaborate ... 5 knocks with a battering ram |
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Subject: RE: BS: Knock, knock - Guess Who? From: Rapparee Date: 15 Jun 06 - 06:49 PM It's not quite like that, if you read the whole decision. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Knock, knock - Guess Who? From: number 6 Date: 15 Jun 06 - 11:32 PM I'm talking about Saint John and how they knock when they arrive at your door with a warrant ... well, not my door but the bad guy's doors. Hell, when ya got a warrant, the decisions have been made. sIx |
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Subject: RE: BS: Knock, knock - Guess Who? From: JohnInKansas Date: 16 Jun 06 - 01:18 AM As posted in the lead post here, and as I found in several newspaper reports: Knocking not needed before police search with warrant. The Court did not say that police are not required to "serve the warrant" by knocking, announcing their identity, etc. The opinion did, in fact, find that the police violated the rule enunciated by prior courts, and - in effect - upheld the requirement that the police must "knock before entering." What the Court did say was that even though the police violated the law in obtaining the evidence used to obtain a conviction, the "mere fact" that the evidence (technically????) was illegally obtained does not prevent it being used as evidence in the trial. So we now have a Court that believes that "legal vs illegal" is a mere technicality. If the dissenting opinion is given credibility, we also now have a Court that feels free to render opinions without basis either in law enacted by the legislature, and without basis in prior precedent established by the Courts, and without basis in Common Law. Obviously those who complained about "Activist Judges" just meant "Activist on the wrong side." (?) The very real bucket of worms opened here is that entering a person's home without announcement and identification and immediate presenting of evidence of a warrant opens the plausibility of a plea of self defense against "unknown persons entering by force." This decision may kill a lot of cops, if the police don't understand what it really means - or may leave citizens much more vulnerable to forcible entry by criminals using police disguise, as is seemingly a rather big problem in some places. John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Knock, knock - Guess Who? From: mrdux Date: 16 Jun 06 - 02:10 AM I don't think it's so much about "legal vs illegal" as a technicality as it is another skirmish in the ongoing struggle between (over)zealous law enforcement and personal privacy. The supreme court held in 1914 that, in order to deter police overzealousness, evidence seized in violation of the fourth amendment without a warrant must be excluded from use in federal courts. The rule was applied to state court prosecutions in 1961. Law enforcement and prosecutors and conservative legal analysts have hated the rule ever since, and have argued that exclusion of the illegally seized evidence isn't a proper remedy. Personal privacy lost this round. Today's decision is, in essence, a determination by the new majority that this kind of illegality -- and there was no question that the police acted illegally in failing to knock and announce before entering -- does not need to be deterred: so long as there's a warrant, everything's o.k. Scalia's suggestion that filing civil lawsuits against cops is likely to deter them from anything is somewhere between appallingly cynical and downright ludicrous: it simply doesn't happen. Civil rights cases are expensive to pursue, and, given the prevailing social climate, difficult to win (and lots of good and committed lawyers out there simply won't do these kinds of cases any more, or at least not very often, for just those reasons). And in those rare cases that are won, only in the most extreme cases of egregious misconduct do the cops themselves ever receive any sanction. Not much of a deterrent. In short, one more right, backhandedly acknowledged, with no real remedy for its violation. I think all of the things in John's bucket of worms are likely to be the unfortunate results. If there's any comfort in the decision, it's Scalia's acknowledgment that evidence illegally seized without a warrant is still subject to exclusion. "Until a valid warrant has issued, citizens are entitled to shield 'their persons, houses, papers, and effects,' U. S. Const., Amdt. 4, from the government's scrutiny. Exclusion of the evidence obtained by a warrantless search vindicates that entitlement." I guess that's something, coming from Scalia. michael |
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Subject: RE: BS: Knock, knock - Guess Who? From: GUEST Date: 16 Jun 06 - 10:44 AM A: knock, knock B: who's there? A: interrupting cow B: interru A: mooooo ! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Knock, knock - Guess Who? From: katlaughing Date: 16 Jun 06 - 10:55 AM Thanks, JohninKS and mrdux. Good to read your take on it. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Knock, knock - Guess Who? From: Wolfgang Date: 16 Jun 06 - 03:32 PM The musical angle: The knock-on-the-door-in-the-night squad Wolfgang |
