Scalia and me
I agree with the recent right-wing Supreme Court ruling! Oh, I feel like such a rebel.
It’s that one written by [gulp] Antonin Scalia (wow, even Spellcheck doesn’t like him!) about police no longer having to knock and announce before they enter a place to serve a valid warrant.
I know it’s part of my job as a blogger to be philosophically consistent (even one-note), but this one just seems to make sense to me. Maybe commenters can show me where I’ve misunderstood.
It seems to me if cops are serving a warrant and there’s bad guys inside where the suspect is, all the knock-and-announce does is give the ne’er-do-wells time to flush evidence and/or grab a weapon. This ruling could save lives, of police as well as evil-doers, and that should be the prize we’re keeping our eyes on, here.
That, of course, and the valid warrant. I think if you’ve convinced a court to give you a warrant for search and/or arrest, you don’t have the obligation to make yourself a target by announcing your presence prematurely in a situation more and more likely to involve scofflaws and criminals who are armed to the teeth.
You see it a hundred times a week on TNT: A cop gets to the perp’s door, yells that it’s the police and they’re coming in. What happens? A hail of bullets through the door at the cops, who have ducked off to the side and clutch their service weapons to their chest. I always wonder how stupid the crooks are to not know by now to shoot at the sides of the door instead of the middle.
But I digress…
I know this ruling is an ominous bellwether for future court rulings in the same area, but on its own merits, I think it will probably save lives and help secure legitimate convictions.
Tomorrow’s rulings will take care of themselves. Today’s was a good one.
posted by Fang Bastardson at 10:33 PM
1 Comments:
1.) In many instances, this would actually put cops at a greater risk. Barging into a baddie's pad unannounced is a good way to get shot.
2.) Innocent people have already been killed by cops who entered the wrong place and surprised their victim. In my town, the cops, responding to a robbery tip, entered an artist's loft unannounced and caught him on the phone. They thought the phone was a gun. He's dead now. The cops lost their jobs, but were hired elsewhere.
3.) This will primarily help secure drug convictions. Our prisons are already overcrowded thanks to a war on drugs that is as draconian as it ineffectual. Do we really need more drug convictions?
4.) Hate to drag out the ol' slippery slope argument, but there's a reason Kennedy wrote a separate opinion while voting with the majority. In this particular case, the police would have secured a conviction even if they had properly followed procedure. If a conviction depends upon evidence that could only be obtained unlawfully, that's another story. To me, once we begin parsing these issues, basing them on the outcome rather than the established judicial principle, then the ends justify the means: if cops no longer have to worry about the inadmissability of improper evidence, they will have no incentitive to adhere to 4th Amendment safeguards.
Coupled with the NSA wiretapping, the government's monitoring of websites like MySpace and Friendster, and recent attempts to force ISPs to provide the Feds with their email archives, it all spells one big dilation of state power.
10:42 AM
Post a Comment
<< Home