Pubdate: Fri, 16 Jun 2006
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Authors: Jess Bravin and Ben Winograd
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Fourth+Amendment

HIGH COURT ALLOWS USE OF EVIDENCE TAKEN IN VIOLATION OF KNOCK RULE

WASHINGTON -- Prosecutors can use evidence taken in violation of the
Fourth Amendment requirement that police knock and announce
themselves before entering a home, the Supreme Court ruled.

The 5-4 opinion, by Justice Antonin Scalia, acknowledged that such
entries are unconstitutional, but not serious enough to invoke the
traditional sanction for unlawful searches: exclusion of the evidence
they yield.

The price of applying the so-called exclusionary rule sometimes
includes "setting the guilty free and the dangerous at large,"
Justice Scalia wrote. Other remedies, such as civil damages or
internal discipline by a police department, were adequate for
violations of "the right not to be intruded upon in one's nightclothes."

In a dissent by Justice Stephen Breyer, the court's four
liberal-leaning members argued that such remedies largely were
illusory, and thus the majority "destroys the strongest legal
incentive to comply with the Constitution's knock-and-announce requirement."

Justice Clarence Thomas and President George W. Bush's two
appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito,
joined the majority. Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter and
Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined the dissent.

The case was argued in January when Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was
on the court, and reargued after she retired. Justice Anthony Kennedy
- -- seen as inheriting the court's ideological midpoint from Justice
O'Connor -- concurred in the result, but he wrote separately,
suggesting stronger remedies might be needed for a "demonstrated
pattern of knock-and-announce violations."

The case came from Detroit, where police bearing a warrant to search
for drugs and guns waited several seconds after shouting, "Police,
search warrant," to enter a suspect's house. Inside, they found what
they were looking for. Prosecutors conceded police violated the rule,
and the trial judge threw out the evidence. A Michigan appeals court
reversed, and the defendant appealed to the Supreme Court.

Police officers generally are required to give a suspect a chance to
voluntarily admit them inside their home before entering and
searching it. Justice Scalia explained three purposes behind the
knock-and-announce rule: keeping surprised occupants from reflexively
attacking intruding police; sparing residents the cost of repairing
broken doors; and safeguarding "elements of privacy and dignity."

But the rule "has never protected ... one's interest in preventing
the government" from obtaining evidence listed in a warrant, Justice
Scalia wrote. Had police obeyed the rule, it might have delayed their
entry by several more seconds, but they would have found the evidence anyway.

Zealous enforcement of the knock-and-announce rule would tie courts
in knots, he wrote, forcing them to spend hours deciding "how many
seconds' wait are too few."

Justice Breyer's dissent accused the majority of abandoning doctrines
that had developed since 1914, when the court first imposed the
exclusionary rule on federal officers.

The dissent noted many exceptions to the knock-and-announce rule
already exist, including when police reasonably suspect that obeying
it would expose them to danger or allow suspects to destroy evidence.

Separately, the justices found a federal appeals court erroneously
dismissed a suit by mutual-fund holders who claimed managers
facilitated market timing, or the practice in which investors find
ways to buy into a mutual fund before the fund's price fully reflects
underlying movements of the stocks in that fund, profiting from the
discrepancy.

The decision sent the suit back to the state court where it
originally was filed -- but under another high-court ruling from
March, it likely will be dismissed again.

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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman