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Well, that's debatable, but last week the High Court handed down a decision in the case Hudson v. Michigan, which has legal scholars (and bloggers) buzzing about the implications for other 4th Amendment protections.
For those who forget exactly what the Fourth Amendment protects, an oversimplified explanation would be that it protects individuals against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government/state and has long been considered an essential check on governmental abuse of its state police powers.
Appropriately, Slate heralded the case as “the most important case you’ve never heard about� and unfortunately, they are probably right as I haven't seen a lot of coverage of the case in the news.
Slate goes on to sum up the issue in Hudson:
At issue is whether or not police who used an illegal "no-knock" raid to enter a defendant's home can use the drugs they seized inside against the defendant at trial. To understand the importance of this case, some background is in order.
As the name indicates, a "no-knock" raid occurs when police forcibly enter a private residence without first knocking and announcing that they're the police. The tactic is appropriate in a few limited situations, such as when hostages or fugitives are involved, or where the suspect poses an immediate threat to community safety. But increasingly, this highly confrontational tactic is being used in less volatile situations, most commonly to serve routine search warrants for illegal drugs.
In other words, does the Fourth Amendment prohibit evidence obtained from a no-knock search from being used against a defendant? Previously the answer was a firm, "yes". In legalese this doctrine is referred to as the exclusionary rule. However, in a 5-4 opinion that is extremely deferential to the government/police, the Supreme Court answered with a resounding "no."
The always-helpful SCOTUSblog puts it this way:
When the case was argued on May 18 (the second of two arguments in the case this Term), it seemed clear that a major Fourth Amendment ruling was in the making. The final opinions justify that impression.
The bare holding of the case is simple: if police have a warrant to search a home, and they enter in a way that violates their constitutional duty to knock first and announce themselves, the evidence turned up in the search can be used in a criminal prosecution.
[snip]
In articulating a second theory as critical to the Hudson decision, the Court made clear that its views may be changing on the value of the exclusionary rule in deterring police misconduct. It exhibited a greater willingness than it has in the past to trust police officers to avoid constitutional violations, and a belief that that trust can better be reinforced by means other than judicial suppression of evidence that is vital to successful criminal prosecutions. This theory was most vividly in display in Justice Scalia's analysis of present-day deterrents that may keep police in line. "It seems to us not...true, as Hudson contends, that without suppression there will be no deterrence of knock-and-announce violations at all," Scalia wrote.
Scalia posits an interesting theory which could possibly also be described as wishful thinking which tends to be repudiated by real life crime-fighting- that the possibility of suppressing evidence gained from police actions that violate the 4th Amendment has not been a meaningful deterrent to such violations. And that begs the question- then what is?
Well, the blog Crooked Timber points us to the answer- and pulled right from Justice Scalia's opinion no less:
By the by, Scalia, writing for the majority, is happy to set his originalism aside and argue that the growth of “public-interest law firms and lawyers who specialize in civil-rights grievances … [and] the increasing professionalism of police forces, including a new emphasis on internal police discipline … [and] the increasing use of various forms of citizen review can enhance police accountability� all mean that the fourth amendment can be reinterpreted.
I am willing to bet there are quite a few citizens out there who would beg to differ.
And the blog, The Agitator, reminds us why allowing the police to break down your door without first announcing their presence, may in fact be important, never mind the privacy concerns:
Just for review, those reasons would include the terror and fright associated with having once door beaten down in the middle of the night by armed, masked men; the unimaginable predicament a homeowner is unwillingly put in when he must decide if the intruders are cops or criminals, and whether to confront them or succumb to
