Common sense appears to have afflicted the new Supreme Court, at least if the majority's reasoning in the recently decided Hudson v. Michigan is any indicator.
Cases wherein missteps by police have caused courts to let obviously dangerous people go free have always seemed to be exceedingly foolish. If the police overstep their bounds then the police should be disciplined, but to set a criminal free or to throw out incriminating evidence because the police may have violated procedural rules essentially punishes the public for the fault of the enforcement officers.
A majority on the Court now agrees:
The Constitution does not require the government to forfeit evidence gathered through illegal "no knock" searches, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday, in a far-reaching ruling that could encourage police with search warrants to conduct more aggressive raids.
At issue in yesterday's case, Hudson v. Michigan , No. 04-1360, was the "knock and announce" rule, which has deep roots in Anglo American law. In 1995, the court made it part of what defines a "reasonable search" under the Fourth Amendment, without saying how it should be enforced. Before yesterday's decision, police executing a search warrant in most jurisdictions had to worry that they might lose a case if they did not first knock on the door, announce themselves and wait a reasonable time for a response before forcing their way in.
Now, unless state law says otherwise, the most they would face is administrative discipline or a lawsuit for damages.
Scalia's opinion focused on the guilty defendants who go free when otherwise valid evidence is thrown out of court. He concluded that that "social cost" is too high in relation to whatever additional privacy protection residents get from the "knock and announce" rule.
Today's police are more professional than those of 45 years ago, he observed, and there is "increasing evidence that police forces across the United States take the constitutional rights of citizens seriously."
In this environment, Scalia argued, lawsuits and administrative proceedings are enough to ensure that police comply with the "knock and announce" rule.
The decision suggests that reasonable people now hold sway on the Court and augurs well for the future. Scalia was joined by Roberts, Kennedy, Alito, and Thomas.
