Just Asking: no-knock police searches

does this mean CONGRESSIONAL OFFICES can be searched without knocking? Or are they still above the law? just asking...

that's been the horrid norm since the early 1970s.
The question they decided was whether evidence obtained in an illegal serch had to be thrown out.

Suppose the police, acting on a tip (for simplicity's sake,)did a no-knock search of your brother-in-laws' house' in a kidnapping investigation, at four AM.
In their not so abnormal, bull-in-the-china-shop fashion, they got the address wrong and illegally busted into your house, instead of his, inadvertantly discovering your meth lab.
Here to fore, that illegally discovered information had to be discarded because it was not legally obtained--fourth amendment protection.
The new breed of republican activist judges, reinterpreting their particular "living" constitution has set up a whole new challenge to the privacy amendment by ruling that this serendiditous information, although obtained illegally and in no way connected to the case they have a warrant to cover, may now be used to convict you of drug manufacturing.

Some how I feel it gives police to much power and I am sure it will happen even more. Police tend to feel you are guilty before they have proof and many think if the police pick you up you must be guilty even if the law does not say that.

There's no "some how" to it, izzie! It absolutely does add to the police powers.

The thing that really galls me, however, is that if you read Scalia's opinion, this is just one more case of the radical right exposing their own fear of everything.

The whole concept is that in their cowardice, they want the gov't to be able to protect them against the slightest possiblity that someone, somewhere, MIGHT be doing something that might hurt them in unspecified ways in some indeterminate future.

Not exactly a case of bravery, is it?

When will these "tough guys" finally show a little courage and stop wanting the gov't to protect them from every possible bad thing that could ever possibly happen? Aren't these the same cretins from the radical right that think people should "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps"?

What hypocrites!
The Professor

some how this puts it really on the books when I would like them to say who they are before they come storming into my home.It comes down to what they find I guess. I see this an an open book for the police as they will surely use it 100 percent. And Professor do watch your step. Things are starting to get very odd in the USA

I appreciate the sentiment, but I will not surrender to the fear that grips cowardly conservatives.
The Professor

Like face it on 911 the only planes left flying were Bush, his fighters and his Saudi friends. Makes one see power and what it can do. I would have thought Congress would have hit the roof on some if these things but I guess we have just lap dogs their now. Makes one shameful to be an American with leaders like this and I was sure I would never feel that way. Usually we get rid of our crack pots. A military empire is just not for me.

:sarcasm:

continuing its rightward turn and considering the right of society to fight crime higher than the right of the individual to be free of unwarranted searches. But, Kennedy's opinion keeps the exclusionary rule in place, so far.

Interesting to see what happens when Miranda gets to this court in its regular travels. We've already seen "good faith" acceptable when there were improper warrants, execution OK when there is no "proof" of innocence, and a few other fascinating decisions that haven't kept us free of crime but have made police and prosecutors' jobs easier.

The prison society.

will the next step be allowing the cops to enter a home when no one is there? Sorry, but I know there are some cops out there who love to plant evidence. In the '60s, my husband was stopped and his vehicle torn apart in search of drugs. He had none. The cops were mad, and one said to him, "I was so certain you had drugs, I didn't bring any to plant. Next time I'll be ready. Get out of this state." My husband took his advice, btw.

via the patriot act, with its "snoop and poop" provisions. They can come into your home, under cover, and do as they wish, without notification for many days.
Bush's absolute power assumptions grant no notification at all, as long as the invading operatives can be said to be operating under the aegis of the justice department--which means anybody the executive wants to sneak in on you.

The fourth amendment was iffy at best, due primarily, in my opinion, to its attempt to be as objective as possible, in the somewhat stilted language of the times, plus another linguistic and attitudinal anomaly, in this case, the absence of a word for privacy.
They just didn't have a word for it; it derives from the word for the shitter-privy-and the bashful attitude
that created embarrassment if someone sees you shit. Along with the mental paradigm that does not admit of a word for privacy comes the curious notions of their worldview without such a concept or a direct name for it.

because DNA proved that they couldn’t have committed the crimes that they were convicted of. If they will let murderers go free while killing innocent citizens, they will plant dope or child porn on you when you become inconvenient.

Two conservative legal concepts are now going to collide, sooner probably rather than later.

First, there is this ruling handed down yesterday, giving police the authority to break down the door without pause or announcing themselves.

Now, add to the mix the various states that have passed, or have in the hopper, these Stand Your Ground laws, wherein a homeowner has increased authority to blast away at whoever if they feel threatened.

Now, what is going to happen here? I can see a cop in Florida banging down the door in the middle of the night, and some homeowner, drastically alarmed by their door being blown down, confused with sleep, snatching up the shotgun and blasting away, not knowing that these are police, since they didn't announce themselves. And a cop dies.

And to make it even more interesting, let's say that the police had gotten the wrong address, busted down the wrong door, a not uncommon occurrence.

Who would be held responsible in this case? The homeowner? Hell he was well within his rights, especially under the Stand Your Ground laws. The police? According to this SC ruling, they would be within their rights also.

I foresee a massive collission of these two legal concepts, and I would have to bet that, in our current police state, the homeowner would suffer the punishment, even though he was within his rights and had the law on his side. We'll see, for I'm sure that this is gong to occur within our relatively near future.

... and as far as I'm concerned, anyone busting down my door to get in unnanounced is asking for a bullet between the eyes. What am I supposed to be, Kreskin?

There are already way too many cases where the police break in using rambo style tactics and when they get shot they are heros and the person defending his home is a cop killer.

No, the cop is an idiot and the homeowner was protecting himself as is his right.

instead of who they were looking for, and if there is evidence of any kind of crime, say i may have a certain green herb, they can then arrest me and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it.
Even though they were looking for john doe's meth lab, and "accidental" get me instead,

edit: spelling