I first saw this thread when I was home for lunch. Went to the SCOTUS site, downloaded the opinion. Got home from work and began reading. I am aghast!
Wildalaska said:
Lot of door busting going down in the 1920s
Yeah, even though
Weeks said it was a no-no... Read on.
The Fourth amendment is essentially trashed. The only thing that has kept the police from simply bashing your door down, has been that the evidence would be suppressed - known since
Mapp as the exclusionary rule.
The Court is now saying that suppressing the evidence is too harsh a penalty. That criminal and/or civil charges would suffice to keep them knocking and announcing.
The problem is that very few criminal charges have ever been brought and none have been successfully prosecuted. Civil suit? Three or four people have gone that route and were awarded $1 for their trouble. So what other remedy is available? The answer is none.
The Court in
Mapp concluded that the only viable remedy was to deter police/prosecutorial misconduct by excluding the evidence entirely.
If there is no harsh penalty, what is gonna keep them from busting down the door?
There is no precedent for this ruling. On the contrary, there is ample precedent for knocking and announcing, going back almost a century, to 1914:
Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383 (1914). This was the case that formulated the exclusionary principle.
Weeks used
Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616 (1886). In this seminal Fourth Amendment case, decided 120 years ago, the Court wrote, in frequently quoted language, that the Fourth Amendment’s prohibitions apply:
"to all invasions on the part of the government and its employés of the sanctity of a man’s home and the privacies of life. It is not the breaking of his doors, and the rummaging of his drawers, that constitutes the essence of the offence; but it is the invasion of his indefeasible right of personal security, personal liberty and private property.” Id., at 630.
Shall we go back to English Common Law?
Semayne's Case (1603), the Court of King's Bench explained,
"the law [...] abhors the destruction or breaking of any house (which is for the habitation and safety of man) by which great damage and inconvenience might ensue to the party, when no default is in him." So it appears that part of the reason for knock-and-announce is for the prevention of destruction of private property! Researching this further reveals that the sanctity of the home and hearth were such, that the King's men would knock, announce themselves, their purpose and their authority. They were permitted entry only if denied. And upon warrant of the King, if no one was at home.
GoSlash, do you begin to see the 4th amendment violation? Moving on...
United States v. Calandara, 414 U.S. 338 (1974),"The purpose of the exclusionary rule is not to redress the injury to the privacy of the search victim." On the contrary, "the prime purpose of the rule, if not the sole one, is to deter future unlawful police conduct,"
United States v. Janis, 428 U.S. 433 (1976)
So now there is no deterrance to unlawful conduct. Which in and of itself, renders all warrants to be (for all practicable purposes) no-knock warrants. Sorry to say, this turns 120 years of constitutional precedent on its ear, as this ruling was taken directly from thin air.
