Friday, June 16, 2006

Missing the point of knock and announce In comments below, Terry at US Marijuana Party mentions this story from back in April in Buffalo: A loud "flash bang" concussion device is detonated inside a Kensington Avenue house as Buffalo Police SWAT officers, clad in black armor and brandishing automatic assault rifles, storm a lower apartment. "Buffalo Police. Search warrant. Buffalo Police," the officers yell to the now temporarily stunned occupants inside. Within seconds, there are multiple shotgun blasts. At the same instant, another officer cradles a 1-year-old boy out the front door and down a flight of steps to safety. When the smoke clears, three large pit bull terriers lay dead, in pools of their own coagulated blood. Five people are in handcuffs. So first you deafen the occupants. Then you announce yourselves. Then you kill the dogs. This must be what Scalia was talking about when he said "we now have increasing evidence that police forces across the United States take the constitutional rights of citizens seriously." Right. 7:01:57 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Most idiotic post on Hudson so far ... and the winner is Glenn Reynolds: However, the exclusionary rule is a lousy remedy for these kinds of things, since it doesn't protect those innocent of any crime. (If you're innocent, there's nothing to exclude). I'd rather see a rule that disciplines officers for improper behavior without regard to the exclusion of evidence. Now, it's true that the exclusionary rule isn't perfect, but as Breyer so eloquently stated it in his dissent, it's been shown for ages to be the most effective solution. And the exclusionary rule isn't just for guilty people (I get so tired of people asserting that rights are for the guilty). The whole purpose of the exclusionary rule is to protect all citizens. It's a deterrent to future police misconduct, not a punishment for that misconduct. There's a big difference. People like Glenn seem to think that the idea is that the entire advantage of the exclusionary rule is that the bad guy gets off. That's stupid. The advantage of the exclusionary rule is that when the bad guy gets off, the police will sit up and go "Well, that sucked -- let's not ever let that happen again!" and they won't let it happen again. They'll take the time to do it right -- to get the facts right, and the law right. And we'll all be safer and more free because of it. This means that now and then a bad guy has to go free. That's the price of insuring better work by the police in the future. Now, the exclusionary rule can't protect us from the really bad cop -- the kind that tortures a suspect to get him to sign a consent form (other means are necessary to catch such vermin). The exclusionary rule protects us from the well-meaning, yet overzealous cop who cuts some corners to put the bad guy away. The rule says that cutting corners is not acceptable, and if you want to catch the bad guy, you've got to follow the law. That's an important principle. Without the exclusionary rule, who will tell the cops? And will they listen? Glenn then follows his idiocy with: I don't see the Supreme Court fixing this any time soon. Congress could limit officers' ability to barge in without announcing themselves (by banning it, say, except where there's a serious risk of danger to people's lives) by legislation. I doubt it will, though. States could do the same, of course, as regards state law enforcement. I think that they should. Um, Glenn, I don't know how to tell you this, but that's already been banned by the Constitution -- the Justices were in complete agreement about that part, just not on the proper punishment or deterrence. Congress banning it would do... what? Update: It appears Andy McCarthy needs to go back to school as well. See Radley's post. 6:02:34 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

More on Hudson Breyer's dissent (pdf) in the Hudson Supreme Court case is really impressive (if you're a Constitutional rights geek like me, you'll enjoy reading it). Here's a justice who understands the importance of the 4th Amendment as part of our guarantee of freedom. He methodically and thoroughly dismantles every one of the majority's points, shows some real exasperation with Scalia's lack of logic, and concludes: There may be instances in the law where text or history or tradition leaves room for a judicial decision that rests upon little more than an unvarnished judicial instinct. But this is not one of them. Rather, our Fourth Amendment traditions place high value upon protecting privacy in the home. They emphasize the need to assure that its constitutional protections are effective, lest the Amendment 'sound the word of promise to the ear but break it to the hope.' They include an exclusionary principle, which since Weeks has formed the centerpiece of the criminal law's effort to ensure the practical reality of those promises. That is why the Court should assure itself that any departure from that principle is firmly grounded in logic, in history, in precedent, and in empirical fact. It has not done so. That is why, with respect, I dissent. And what was Scalia's justification for ignoring hundreds of cases of precedent? Because we don't need it any more. ...we now have increasing evidence that police forces across the United States take the constitutional rights of citizens seriously ...except of course that he had no such evidence. Via The Agitator (and Radley continues to be the go-to source for information on this), there's an excellent editorial at The Orange County Register Unfortunately, the ruling is likely to lead to more military-style no-knock raids of people's homes and businesses, which will mean some innocent people's homes will be raided, and a few people are likely to be killed. [...] The decision could mean, in effect, that every search warrant becomes a "no-knock" warrant.[...] Since drug raids are often based on confidential informants whose reliability can be dicey, this decision is likely to lead to more military-style policing and more "wrong-door" raids on innocent people. It is wrong-headed and potentially tragic. What's particularly disturbing to me is that the new court seems to be on a very dangerous path for us. Already, the court had been way too lenient on allowing "drug war exceptions" to just about every part of the Bill of Rights, and deferring to the government in Fourth Amendment cases without requiring any proof of effectiveness. But now there seems to be a disturbing trend toward an "ends justifies the means" approach to policing. In Caballes, Justice Stevens (who actually was on the correct side in Hudson) allowed a dog sniff without suspicion because revealing "no information other than the location of a substance that no individual has any right to possess does not violate the Fourth Amendment." In other words -- it was there, so it was OK to search for it to see if it was there. Convoluted logic and -- ends justifies the means. Now in Hudson, the majority opinion by Scalia claims that the legal search warrant would have discovered the drugs anyway, so the illegal entry doesn't matter. The bizarre claim is that it's too much of a penalty on the police to make them give up that particular case, because of the comparatively small infraction of neglecting to knock. But what the majority leaves out is what the cost is to the rest of society in having a government that no longer respects right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. Another disturbing part of this is that the majority is making the case that it really isn't all that important for the police to obey the law. When we have the highest rate of citizen incarceration in the world, and yet at various levels of hierarchy we frequently now see clearly stated that the government is not required to obey the law, then what do we call ourselves? 10:05:15 AM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []