Pubdate: Fri, 27 May 2011
Source: Desert Dispatch, The (Victorville, CA)
Copyright: 2011 The Orange County Register
Contact:  http://www.desertdispatch.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3218

KICKING DOWN YOUR DOOR GETS EASIER

The next time police knock at your door, be careful what you do next. 
Any sound you make inside could grant police the authority to search 
your home without a warrant.

That's the result of last week's misguided Supreme Court decision 
expanding the definition of an exigent circumstance under which 
police can conduct a warrantless search. In an 8-1 ruling, the court 
created a new precedent that grants law enforcement the power to 
bypass a warrant based on arbitrary standards, which could be as 
minimal as "hearing" evidence being destroyed. We strongly disagree 
with the court because, in the words of dissenting Justice Ruth Bader 
Ginsburg, it "arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the 
Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement."

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution explicitly protects an 
individual from unreasonable searches. To search a home, law 
enforcement must first obtain a warrant based on probable cause. Only 
in exigent circumstances, such as imminent danger, while pursuing a 
suspect, or to prevent the destruction of evidence, are police 
allowed to search a home without a warrant.

The case of Kentucky v. King addressed the question of whether police 
can themselves create the emergency conditions to bypass the need for 
a warrant. While pursuing a drug suspect, police smelled marijuana 
from an apartment. They knocked on the door, identified themselves as 
police and then heard what sounded like evidence being destroyed. The 
knock at the door, the police argued, scared the suspects into 
destroying evidence, and thereby constituted the exigent circumstance 
to justify their warrantless search.

The process of obtaining a warrant doesn't just protect the accused; 
it also minimizes the number of "wrong door" police raids that injure 
and kill innocents. In this very case, police picked the wrong 
apartment that did not conceal their intended suspect. The Cato 
Institute, which tracks botched police raids, has called the problem 
"an epidemic of isolated incidents." We can expect more of them.

Defenders of liberty should be worried by this easy circumvention of 
the Fourth Amendment. It violates basic tenets of a free society: 
that individuals are presumed innocent; that our homes are our 
private sanctuaries; and that government can search our property only 
after obtaining a warrant.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom