Honey, I’m home!
Supremes to Victims of Wrong House Searches: Deal With It
The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the police can break into your home, rouse you from sleep, hold you naked at gunpoint, and—even if you’re completely innocent—you have no recourse, so long as the warrant was valid.
It was an 8-1 decision.
“Valid warrants will issue to search the innocent and people like Rettele and Sadler unfortunately bear the cost,” the justices said in the unsigned opinion. “The resulting frustration, embarrassment and humiliation may be real, as was true here. When officers execute a valid warrant and act in a reasonable manner to protect themselves from harm, however, the 4th Amendment is not violated,” the court concluded.
The police apparently didn’t know that the suspects they were after no longer lived at the residence, and didn’t bother to check to see that the house had been recently purchased by new owners several months earlier. The new owners were white. The suspects the police were looking for were black. And they were wanted not on charges related to violent crime, but for identity fraud.
The Hudson case basically gave police carte blanche to violate the knock-and-announce rule without having to worry about application of the exclusionary rule. This case says that innocent civilians should have to bear the humiliating, terrifying, and possibly dangerous costs of mistakes made by agents of the state. It’s a horrible ruling.
A ruling every suing lawyer’s boat builder will love.
The essence of a fascist state is putting the claimed rights of that state above those of the individuals comprising it. Neither the US nor the UK are fascist states but rulings like this and like some laws enacted earlier in the UK shift them ever closer. And, sadly, too many of the population swallow the specious line about necessity in dangerous times.
…Honey, go back to sleep. It’s just a burglar. What a relief… I was frightened it might be the police.
It is a sad state of affairs when you are more afraid of the police than the criminals. Maybe we could pay the mob to protect us.
Sigh, I want our republic back. . .
OK, I researched this because it just sounded way too outlandish to be true. The devil is in the details:
The court, in a 5-4 decision, concluded that it was not. Justice Antonin Scalia, in writing the opinion, noted the difference between a situation in which evidence is seized without a warrant and a situation like appellant’s when the police came with a warrant. He wrote, too, that other remedies, like civil suits and disciplinary actions within police departments, are in place to counter lapses like those committed by the Detroit officers.
So, they can barge in without knocking if they have a warrant, but if they screw up they can (and will) be sued in civil court.
Two words: Denny Crane.
Welp – sighing ain’t gonna help you get it back natefrog.
I think they’re evaluating the case wrong. The court didn’t rule on whether this gives a back door around the exclusionary rule. I think that backdoor already exists. They’ve said the victims have no recourse for compensation. But can they be thrown in jail if the police find something there while they have a warrant for another house? My guess is yes. since good faith actions are already valid.
#6 And have been for a long time.
Two more words: Geoffrey Fieger.
It’s still unsettling; maybe it isn’t a great leap away from the 4th amendment but I can’t help but feel at least yet another step or two were stumbled in that direction.
Attention I.D. thieves in Detroit: It takes several months for the Detroit Police to find you. You have plenty of time to set up shop, do your dirty work, and move before they come for you. Best of all, they’ll bust the next occupants of your old house, get sued for $$$, and end up without enough $$$ to come for you in the future. Best of all, it’ll take even longer to find you next time… assuming they ever do.
The future’s so bright, you gotta wear shades.
SEE!
i told you! the torture of foreign suspects is just a trial balloon — it won’t be long before the 4th amendment is in tatters, and once that’s gone, then there’s legal precedent to rid the state of the rest.
and yes, that’s means they’re coming for your guns, sparky.
so [funny|sad] how people think they can pick and choose which constitutional amendments they can support.
#11. The 4th Amendment has been in tatters ever since Reagan appointees to the USSCT started enacting all kinds of “exceptions” to the warrant and probable cause requirements from the 80s onward.
this case is just a blip that gets more sympathy because the victims were innocent bystanders instead of guys with drugs in their house. the battle cry of those who want to dismantle the 4th Amendment is “technicality! the guilty will go free!”
but if we are to truly preserve our rights under the constitution, they must protect both the guilty and the innocent.
but if we are to truly preserve our rights under the constitution, they must protect both the guilty and the innocent.
Comment by doug — 5/23/2007 @ 7:06 am
Very true.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.
Thomas Jefferson
J/P=?
Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were great men. Were are their counterparts today? America doesn’t need a revival it needs a new Enlightenment.
Hey so cool.. The pervert voyeur in me is so excited. Where do I sign up to be a idenity theft cop.
#15: Their counterparts are likely a) Being censored/oppressed by Fox News, b) in Gitmo…
Probably Gitmo…
Did you notice the reason the SC gave for this? The police are afraid *for their own safety*. The giant armored goons with the machine pistols are afraid someone might hit them. So, they’ll chain your penis to your feet. Anything goes if you’re afraid.
And EVERYONE is afraid. The most chickenshit culture this planet has ever spawned. And the safest, that’s the galling thing.
I swear, I’ll build steel I-beams into my doorframe, with a two inch thick counterweighted door with bolts that would make a banker say, “Isn’t that a little much?” And a little jig in the hallway so they can’t get a run up to the door. I’d like a little warning before they smash the place and hold the kids at gunpoint because one of them “stole” some Ludicris tracks from Limewire. And I suppose shooting them is justified if they make a sudden move and an officer might feel afraid.
The “shoot the civilians to keep yourself safe” idea is supposed to be a military concept! Police are not soldiers, and they are expendible if it comes down to possibly innocent civilians being hurt. If they don’t like it, they can join Blackwater where they shoot civilians for fun and profit. Cops aren’t soldiers. The police are not a military unit. Real madness gets foothold when words loose their meaning, and the word “Cop” now equating to “Soldier in Occupied America” is really, REALLY bad. For you. A scared soldier will shoot anything.
The Republicans are handing the Whitehouse to the Dems next year. They will also widen their hold on Congress. It will take a few years and a couple of Justices, but things will swing way back the other way because of the silly excesses from the last 6 years.
It is a sad day to be a Republican.
Don
#19 – It is a sad day to be a Republican.
I’m straining my brain here… when is it not a sad day to be a Republican?
Land of the free? What BS !!!
18. catballer,
I really liked the ‘armored door’ idea to give you time to get rid of the evidence but you should give credit to the people who invented the idea: motorcycle gangs.
On one thing you are dead wrong:
Cops don’t get paid to die on the job. Really! If it looks like they’re gonna get themselves killed, that’s when the military gets called in. They’re the ones who get paid to take that particular risk, God Bless ‘Em All.
On the other hand, you’re right about using the military to cause great harm to civilians. Eventually, the military goes away but the cops still gotta be there after the cordite clears.