The Supreme Court of the United States ruled 5-4 [guess who voted which way!] in the Hudson v. Michigan case as to whether “evidence can be used against a defendant even when seized in violation of a long-standing rule requiring a knock on the door before executing a search warrant” reports the Washington Post.
The 5-4 decision, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, ran counter to previous decisions requiring suppression of evidence obtained in violation of the so-called “knock and announce” rule.
A little background on the case from WaPo:
Today’s case, Hudson v. Michigan, stemmed from a 1998 drug and weapons search, authorized by warrant, of a home in Detroit.
While the officers yelled, “Police, search warrant!” before opening the door, they chose not to knock, they said later, for fear of being shot on the way in.
Having acknowledged that they broke the rule required under the Fourth Amendment’s search and seizure protections, the question today was whether the evidence was then properly admitted at a trial that led to the conviction of Booker T. Hudson or whether it should have been suppressed under the “exclusionary rule” established by the Supreme Court to deter unlawful police conduct.
Just taking a quick read over the AP article and the WaPo one, the impact of the new starting lineup of the SCOTUS is front and center.
The case was decided: Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Kennedy for Michigan and in dissent: Breyer, Stevens, Souter and Ginsburg. The AP article states that now retired former Justice O’Connor was leaning towards ruling in favor of Hudson. The effects of the anti-privacy appointments of Roberts and Alito have only begun.
From what I can tell, this decision does not completely overrule the Fourth Amendment’s “knock and announce” rule, but it does give it a nice unannounced knock upside its head.
How many more cases like this one are coming up on the dockets to come in the long tenure of the 51-year-old Chief Justice Roberts. When will someone pull the reigns of the at the helm of the police state we live in? A police state, ironically, with less officers on the street, but with more leeway now to do as they please. Protesters gathered up by the hundreds. Critical Mass bikeriders dangerously corralled into orange plastic netting. Snatching up people first, asking questions later, if at all. With the extreme that is Guantanamo Bay looking more and more like it could be closer to a norm domestically.
Yes the police did have a warrant and yes there was evidence that was [previously illegally] collected. But doesn’t it just feel wrong? It did to me when I read the two articles. It’s a knock on the door, a technicality if you will. But a technicality still and this ruling narrowly circumvents it.
This case brings to mind Miranda rights. The whole “You have the right to remain silent…” schpeal we’ve all heard a bajillion times on cop shows and movies [and hopefully not on the receiving end]. You do not have to be notified of your rights unless they intend to interrogate you; you can be arrested without being read your rights as I assume those arrested en masse in orange plastic netting were. There are still plenty of people who do not know their basic rights. While it would be great to be able to have a 100% educational rate on one’s basic rights if one is arrested [I’ll save the hopes for a 100% voter turnout rate for another lifetime] it would be quite nice to know my most basic rights before interrogation.
Getting back to the case… Anybody over in Michigan follow this case through the appellate courts there before it hit the SCOTUS? And what are your initial reactions?
This is so disturbing on a number of levels, but what I find most telling is that the Majority didn’t lay out a test here.
It would seem to me that if we agreed that at times a “knock and announce” would be imprudent,( For example: evidence collected suggesting a violent and armed criminal, or require stealth such as a massive drug warehouse) that the court could have developed a test here. Say for example that there needs to be a showing to a judge that the officers life would directly be in danger, a standard reviewable by the courts that wouldn’t just be a blanket covering. For instance, barging in for a misdemeanor charge, or a person with no record and not believed to be armed and/or dangerous, would be illegal.
No, instead this court simply decided that in this case the “knock and announce” was unnecessary. Which is going to open a whole flood gate of additional legal claims, and may have made more work for the SC. More importantly though, it does signal perhaps a change in court philosophy, which we all expected, to put more power into the discretion of police officers and outside the review of the court system. This ruling is troubling indeed.
The Supreme Court’s decision removing protection for whistleblowers is grounds for impeachment. Anyone who voted to allow harrassment of whistleblowers is aiding and abetting high crimes and misdemeanors.
All we need is one whistleblower that witnessed a criminal act done by a US Govenment official to be harassed by a US Government superior, and we can start impeachment proceedings against the 5 SCOTUS judges that voted to allow harrassment of whistleblowers.
Those rusty holes you see are evidence of the corrosion of the Bill of Rights.
Two good analyses of the decision at Scutusblog.
Right . . . the cops will police & deter themselves. How many cities in this country have a citizen review board that its citizens are satisfied with? How many polive departments are actively resisting the establishment of one?
Our lives & rights now lie in Kennedy’s hands. Wish I could remember now where the article appeared a few years ago that portrayed him as a “pleaser.”
In other (horrific) legal news, a federal judge in NY ruled yesterday that “the government has wide latitude under immigration law to detain noncitizens on the basis of religion, race or national origin, and to hold them indefinitely without explanation.”
So the potential for lawsuits is going to keep cops in line? Yikes!
from Breyer’s dissent:
At least Scalia and the other neofascists are upfront about who they are and what they want. The one that makes me sickest of all is Kennedy, who votes to shred the Bill of Rights but then has to add a whiny little self-serving pile of steaming shit to try and ingratiate himself with anybody who still cares about civil and human rights. What a cowardly disgrace he is. He’s the first one I’d impeach.
I think at least some of the lack of fight against Alito had to do with sexism.
Back when I was tagged Judybrownibot for tirelessly (and annoyingly) trying to get blog readers to take action against Alito (call their congress critters, sign petitions) whole threads were often dismissive about the Alito issue.
Dismissive along the lines of “Abortion, not an issue the Democrats want to be attached to,” “Abortion, is a minority concern” (meaning only of concern to that “minority”: 50% of the country, women.)
Well folks, how do you like these “minority” first amendment rulings now?
There’s a price to be paid for any kind of bigotry, in that those willing to scapegoat any group, may next turn their obnoxious attention to you.
good stuff from there. the direct link to the post.
so, this prick was not only dealing cocaine to kids but he tried to get off on a technicality, taking it all the way to the Supreme Court AND LOST, eroding all our rights.
He’s a contestant for the asshole of the year award.
quite possibly the most depressing thing I’ve ever read in my life.
because it triggered a thought-rush of everything unspeakable they have already done with a nice heaping side of “what are these crazy phuckers going to do next”.
this guy’s case, it would have been another’s. The Court didn’t say it was ok to not knock. The wquestion before them was the remedy to the violation. As laid out above, what’s happening here is the beginning of an assault on the exclusionary rule. That’s what at stake here. The exclusionary rule is an important tool, not teh mere “technicality” that conservatives love to portray.
The real assholes in this case are 5 white men in black robes. Don’t blame the losers.
The case was decided: Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Kennedy
Oh boy. Just think, every year for quite possibly the rest of my life I get to watch a bunch of conservative Catholic males erode everything decent about this country. In about 5 years most people reading this blog will be seriopusly considering moving to Canada, particularly the women.
One wishes the Democrats would have at least made an effort at a filibuster.
Oooh, I forgot to add that since this case was started while O’Connor was there, it had to be re-argued so that Alito could take part in the lovely circle jerk.
I remember way back in 1970 when the Nixon regime was pushing hard for no-knock legislation that would have allowed law enforcement to break in to peoples residences so as not to give them time to destroy evidence. (Authoritarian loyalist John Mitchell led the charge on this for Nixon.)
This link here
is to an account of a Supreme’s ruling on this issue back in 1995.