It does make one wonder: is there any domestic situation that Conservatives wouldn't solve with either a SWAT Team or a firearm?

-Dave Adams-

I don't see a conflict here. The police would never come to the house of a law-abiding gun owner, except maybe for coffee or to solicit for the benefit fund. Its just like wire taps. Law abiding citizens have nothing to fear from the government listening in on their conversations. And torture. Only terrorists have to worry about that. So what is the issue?

Let me tell you all a little story about the way police conduct raids. I think I read this in the Philadelphia Inquirer or someplace, I can't remember. It was a legit story.

The drug cops had an informant they were paying for tips. He was, like most informants, ratting on anybody in order to get paid. He spotted this house that looked it was empty and told the cops the owner was a big drug dealer or something.

Problem was the house wasn't empty. The owner had a messy divorce and the wife got the furniture. He was living in an empty house.

So the cops bust down the door, the owner makes a "suspicious move", and they shoot him.

They ransack the house while he's lying there in a pool of blood for half an hour with no medical assistance or anything.

But he's conscious, unbeknownst to the cops.

They suddenly realize that they've hit the wrong place on a bad tip and shot an innocent civilian.

They now discuss the merits of FINISHING HIM OFF to cover up the bad raid.

The ONLY reason they didn't do it is because there were FIVE JURISDICTIONS in on the raid and they didn't think they could cover it up...

The guy hears all this.

This is how your big city police forces operate, folks.

Yes, they kill innocent civilians and then cover their butts.

Go look up the LA gang squad trials.

What the Supreme Court did was get more civilians killed over the next X years.

Alright, how about this:

"Today, the rightwing majority removed the only significant disincentive preventing police from entering homes without warning."

Other than the exclusionary rule, what else protects you from having your door kicked in?

The threat of liability? Right, like any jury will award damages against cops. They'll always testify that there was suspicious activity/suspicion of drugs/some other reason for them to knock down your door and blow you away.

"A minor infraction of the Fourth Amendment?" Oy. It's attitudes like this that are allowing the government to take away our rights and freedoms, bit by bit. What you're really saying here is, "it's okay for the government to break its own rules, to catch a criminal." It's not that far a leap from that statement to "it's okay to torture people or hold people indefinitely without charges or access to lawyers in order to catch terrorists."

Also, remember that when you're talking about "criminals," in 80 percent of cases you're talking about nonviolent drug offenders. Just wanted to throw that out there.

I don't think it'll present much of a tangle for juries at all. Check out the sad case of Cory Maye, currently on death row in Mississippi for shooting a cop in just such a situation.

I see what you're saying. The exclusionary rule IS severe. But it's supposed to be that way, to give the government the strongest possible incentive to play by the rules.

Madison idea! How true. You came 219 years too late. You could have expedited the work and greatly pruned the Constitution done in Philadelphisa in 1787, and the writing of the Bill of Rights in 1789. In the time saved, the delegates could have worked on torture techniques.

"The government can just be trusted" 'nuff said.

I did a quick search, but couldn't find anything online regarding the "No Crime Day" in Detroit, held in the mid 1990's. Isiah Thomas, the Pistons guard, reprised his idea from his days in Chicago, in which criminals were asked to "abstain from crime". No shit.

Those that have spent any time in the city are familiar with the General Tire billboards, which have odometer like devices that record US car production for the year. The murder rate was such that a local talk radio station sponsored its own billboard, with the image of a handgun and an odometer tallying "Murders to Date".

On the Saturday that was chosen for "No Crime Day", there were something like 12 killings, including a police officer that was killed by a man in his 60's or 70's. The man lived in the upper flat of a duplex, and someone had broken into the lower flat. He called the police, and some time later, after the intruders had left, the cops arrived, and the old man thought the steps he heard on his stair were the returning burglars. He pointed his revolver around the corner and fired, hitting his target that he had not even seen.

So yes, we don't need to wait to see what the outcome of this new SCOTUS decision will be.

In Dekalb county Georgia some years ago a paramilitary wing of the Dekalb Police executed a search warrant at 4:00 AM in the 'projects.' They knocked, shouted, 'Police!' and immediatebly began knocking the door in. The resident woke to the sound of his door being battered and fired a handgun through the door. The police returned fire by firing blindly through a window and killed the resident's young son. He was charged with manslaughter for causing the police to kill his son.

The 4th Amendment balances two risks.
1) A criminal may go free.
2) The government may become tyranny.

Which would you rather risk? When times are easy there is perhaps not much of a risk of tyranny, but especially now, the risk is very high. If the executive can simply declare a war situation, all bets are off without Constitutional protections.

Well, to give them some creidt, they haven't started killing their own adulteress daughters yet.

For the record the "Castle Doctrine" is old and based on English Common Law. The Florida law, which is called the "Stand Your Ground Law", is a result of the NRA's attempt to expand definitions of old laws concerning "A man's home is his castle."

see:
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/sebok/20050502.html

Aren't conservatives fun! Haidtha, USA ...God help us all.

The key word is "yet".

What happens when a majority decides that gays are criminal, or that your particular religious beliefs, are contrary to the wishes of patriotic duty.

Maybe the quakers Anti war preaching activities are declared unlawful. Do you think the police will hesitate kicking down those doors, delivering those people to trial and scourging.

How about someone who decides he not going to bow down, before the flag? Feed them to the lions? After they kick down the door, scaring your wife and kids at 3AM.

Heck it works in Iraq why not here at home. Cindy Sheehan better go underground. But hey, they have uniforms on, Or they pulled you over because you saw a flashing light.

How easy it would be to remove dissidents. Was it really the police? Or a paramilitary group pretending to be police? Can you see the News release, "Neighbors report police raid and suspects arrested. Funny thing though, never heard from that family again.

See the pattern, the NEW AMERICAN REICH RIGHTWING CONTROL (NARC) Open season on anyone not strictly obeying the commands of the current government.
Ask Central America, how they dealt with American backed death squads.

Give an inch and they'll think their rulers

Er, I think I know this one. Evidence obtained from an illegal search is inadmissible. So if they enter illegally, the evidence can't be used. Simple as that.

Your brackets are defective and deceptive. I never said the Fourth Amendment serves primarily to protect the guilty. I said the exclusionary rule has this effect. I have also acknowledged that we may have to pay that price in order to protect a free society in some cases. My point is just that suppressing evidence is not and should not be required in all cases.

Maybe I should clarify. If law enforcement enters without knocking and find incriminating evidence, the Supremes say that evidence can be used used despite an "illegal" entry.
My question is that since law enforcement committed a crime
1) Can law enforcement be charged with a crime?
2) If the prosecutors don't charge the law enforcement officials, can't the defense lawyers point out that the prosecutors are eagar participants in a crime
3) If law enforcement is charged with a crime (illegal entry), wouldn't law enforcement be hesitant to admit to a crime on the stand and refuse to testify?
I'm just wondering what the fine print of the Supreme Court decision will mean in an actual court of law.
I mean, I was set to order wine from every state in the union when the Supreme Court said shipping wine across state borders was
legal until the fine print statements came out, and only a small number of states actually were involved (not mine).

I would say exclusion has the direct effect of protecting the accused, but an indirect effect of protecting the innocent.

Certainly its intent, another way of saying its primary use, is to protect the innocent from violations of the 4th Amendment.

There is obviously a distinction between a search without a vaild warrant, and a warranted search badly executed. This is a slippery slope and needs careful monitoring. Good-faith exceptions can go too far, for example if there is a valid warrant and the search is of a different person than specified.

In this example it seems on its face to be OK for evidence discovered through error to be be accepted, but it invites deliberate error. The point of announcing a search is to distinguish it from a home invasion, so the "Castle Home" issue does arise.

I feel the apparent advantage to minimizing the announcement (through instant entry) is trivial. For any serious criminal enterprise the situation is hard to arrange in the first place. The arrival of police prior to search will be noticed so any hiding or destrucition of eveidence will have occurred already. It is only unwary low-level criminals such as private drug users that aren't on the lookout.

The value to society of allowing inadequate announcement is not significant but the risk of blurring the definition of proper search is.

There is a big difference between saying the the knock and wait rule is "unclear" and saying it no longer exists. Scalia did not say that Detroit police satisfied the rule, after all. He admitted they violated the rule (as did the DA and trial judge), then said the penalty should not apply. In short, he destroyed the rule by saying that evidence is still be admissible even when it is violated. If a rule carries no penalty, is it still a rule?

Here's how Scalia sums it up: "...ignoring knock-and-announce can realistically be expected to achieve nothing but the prevention of evidence destruction and avoidance of life-threatening resistance..."

In other words, there is no social price to be paid for ignoring the rule, so the rule has no meaning -- and should not be enforced.

Note too, how Scalia seeks to caste the exclusionary rule as appropriate only in cases in which police act "illegally." Which he effectively limits to cases in which police don't have a warrant. Again, this effectively erases the rule. It amounts to an "anything goes" rule for police who have a warrant.

So, your "unclear" rule just became a non-rule. It no longer exists.

Internal discipline (a joke) and civil rights suits (expensive and lengthy) are fine and dandy, except for one little problem: they don't affect your criminal trial. Moreover, now that Scalia has proclaimed that a failure to adhere to the rule constitutes only a nominal violation of the 4th Amendment, how is one supposed to proceed in their civil rights suit?

The practical reality is that while internal discipline and civil suits might be attractive alternatives for other forms of police misconduct, the only way to enforce this particular rule is through the rule of exclusion.

Just like Miranda, which may be next in the new Court's crosshairs.

Agreed that the rule provides some indirect protection to the rule of law and thus to all citizens.

Agreed on the need for careful monitoring and not allowing "good faith" exceptions to allow dumbing down of the police to permit erroneous searches.

Agreed completely that the advantage to minimizing announcement is relatively trivial. That's probably why everybody agreed that the search was illegal.

But it's also fair to point out the relative protection to privacy through extending the entry time for a few seconds in also trivial and the added deterrence of excluding the evidence pretty unlikely.

Anyway, I didn't come here to carry water for Scalia, for God's sake. You may very well have the balance right in this case and the dissenters in Hudson may well be right.

Yup, that's how it will go.

And the primary "beneficiaries" of this new policy will be minority civilians being shot as a result of more "no knock" raids.

"If you say police can break the rules because it's a violent crime, then they will break the rules every time there's a violent crime."

Correct.

And for the record, the police consider ANY drug crime to be a "violent crime" - because drug dealers carry guns.

Where Federal sentencing guidelines require additional penalties because a firearm is used in the commission of a "violent crime", the Fed prosecutors will routinely tack on addition charges of "possession/use of a gun in the commission of a violent crime" if the person involved was carrying or even had a weapon anywhere in the house or vehicle being searched.

As I recall, one of the Circuit Courts ruled that the weapon had to be actually in the possession of OR actually used by the criminal in order to qualify for these enhancements. The usual charges were worded "possession AND use of a firearm." The court ruled that BOTH aspects had to be proved when that was the wording - otherwise the wording would have to be "possession OR use". And "possession" alone would rule out the "violent crime" enhancements. So the issue was significant for the cops and the courts.

I had a cellie who was appealing a murder conviction. He and an associate had been accused of executing a hit on an informant. He denied his involvement to me - and I believed him (not that I cared one way or the other, as I told him - but he seemed to care that I believe him.)

However, there was no evidence that HE had USED the weapon involved. His associate had already walked on the primary case due to lack of evidence, so the Feds said that either he plead guilty to the case in exchange for a twelve years sentence (including time spent in the state system) or they would bring up a dozen other charges and try to get him a maximum sentence. He took the deal because they included his associate in the deal and because he knew the Feds might well win on some other charges. So he received a twelve-year Federal sentence which included the four years or so he'd already spent in state prison for the case. So when I met him he had about seven or eight years to go. At that time I had about four, I think.

But he then learned of the Circuit Court's ruling. So he appealed on that basis - and got the five years enhancement for "possession and use of a firearm" knocked off his sentence. He got out before I did.

The bottom line: the cops and the prosecutors will bend ANY rules they have to in order to get the maximum sentences for the maximum number of cases they can prosecute. They do this to maximize the number of offenders in prison and to maximize their careers. It has NOTHING to do with "combating crime".

It's that simple.

Funny.

But don't be too subtle about it - a few people took you seriously.

But Scalia has just written (in the Majority decision) that exclusion of the evidence is too extreme a punishment for the misdeeds of law enforcement in this case. That is the core of the decision.

The search, as I understand it, is still illegal, but the State can still use the evidence found.

The reason the exclusionary rule was adopted was that a century of experience showed the fourth amendment was not effective without a significant and absolute penalty connected.

The exclusionary rule is quite an extreme penalty. For the last century the opinion has been that the absence of that penalty was even more extreme. We will again find that the be true.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think the Constitution concerns itself at all with the needs of law enforcement.  The whole purpose of the Constitution, and most especially of the Bill of Rights, is to limit the rights of the government, not to enhance those rights.  In the real world the government has absolute rights to everything except where the Constitution limits those rights.  And, the Constitution is very specific and clear about what limitations it puts on those rights.

Hoppy in Sacramento

I am amazed at the speed with which criminals are able to take advantage of our legal system. When I read that the police could now use evidence gathered using a "no knock" policy I knew that "no knock" or "quick knock" would quickly become SOP for law enforcement. Immediately I had this image in my mind of a home invader yelling "Police!" while kicking in the door.