LOSING OUR RIGHTS

The law requires that when the police serve a search warrant, they must knock and announce themselves and only if there is no response can they break into the house.  Of course this does not apply to “no-knock” warrants where the police are authorized to enter without any prior notice.  The “no-knock” warrants are authorized based upon a showing that there is a reasonable belief that there is some danger to the officer’s safety or that evidence would be destroyed.  Before 2006, if the police violated a person’s rights by ignoring this law and busting into someone’s house, then the evidence would be excluded under the exclusionary rule.  The U.S. Supreme Court changed that with its decision Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586, 126 S. Ct. 2159 (2006).  Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion, held that the cost of losing evidence was too great and the threat of civil lawsuits would deter police misconduct.  Before the Hudson decision, the requirement that police officers must knock and announce themselves before entering was not only a federal statute (18 U.S.C. § 3109) but was part of common law, or judge made law, going back to before this country was founded.  As Justice Breyer wrote in his dissenting opinion:   “Today's opinion is thus doubly troubling. It represents a significant departure from the Court's precedents. And it weakens, perhaps destroys, much of the practical value of the Constitution's knock-and-announce protection.”  Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586, 605, 126 S. Ct. 2159, 2171 (2006).  This appears to be merely another traditional right which has fallen under the current conservative U. S. Supreme Court which is composed of conservative judicial activists, ignoring precedent when it suits their political ideology.  Scalia’s opinion that potential civil lawsuits would be a deterrent is wholly unrealistic because of the difficulty in being successful in civil lawsuits against police.  Ellis Law Firm has sued police departments, with great success, for violating someone’s civil rights.  Those cases are very difficult, though, due to the conservative nature of Supreme Court decisions involved in suing police officers and the cities they work for.  Without apparent physical damages, as in an excessive force case, I would be reluctant, as would nearly every other law firm, to take on such a case.  If law firms are unwilling to take on the challenge of suing police departments when there is little reward for all their trouble, then the threat of civil law suits would not serve as a deterrent to police abuses.  Therefore, Scalia’s opinion undermines the remedies people have when the police break the law requiring they knock and announce before entering your home.  To see what type of cases I focus on, check out my website at:  http://www.ellislawfirm.pro/