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Subject: RE: BS: Knock, knock - Guess Who? From: JohnInKansas Date: 16 Jun 06 - 03:50 PM Anyone interested in the full Court decision can download it at 2005 TERM OPINIONS. This decision is "65 06/15/06 04-1360 Hudson v. Michigan." The target is a .pdf, so you can right click and save target for leisurely reading. The download is 421 KB, and is 51 pages, so it will take some time to read it all. I suggest saving if you expect to spend some time on it. An interesting technological marvel is found at the bottom of page 31, in the Dissent by Justice Brewer. A citation for an extra-legal comment is given. It is not apparent from the document, but the URL is a link, and if you click on it, as I did accidentally while trying to copy the URL, you are offered the option of opening as .pdf or .htm. I chose .pdf, and found the article "interesting," so I clicked the "save icon" in the .pdf. It informed me that the article had been saved – but gave no indication where the f**k it put it. I found it later, appended to the original Decision.pdf, making it now a 470 KB 52 page .pdf. Very handy, but quite puzzling at a first encounter; and it makes one wonder how many other links are in the Decision… The linked (and in my case appended) article can be seen separately (html) at R. Balko, Cato Institute, Apr 6, 2006, and although published prior to the decision, it gives a "readable" and much briefer outline of objections to the eventual decision of the Court, well worth reading if you just want to see what all the fuss is about. John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Knock, knock - Guess Who? From: katlaughing Date: 16 Jun 06 - 04:41 PM Thanks, Wolfgang. JohninKS, I'll have plenty to read this weekend! Thanks, but I do think you meant Breyer.:-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Knock, knock - Guess Who? From: JohnInKansas Date: 16 Jun 06 - 05:48 PM kat- Correct of course. It was Breyer. The links I was setting up apparently distracted me from that particular typo. Ordinarily I'd copy and paste any such reference, just because of the cat drool on my keyboard; but the .pdf didn't lend itself to my usual method. Apologies to Justice Breyer, of course. John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Knock, knock - Guess Who? From: katlaughing Date: 16 Jun 06 - 07:33 PM LOL...cat drool on yer keyboard, John?! Eeewwww! I figured it was the durn ol' pdf's fault all the time. For a minute there ya had me going, though...wondered if I'd missed someone new or we had some home brew going on in the Court.:-) I was pretty sure ya meant the ice cream feller, though. Thanks! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Knock, knock - Guess Who? From: kendall Date: 17 Jun 06 - 07:15 AM We tend to blame the courts for all those bad guys running around free, but it's cases such as Mapp v Ohio that caused the crack down which gave the bad guys such an advantage. Blame the incompetent cop for not understanding the bill of rights. The 4th amendment is crystal clear about search and siezure. If the cops have a warrant they should be able to enter without knocking. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Knock, knock - Guess Who? From: mrdux Date: 17 Jun 06 - 03:47 PM Kendall -- The government has been arguing that there shouldn't be a "knock-and-announce" rule -- and that it shouldn't apply if the cops have a warrant -- for a long time. And, when they do have a warrant, there is a case to be made for it. But even Scalia, in the recent case, noted that "The common-law principle that law enforcement officers must announce their presence and provide residents an opportunity to open the door is an ancient one," and it was written into federal statutes in 1917. The Supreme Court decided that the "knock-and-announce" rule was required by the Fourth (and Fourtheenth) Amendments only as recently as 1995 (Wilson v. Arkansas). In practice, it rarely mattered. There are so many exceptions to the rule that any cop with two brain cells could figure out the right things to say to get around it. Things like the cops had a "reasonable suspicion" (not a very high standard) that, for example, "circumstances presen[t] a threat of physical violence," or there is "reason to believe that evidence would likely be destroyed if advance notice were given," or knocking and announcing would be "futile." The Hudson case dealt with one of those rare instances in which the cops, for whatever reason, couldn't pull it together, so everyone -- including the State of Michigan -- agreed that the rule was violated and that the evidence was illegally seized. The only question was what to do about it. The usual remedy for the illegal seizure of evidence to keep the evidence that was illegally seized out of court (Weeks v. US (1917) and Mapp v. Ohio (1961)), which is a remedy law enforcement understands and it actually does deter police lawlessness. The Court decided the exclusion of the evidence is no longer a remedy for a violation of the "knock-and-announce" rule, which essentially eviscerates the rule. My concern is not so much with the dismantling of the rule -- which, I think, will have a relatively small impact -- but with the ease with which the Court reversed itself on the logstanding rule that illegal searches usually require the evidence to be suppressed, and the serious absence of legal - as opposed to policy or political-- reasoning that went into the decision. That doesn't bode well for future decisions. michael. |
