Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your Brain
Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your BrainOooooh, Snap! that's so YESTERDAY!
The police don't need to knock any more, thanks to today's ruling by the Q Continu....Uh, I mean SCROTUS...
4-4 tie with Scalitto throwing the deciding vote that will now allow the Gestapo to tap your door with their Warrant THEN kick it in. Used to be that any evidence seized in an improper search, i.e. smashing the door down w/o identifying themselves as the Gestapo, was dirty and inadmissable.
Now it's perfectly good, if they have a warrant, a minor detail I'm SURE Roberts and Scalitto will be working hard to rectify before year's end.
The OLD Gestapo used to carry a small metal disc, called a "Warrant Disc" that worked 24/7, no need to get a judge out of bed at 3AM and sell him on your "Probable Cause". Today's Gestapo will probably have those soon.
And when Jebbya gets to the Oval Orifice, I expext he will re-institute the old Feudal custom of "Droit de seigneur", too.... 
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In your comparison with the current SCOTUS. For anyone who wonders, what The Wheelman is ranting about...
Supreme Court upholds police evidence in searches without knocking
WASHINGTON (AP via USA Today) — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that police armed with a warrant can barge into homes and seize evidence even if they don't knock, a huge government victory that was decided by President Bush's new justices.
The 5-4 ruling signals the court's conservative shift following the departure of moderate Sandra Day O'Connor.
Dissenting justices predicted that police will now feel free to ignore previous court rulings that officers with search warrants must knock and announce themselves or run afoul of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches.
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, said Detroit police acknowledge violating that rule when they called out their presence at a man's door, failed to knock, then went inside three seconds to five seconds later. The court has endorsed longer waits, of 15 seconds to 20 seconds.
"Whether that preliminary misstep had occurred or not, the police would have executed the warrant they had obtained, and would have discovered the gun and drugs inside the house," Scalia wrote.
Suppressing evidence is too high of a penalty, Scalia said, for errors by police in failing to properly announce themselves.
As for myself, I'm unsurprised at this ruling. So much was lost on the criminal justice (emphasis on the word justice there) front back during Bush I. That's when the 4th Amendment began to be seriously undermined. Once that started, it wasn't so much of a slippery slope as a rocky precipice and the U.S. has gladly made the leap.
What my conservative friends will say..."Well if you're not doing anything wrong, then you shouldn't have anything to worry about!"
Oy.
...when I hear that.
What amazes me is that these are usually the same people who hold that their home is their "castle" and keep handguns and shotguns in easy reach all over the house.
Ask them if they implicitly trust in the Gestapo's ability to tell "745 Easy Street" from "747 Easy Street", or apartment "A" from apartment "K".
I usually tell them "Oh, so you have no problem with me going through your wallet right now? Why should it make any difference that I'm not a Cop, if your life is an open book?"
Round and Round it Goes...
