Supremes gut 4th Amendment

Supremes gut 4th Amendment. Sorry for the inconvenience. Have a nice day!
by occams hatchet
Wed Jan 14, 2009 at 04:28:19 PM PST

My brother e-mailed me:

Remember 1-14-2009.

That's the day we officially became a Banana Republic.

By a 5-4 ruling the Supreme Court voted today to effectively gut the 4th Amendment as a meaningful limitation on police power.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today (PDF file) that evidence gathered illegally by police as the result of defective search warrants is admissible in court.

Officers in Coffee County arrested petitioner Herring based on a warrant listed in neighboring Dale County’s database. A search incident to that arrest yielded drugs and a gun. It was then revealed that the warrant had been recalled months earlier, though this information had never been entered into the database . . .

Held: When police mistakes leading to an unlawful search are the result of isolated negligence attenuated from the search, rather than systemic error or reckless disregard of constitutional requirements,the exclusionary rule does not apply.

Translation: If the cops screw up, but get lucky and find something anyway, tough ta-tas for you, Mr. Private Citizen.

Better yet, If the cops decide they want to go after you, but can't get a legitimate warrant, they can fabricate one and later claim it was a "negligent" but innocent mistake. The burden of proof will then be on YOU, Mr. Private Citizen, to prove "systemic error or reckless disregard of constitutional requirements," and we know how much time, money and good ol' American can-do spirit you have to do that, right?

Banana republic, indeed.

Guess who the four dissenters were?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/1/14/19243/7648/308/684135

Yes, there is potential for abuse.

but that will never happen.

Good old "good faith" exclusion. The reasoning is that the cops weren't deliberately violating his rights. They didn't realize the database was in error, and were acting on info they believed to be correct. That's where the "good faith" exception to the exclusionary rule comes in. But I agree with the dissenting opinions that this is basically bullshit.