Yesterday in the supreme court, a 5-4 vote approved that police could enter your home without announcing who they are, and use whatever they find after they enter into evidence. Before this ruling, cops had to tell you who they were before they could bash down your door. Scalia was the tie breaker, which is funny. The same group of people ruled on the whistle blower case, the opposite way. The Extreme Court seems to be highly concerned with corporate/government's rights, but not too concerned with the protections for citizens. How can it be ruled that whistleblowing is illegal, but then turn around and say something like supressing evidence of guilt is unjustified? Has Bush successfully packed the court or am I missing something?
This seems like another tie in to the intangible "War on drugs". Is someone's stash worth a cops life? If someone burst into my house, I'd shoot them. If they said they were cops BEFORE they broke down the door, I wouldn't. I thought the knock and announce was for the cops' safety as much as anyone's being as people get paranoid when strangers appear inside their houses pointing weapons at them. It seems Scalia destroyed the legal incentive for police to obey the knock and announce rule, and the upholding of no improper search and seizure.
Scalia warned that excluding incriminating evidence would have various social costs, generating a flood of lawsuits claiming violations, causing police officers to refrain from making a timely entry and resulting in the possible destruction of evidence.
Yes, 15 seconds to flush your guns and fake id documents down the toilet. Oh wait, you can't do that. The only thing this could be applicable to is drugs. There's no other sort of evidence you could ditch that quick, unless you tossed it out the window, and god knows that's easy to find. Imagine the abuses that this could spawn. People conducting home invasions pretending to be policemen, because they would no longer have to announce themselves while coming into your home. What if officers burst into the wrong home by accident and someone got seriously hurt? What if this becomes a tool to get back at an opposing politician? The possibilities are limitless.
These no knock warrants should only be used in EXCEPTIONAL situations, pursuit of murderers, hostage situations, things like that. But god knows there will be incidents. Now even if you don't have a no knock warrant, you can go ahead anyway. There will be no penalty, unless you're the civilian inside the house that kills the cop for popping inside without warning.
But why is this being brought up right now? They are ruling in this case so that evidence can be used even if they don't follow the rules. We've had more of our constitutional rights chipped away during this administration than in any other time in our history. When will the War on American Freedom end?
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