The phrase "This guy appoints judges who take away your freedoms" ought to be enough to end the political career of just about anyone, but it never seems to do so.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court narrowly voted to significantly limit the protection of citizens against police searches:
Evidence found by police officers who enter a home to execute a search warrant without first following the requirement to "knock and announce" can be used at trial despite that constitutional violation, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday.What a difference 11 years of conservative court-packing makes:
The 5-to-4 decision left uncertain the value of the "knock-and-announce" rule, which dates to 13th-century England as protection against illegal entry by the police into private homes.
The decision answered a question that the court had left open in 1995, when it held in a unanimous opinion by Justice Thomas that the traditional expectation that the police should knock and announce their presence was part of what made a search "reasonable" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The amendment bars unreasonable searches.NPR's Nina Totenberg summed up the Antonin Scalia's attitude in the majority opinion as: "That was then, this is now."
Makes you wonder what "now" will look like in a couple of years, doesn't it?
A big part of the change, of course, is not some shift in the level of dastardly criminality out there in America; it's simply that the so-called "swing" vote of Sandra Day O'Connor has been replaced with the reliably pro-corporate and anti-civil liberties Samuel Alito.
For those "what does it matter if you've nothing to hide?" types out there, the presumption of your innocence just got a whole lot weaker. I'll say it again: No one's life--not mine, not yours, certainly not George Bush's, not anyone's--is so unambiguously pristine that it doesn't have details that would be difficult, or at least embarrassing, to explain under oath or in that little room with Briscoe, Green, and the one-way mirror. As procedural protections against search and seizure get weakened, the day nears when it becomes your job to prove there's nothing to hide in your phone records, internet history, private mail, prescription purchases, choice of dinner companions, DVD rentals, library usage, OnStar records, organizational memberships, tax records, and so on. A state that has unfettered access to your life, your home, your movements, and your records can always find something to put the screws to you with, if it's sufficiently motivated and sufficiently creative.
And for you staunch Second Amendment types, consider the Tucson AZ Police Department, who promises reassuringly that "no-knock" searches will be "rare" in their jurisdiction, pointing out in fact that the old 10-to-15 second rule between knock-and-announce and entry probably makes their jobs safer--although if the police do break down your door without announcing themselves and you open fire, you could well be convicted of murder. Wrap your "cold dead fingers" around that one, fellas.
These are the concerns that Scalia amusingly dismisses as "the right not to be intruded upon in one's nightclothes."
2 comments:
What is really disturbing here is that apparently there is already something called a No-Knock warrant. My understanding is that a No-Knock warrant is issued for situations like raiding suspected Drug houses where armed resistance is expected. So if the police are worried about the knock and wait rule giving time for criminals to arm themselves or destroy evidence, they can get a No-Knock warrant from the judge. So why is the high court allowing all warrants in effect to now become No-Knock warrants? Another step closer to a police state?
Hi, Darley--
The pattern sort of resembles the warrentless domestic wiretaps that Bush's administration has turned out to be engaging in for years now:
There's always been the secret FISA courts where they could get a warrant, even by applying after the deed is already done. And the FISA courts have rarely, rarely turned down a request.
But Bush et al didn't seek FISA court approval--because they wanted to establish the principle that presidential ppower was unchecked by any pissant judicial rules and restraints, no matter how feeble and compliant.
bn
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