Happy 231st Birthday, America!

[greybeta]

On this 231st birthday of the United States of America, I have to ask a question. What's the big deal about the following Supreme Court ruling?
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/06/16/MNGKKJFD5U1.DTL

Comments

[ink_13]

This is a further erosion of the Fourth Amendment. I hadn't heard of this yet, and I'm a little surprised.

The article amuses me.

In a 5-4 ruling, with new Justice Samuel Alito casting a crucial vote, the court said police intrusions on residential privacy are adequately restrained by several factors -- including "the increasing professionalism of police forces" -- without suppressing evidence that is obtained with a search warrant.

)(emphasis mine)
HAHAHA

[visgoth.livejournal.com]

Part of the reason police announce themselves when serving a warrant is to give the person inside time to comprehend that police are at the door.

You can find many cases where police served warrants on the wrong place, resulting in injuries, deaths, destruction of private property, and assorted legal hassels.

Personally, I'd rather let the occassional drug dealer try to flush his stock (a gambit which seldom works) than get into a gunfight because I assume that someone kicking down my door is a Bad Guy rather than a cop who has the wrong address. If I get a knock on the door and police announce themselves, I'll probably look out the window for uniforms, and open the door to find out what is going on. If my door is suddenly kicked in, I will almost certainly go for one of my guns. The police have no reason to be kicking in my door, so it is natural for me to assume that anybody who does has nefarious intent.

The decision says that even though the cops violated the terms of the warrant, the evidence is admissible. That means the police no longer have any legaly binding reason to wait before breaking down the door. They can violate the wait terms of warrants on a whim. That provision of the warrant may as well not even exist. In fact, many police will feel it is necessary to break in immediately to prevent Bad Guys from having time to prepare a defense. Of course, this also makes it more likely an innocent will try to defend himself, which will result in increased law-abiding citizen vs. police violence.

The decision also makes a VERY dangerous assumption. At one point it says that police are professional enough that they will make the right decision. If I accept that as true, what assurance am I offered that police in 30 years will have the same level of professionalism? None. None whatsoever. That's why we have laws restricting the behavior of police, to impose a certain level of behavior upon them because it cannot be trusted that the restraint they practice today will be the restraint they practice tomorrow.

As a closing note to this - I have several friends who are police officers. I believe most police join the force because they want to make their fellow citizens' lives better. I am grateful and humbled that they put on that uniform and step out into the world willing to fight and die for my safety. But I also know they are human and falible, just as I am, and they need rules to inform, assist, and temper their judgment and exercise of power.

[gentleeleos.livejournal.com]

I could give you a long, long explanation of why this ruling is bad. And you know I'm a lawyer, so you know I know what is bad law. But, today, I'm going to keep it short:

This ruling is bad because it carves out yet another exception to the fourth amendment's protection against unlawful search and seizure. At this point, there are so many exceptions to the rule that we might as well do away with the Fourth Amendment altogether. Search and seizure cases were my bread-and-butter as a criminal defense attorney, and I know just how futile it is to get evidence thrown out of court anymore. It's gotten worse and worse over the last ten years that I have been practicing law.

This ruling makes me sad. It takes us one step closer to a police state. When the police get to just bust in to any home they like for whatever reason they like.

And there are people out there, maybe one of them is you, who are thinking so what? This isn't me. I don't have anything to hide from the cops.

This is a dangerous line of thought. Because each encroachment into the Constitutional protections we have makes it easier to encroach further and further until we eliminate the protection altogether. Remember, when a right gets taken away from a "criminal" or a "bad guy" it also gets taken away from you and me and everyone else in the country.

*blink*

So much for keeping it short, eh?

[purplkat.livejournal.com]

I was gonna say, do you mean aside from the fact that it erodes away yet again at our Constitutional rights?

Ben Franklin oh so famously said that those who would give up a bit of liberty for a bit of security deserve neither, and he was right.

[purplkat.livejournal.com]

There was a case I was following on the Straight Dope messageboard where the OP's 90 year old neighbor was shot to death by the police. As the case developed, it became clear that they had NO REASON to be at her house. They did a no-knock warrant, but had to dismantle her security bars before entering (she lived in a bad neighborhood), so she knew that SOMEONE was coming in, and thought it was thieves. She got a gun. They saw it. They shot her. Also, they shot each other and blamed those injuries on her.

Then they tried to cover it up by claiming that an informant told them that there was a drug dealer living there when A) there wasn't, B) there was no reason to think that there was, and C) the informant had done no such thing.

The whole thing was a total and utter mess. The cops are in trouble, the judge who rubber stamped the warrant without asking questions is in trouble, everyone is in trouble. But the fact is that the law basically allows what happened, even though it shouldn't have.

Until such a time as our justice system can be reformed to where these sorts of things don't happen, I don't like the idea of giving the police any more power than they have.

[purplkat.livejournal.com]

This is slightly tangental to the subject at hand, but rather interesting.

My fiance, Sam, is Mormon. He has actually come close to convincing other Mormons who are more devout than he is that they need to support gay marriage by this train of logic:

He explains that once you tie the ability to marry in this country to religion, which is basically what you are doing when you outlaw gay marriage, since the primary objections to it are religious, you open the door for other marriage rights to be tied to religion. And not just ANY religion, because there are plenty of people of faith who have no problem with gays -- no, the de-facto state religion of a certain brand of Christianity, that protestant/methodist/baptist thing that's so common here. And any Mormon has a whole slew of stories about people of those churches telling them they're going to hell. Heck, Sam has stories of the local church actually being encouraged by their pastor to fuck with the Mormons. So if gay marriage gets outlawed, who's to say temple marriage isn't next?

It's a powerful argument down the same lines as what you're discussing. Once you open the way for some people to be victimized by the law, there's no saying for certain that other people, maybe you, won't be included.

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

It redefines the way law enforcement can collect evidence, throwing into question individual privacy laws. I want to say I could give up a little privacy for security, but then I think of my home country and other countries in South America and realize that no, I can't.

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

Yes! This is exactly what I mean when I reference countries in South America: police state. It doesn't matter whether you have anything to hide or not. The rights of the individual are being eroded away. And that's a huge deal. And a damn shame.

[exrandu.livejournal.com]

God (and I don't use His name lightly) damn it! I can't swear enough about this!

Oh, my forefathers, where has your dream gone?
Another failed democracy,
Another light lost
To the misled ambitions of man.

Why is this bad? Its horrible! Even if I were, say, a reasonable supporter of the republic instead of an idealistic anarchist I would be able to see the problems with this ruling. This is the government wrapping our constitutional rights in bureaucracy. Layers obfuscating the rights of the common person, keeping our civil liberties wrapped tight in circumstances and the opinion of the judicial branch.