Roberts-Alito Supreme Court Eviscerate Fourth Amendment

Law enforcement officials are no longer required to "knock and announce" before entering your home. The New York Times reports:

The 5-to-4 decision left uncertain the value of the "knock-and-announce" rule, which dates to 13th-century England as protection against illegal entry by the police into private homes.

The justices' lineup in this case, which upheld a Detroit man's conviction for drug possession, may become a familiar one as the court proceeds through its criminal-law docket. In addition to Justice Alito, those who joined the majority opinion by Justice Scalia were Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas and Anthony M. Kennedy. Justice Breyer's dissenting opinion was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The decision answered a question that the court had left open in 1995, when it held in a unanimous opinion by Justice Thomas that the traditional expectation that the police should knock and announce their presence was part of what made a search "reasonable" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The amendment bars unreasonable searches.

Justice Scalia said the knock-and-announce rule was designed to protect life, property and dignity by giving the homeowner time to respond to the knock and eliminating the need for the police to break down the door. But he said the rule has never protected "one's interest in preventing the government from seeing or taking evidence described in a warrant."

Throughout his opinion, Justice Scalia made clear his view that the right at issue was a minimal, even trivial, one — "the right not to be intruded upon in one's nightclothes," he said at one point — that could not hold its own when balanced against the "grave adverse consequences that exclusion of relevant incriminating evidence always entails."

The majority opinion was sufficiently dismissive of the exclusionary rule as to serve as an invitation to bring a direct challenge to the rule in a future case.

Justice Scalia surveyed changes in the legal landscape since 1961, when the court in the landmark case Mapp v. Ohio made the exclusionary rule binding on the states. Noting that the purpose of the exclusionary rule was to deter constitutional violations by making them costly for the prosecution, Justice Scalia said there was less need for deterrence today, when the police are better trained and when the ability to bring civil rights suits against the government has greatly expanded ...

The conditions that made deterrence necessary "in different contexts and long ago" no longer exist, Justice Scalia said, adding that a strict application of the exclusionary rule as envisioned by the court in 1961 "would be forcing the public today to pay for the sins and inadequacies of a legal regime that existed almost half a century ago."

It is rare to find Justice Scalia, a self-described "originalist," incorporating evolving conditions into his constitutional analysis. Almost always, when the court in a constitutional case takes account of changing conditions, the result is an expansion of constitutional rights, rather than, as Justice Scalia advocated in this case, a contraction.

With the Fourth Amendment gone, is the First Amendment next?

For a look at why the Supreme Courts decision is so dangerous consider the following:

Elderly Couple Hurt in Raid on Wrong House

The Associated Press
March 28, 2006

An unidentified elderly Horn Lake couple were hospitalized Thursday after police burst into their home thinking it housed a methamphetamine laboratory.

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San Antonio Police Department to probe storming of wrong house

By Jesse Bogan and Elaine Aradillas
Express-News Staff Writers
November 22, 2002

San Antonio police, who continued to apologize Thursday for storming the wrong Southwest Side duplex, said they'll meet next week to review the foul-up that sent an innocent man to a hospital with minor injuries.

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Man killed in police raid on wrong house

October 6, 2000

LEBANON, Tennessee (AP) -- A 61-year-old man was shot to death by police while his wife was handcuffed in another room during a drug raid on the wrong house.

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Five Die in "Wrong House" Raid

By Claire Wolfe
For the SacredBull News Service

PHOENIX -- Federal agents wearing black ski masks and looking for a bail jumper kicked in the front door of a house Sunday. The raid, which began as a case of mistaken identity, ended with five dead and three wounded, police said.

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Clarksville police apologize for raiding wrong home

By CHANTAL ESCOTO
The (Clarksville) Leaf-Chronicle

Clarksville Police Chief Mark Smith said he will offer two residents a written apology for officers' mistakenly raiding their home Friday night ... ''What justification can you give to kick a 54-year-old man who's down on the ground,'' Meeks said about Elliott, who is a Vietnam War veteran. ''All he saw was men in masks with rifles. He was terrified. Then to get knocked down and stomped. They picked him up like a suitcase. The Police Department said they acted in normal procedure, but that's not normal.''

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Yet Another "Wrong House"

A SWAT team seeking to serve an arrest warrant bashed in a window and a sliding door entering the wrong address.

According to a March 19, 1995, Associated Press story, the Oldsmar, Florida SWAT team broke into the home of 31-year-old Charles Inscor, knocking him from his bed and detaching him from a machine assisting his breathing, before realizing they had the wrong house.

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Police Raid Wrong House and Damage It

The Associated Press
June 16, 1991

A police antidrug squad overturned furniture, destroyed appliances and smashed a toilet into bits during a raid this week. Then the officers discovered that they had raided the wrong house.

The errant raid occurred Wednesday at the home of Lloyd Miner, a 33-year-old construction worker, who says officers hit him with blunt objects, possibly flashlights, to make him lie down. He was held in jail for about five hours.