Source:   Orange County Register
Contact:   Wednesday, January 14, 1998
Author:  Scot Sonner-The Associated Press

SEARCH-AND-SEIZURE CASE GOES TO SUPREME COURT

U.S.prosecutors seek to overturn lower-court rulings that barred using as
evidence weapons seized in a search.

Washington-With memories still fresh of a deadly federal siege in Waco,
Texas, the Supreme Court considered Tuesday whether a SWAT team in Oregon
went too far when an officer with a search warrant broke into a residence
without knocking first.

Several justices said the search-and-seizure case from Boring, Ore., poses
questions about how much force police can use and how much danger must
exist before they can use noknock entries.

Federal prosecutors want the Supreme Court to overturn lower-court rulings
that barred use of weapons seized in the 1994 Oregon search as evidence in
a gun possession case.

Police charged Herman Ramirez after searching his home for another man,a
prison escapee with a history of violence who was not found there.

With 45 law officers surrounding the Oregon residence at dawn, an officer
broke a window and waved a gun in a garage where an informant had told
police guns were stored.

Ramirez said he and his wife thought they were being burglarized.  He ran
to a closet, got a gun and fired it toward the garage.  Ramirez said he
then realized the window was broken by police and surrendered.

A federal judge ruled that the search violated the Constitution's Fourth
Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and said the weapons
could not be used as evidence.

The judge said that although the officers' knowledge of the escaped
inmate's violent past justified entering Ramirez's home without knocking,
they had to do so without damaging his property.