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Supreme Court: 5 Constitution: 0
The Constitution does not require the government to forfeit evidence gathered through illegal "no knock" searches, a majority of the Supreme Court has ruled.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violate, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probably cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. 4th Amendment to the Constitution.
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Court Eases 'No Knock' Search Ban
Illegally Collected Evidence Allowed
By Charles Lane Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, June 16, 2006
The Constitution does not require the government to forfeit evidence gathered through illegal "no knock" searches, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday, in a far-reaching ruling that could encourage police with search warrants to conduct more aggressive raids.
The 5 to 4 decision broke with the court's modern tradition of enforcing constitutional limitations on police investigations by keeping improperly obtained evidence out of court. The "exclusionary rule" has been imposed to protect a series of rights, such as the right to remain silent in police custody and the right against warrantless searches.
But the broadly worded majority opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., suggested that the nation has moved into a new era of improved policing in which such strong medicine may no longer be justified.
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At issue in yesterday's case, Hudson v. Michigan , No. 04-1360, was the "knock and announce" rule, which has deep roots in Anglo American law. In 1995, the court made it part of what defines a "reasonable search" under the Fourth Amendment, without saying how it should be enforced.
But most federal and state lower courts to consider the matter have ruled that it should be enforced through an "exclusionary rule," along with the rest of the Fourth Amendment.
Before yesterday's decision, police executing a search warrant in most jurisdictions had to worry that they might lose a case if they did not first knock on the door, announce themselves and wait a reasonable time for a response before forcing their way in.
Now, unless state law says otherwise, the most they would face is administrative discipline or a lawsuit for damages.
Civil liberties groups and defense lawyers had argued to the court that those deterrents are far too weak to enforce the "knock and announce" rule, which, they argued, is often all that stands between an innocent citizen and an errant SWAT team.
That position was urged on the Supreme Court by attorneys for Booker T. Hudson Jr., a Michigan man convicted of drug possession after police found crack cocaine in his pockets during a 1998 no-knock raid that the state admitted was unlawful.
But Michigan's Supreme Court was one of the few lower courts to reject an exclusionary rule for "knock and announce" violations. Hudson's conviction was upheld, and he appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Scalia's opinion focused on the guilty defendants who go free when otherwise valid evidence is thrown out of court. He concluded that that "social cost" is too high in relation to whatever additional privacy protection residents get from the "knock and announce" rule.
"Resort to the massive remedy of suppression of evidence of guilt is unjustified," Scalia wrote.
Scalia argued that the law enforcement landscape has changed dramatically since 1961, when the Supreme Court first imposed an exclusionary rule on the states to protect against warrantless searches. Today's police are more professional than those of 45 years ago, he observed, and there is "increasing evidence that police forces across the United States take the constitutional rights of citizens seriously."
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That line of reasoning prompted a 30-page dissenting opinion from Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who disputed Scalia's upbeat view of modern policing and argued that lawsuits and police discipline have already proved inadequate to punish and deter "knock and announce" violations.
"Today's opinion," Breyer wrote in dissent, "weakens, perhaps destroys, much of the practical value of the Constitution's knock-and-announce protection." Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined Breyer....
"The majority's 'substantial social costs' argument is an argument against the Fourth Amendment's exclusionary principle itself," Breyer wrote. "And it is an argument that this Court, until now, has consistently rejected." ...
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Whistle-blowing Is Out
The majority of the Supreme Court has decided that government policy outweighs the public's right to know about illegal government actions.
Justices Souter, Ginsberg, Stevens and Bryer were the minority, finding ethics more important than policy.
"But I would hold that private and public interests in addressing official wrongdoing and threats to health and safety can outweigh the government's stake in the efficient implementation of policy, and when they do public employees who speak on these matters in the course of their duties should be eligible to claim First Amendment protection." Justice Souter in dissent. opinion
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http://zfacts.com/p/389.html | 01/18/12 07:19 GMT
Modified: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 03:34:58 GMT
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