The U.S. Supreme Court gave a glimpse of a potential philosophical shift in its recent 5-4 ruling that evidence seized from a “no-knock” raid can be admitted in court even if police barge in without announcing themselves.
New Justice Samuel Alito joined Chief Justice John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy in voting to throw out nearly a century of legal precedents and a cornerstone of Fourth Amendment law. Alito’s vote broke the 4-4 tie that existed among the other members of the court.
While Kennedy voted with the majority, he wrote that he didn’t agree with ending the “knock and announce” requirement altogether. “It bears repeating that it is a serious matter if law enforcement officers violate the sanctity of the home by ignoring the requisites of lawful entry,” he wrote.
Kennedy’s stand underscored his emergence as a swing vote in a court that already misses centrist Sandra Day O’Connor, who retired in January and gave way to Alito.
Earlier in the week, Kennedy ruled with the court’s more liberal justices to give death-row prisoners more ability to challenge their sentences. In the no-knock case he ruled with the conservative bloc.
The court upheld a drug possession conviction against Detroit resident Booker Hudson, even though the state of Michigan conceded that police violated the Fourth Amendment provision requiring that they announce their presence before entering.
Police had a warrant, but one officer admitted that they only announced themselves as they crashed through the door.
The high court majority agreed with the Michigan Supreme Court that exclusion of the evidence gained in the Hudson raid was an excessive remedy for the cops’ violation.
Scalia, writing in the majority opinion, acknowledged that the principle behind the so-called exclusionary rule is “ancient” precedent, but he argued that the rule carries “substantial social costs,” namely allowing guilty people to go free.
We’re more inclined to agree with Justice Stephen Breyer, who noted in his dissent that decades ago the court recognized that when the police barge in unannounced, it is an assault on “the sanctity of a man’s home and the privacies of life.” The Supreme Court held in a 1914 case that, except in rare circumstances, evidence seized in violation of the Constitution cannot be used. If such evidence were admissible, that decision held, the Fourth Amendment “might as well be stricken.”
There is a greater social cost to allowing police to play fast and loose with constitutional guarantees than there is to letting a few criminals off on a technicality. The court’s decision sets a dangerous precedent by weakening the incentive for police to play by the constitutional rules.
