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eridani

(51,907 posts) Fri Sep 25, 2015, 03:35 AM Sep 2015

Think Police Can’t Use Illegally Obtained Evidence Against You? Think Again.

http://www.thenation.com/article/think-police-cant-use-illegally-obtained-evidence-against-you-think-again/

Hudson v. Michigan (2006) is one in a series of cases in which  the Roberts Court has blessed police officers with extraordinary power. This power authorizes cops to engage in the kind of violent and undemocratic policing that make places like Ferguson and Baltimore look less like American cities and more like the outposts of some totalitarian regime.

The scandal, it turns out, is not bad-apple cops. The scandal is that the conservative justices on the Roberts Court have provided the legal framework for black lives not to matter to the police.

The Constitution be damned: This was apparently the perspective of a Detroit police officer named Jamal Good, who admitted that he routinely violated the long-standing requirement that police “knock and announce” their presence before entering a home. Good found that the Fourth Amendment—with its pesky insistence that searches be reasonable—limited his ability to obtain evidence, so he simply ignored it.

Usually, the Supreme Court decides whether there has been a violation of the Constitution. In Hudson, the Court faced a different question: When a cop admits that he has broken the rules, should there be any meaningful sanction? The issue was whether the classic remedy for Fourth Amendment violations—the “exclusionary rule,” which renders evidence collected through unconstitutional means inadmissible in criminal court—applies to the knock-and-announce rule. In a 5–4 decision, the Court held that it does not.

This holding is an affront to the concept of living in a civilized society. The idea that the police may not barge into a home without some warning has ancient roots. The knock-and-announce requirement has necessary exceptions, including when the police might endanger themselves or risk the destruction of evidence by announcing their presence. But the Court had said, just 11 years before Hudson, that knock-and-announce is a “basic principle” of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.

4 replies

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Think Police Can’t Use Illegally Obtained Evidence Against You? Think Again. (Original Post) eridani Sep 2015 OP

Last night, my niece asked me if I thought that we were all living in a police state... MrScorpio Sep 2015 #1

Knock this, SCOTUS. merrily Sep 2015 #2

They kind of gloss over many of the facts there Lee-Lee Sep 2015 #3

They've always done this. Some people got lucky in the courts about it. hobbit709 Sep 2015 #4

MrScorpio

(73,631 posts)

1. Last night, my niece asked me if I thought that we were all living in a police state...

Reply to eridani (Original post)

Fri Sep 25, 2015, 04:44 AM

Sep 2015

This story pretty much confirms the answer I gave her.

merrily

(45,251 posts)

2. Knock this, SCOTUS.

Reply to eridani (Original post)

Fri Sep 25, 2015, 05:55 AM

Sep 2015

If the Bill of Rights keeps getting eroded, those fuckers are going to "interpret" themselves right out of a job.

Lee-Lee

(6,324 posts)

3. They kind of gloss over many of the facts there

Reply to eridani (Original post)

Fri Sep 25, 2015, 06:32 AM

Sep 2015

The officers did in fact have a warrant. They violated the "knock and announce" rule by knocking and announcing then waiting only about 5 seconds instead of the 10-15 seconds that the courts have ruled is reasonable.

So literally it's a difference of waiting 5 seconds instead of 15 before entering after knocking that was the violation- being 10 seconds hasty is where the officers erred.

The question before the court was that 10 second rush, when everything else including the warrant was valid, enough to declare the whole search excluded from evidence. The court said no, using the used rest of asking had the officers performed without error would the same evidence have been found- and the answer was clearly yes in the case of 10 seconds delay in the case, so being hasty in the entry didn't cause the results from the search to differ.

The department and officers are still open to a civil suit, and the officer was wrong, but the difference of 10 seconds delay in entry is about the same level error as misspelling a street name on a traffic ticket- it's wrong, but not enough to get it tossed from court.

I can see discipline for the officers and a civil suit, but since there is no way you can argue that those 10 changed the outcome of the search or the validity of the warrant then the results should stand. There are lots of errors than can be made during a search to cause what is found to be excluded all or in part- but being 10'secjdns hasty isn't one of them.

hobbit709

(41,694 posts)

4. They've always done this. Some people got lucky in the courts about it.

Reply to eridani (Original post)

Fri Sep 25, 2015, 06:32 AM

Sep 2015

Cops lie, plant evidence, force confessions, etc.

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