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The crux of the case is exigent circumstances. The police were in pursuit of someone who evaded them in an apartment building. The police had no way of knowing into which apartment the person they were pursuing had entered. From one apartment there was an aroma of pot. The police could have gotten a warrant to enter the apartment based on that. But instead they knocked on the door and identified themselves as police. From inside they heard movement, but did not get a response. Assuming that the evidence of drug use was being destroyed, the police forced their way into the apartment where they found both cocaine and marijuana. The Kentucky Supreme Court determined that exigent circumstances did not merit the police breaking down the door. The fact that sounds were heard behind the door after the police knocked and identified themselves did not provide such urgency that the people in the apartment deserved to have their 4th Amendment rights violated. The Supreme Court's position, which I think is ludicrous, is that the people in the apartment should have been so knowledgeable about their Constitutional rights that they should have responded to the police officers' knock by telling the police officers that they were invoking their 4th Amendment rights and that the police should leave them alone. If they had done that, according to Alito, then the police would have had no recourse but to go to a judge to ask for a warrant. Instead, they made sounds like an occupant trying to clean up a messy apartment, thereby creating exigent circumstances.
It is frightening to think that we empower cops to determine what we are doing based on sounds behind the door.
You should read your own link before posting lies.
"In a surprising 8-1 decision, the Supreme Court has ruled that police can knock down the door to your home and enter if they hear noises that lead them to believe that evidence is being destroyed."
That is NOT NO REASON AT ALL as you claim.
Not "no reason at all", but certain not a valid reason.
Wrong! Liberal Judges are the ones that think the Constitution is "outdated" and that people are too stupid too irresponsible to run their own lives and need the government to run their lives.
You can thank your BUSH ERA appointees, to say nothing of conservative stalwarts Scalia and Thomas.
Did you even know the name of a single Supreme Court justice before starting this thread?
Wrong! Liberal Judges are the ones that think the Constitution is "outdated" and that people are too stupid too irresponsible to run their own lives and need the government to run their lives.
That's right MOgal and it's wearing a uniform with our flag on it! But as you have said before, the law is the law. If you don't like it, unchamber that round, and work to change it.
This isn't something started recently; Nixon also had a "No-Knock" law. In this case the SCOTUS had a precedent. Personally, I find it offensive and an assault on our privacy. In the '60s, police could have found exigent circumstances because a young man had long hair and was wearing a fringed buckskin jacket. Check the date on the link.
I am not sure what Obama has to do with this, given the following statement from the article:
"While the decision is not, in and of itself, unexpected given the conservative leanings of the Court, the fact that all but Justice Ginsberg went along with the ruling did come as something of a surprise to legal experts."
If anything, according to the logic of the article, having more liberal-appointed judges on the panel might have upheld the 4th Amendment.
I only have six words: Time limits on Supreme
Court Judges.
No one expected those in a position of judgement
would live this long. They are without consequence
or clue. The Supreme Court has become a political
joke - it does not represent law any more.
I only have six words: Time limits on Supreme
Court Judges.
No one expected those in a position of judgement
would live this long. They are without consequence
or clue. The Supreme Court has become a political
joke - it does not represent law any more.
That's an interesting point; I've often wondered why they didn't have an age for retirement. Nothing is more complicated and controversial than the Constitution, but it would seem, in some cases, that experience would be trumped by senile dementia or Alzheimer's Disease.
You can thank your BUSH ERA appointees, to say nothing of conservative stalwarts Scalia and Thomas.
Did you even know the name of a single Supreme Court justice before starting this thread?
Only one justice dissented, and both of Obama's appointees were among the 8 of the majority, so it's not a left versus right matter, it's a statist scum versus liberty issue.
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