Something is wrong here. And nude too


The Supreme Court covers for police goofs
Stars above and Earth below, what has our nation become? Radley Balko tells us that we're naked and cowering at gunpoint for a mistaken warrant.

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the police can break into your home, rouse you from sleep, hold you naked at gunpoint, and—even if you're completely innocent—you have no recourse, so long as the warrant was valid.

It was an 8-1 decision.

"Valid warrants will issue to search the innocent and people like Rettele and Sadler unfortunately bear the cost," the justices said in the unsigned opinion. "The resulting frustration, embarrassment and humiliation may be real, as was true here. When officers execute a valid warrant and act in a reasonable manner to protect themselves from harm, however, the 4th Amendment is not violated," the court concluded.

The police apparently didn't know that the suspects they were after no longer lived at the residence, and didn't bother to check to see that the house had been recently purchased by new owners several months earlier.  The new owners were white.  The suspects the police were looking for were black. And they were wanted not on charges related to violent crime, but for identity fraud.

The Hudson case basically gave police carte blanche to violate the knock-and-announce rule without having to worry about application of the exclusionary rule. This case says that innocent civilians should have to bear the humiliating, terrifying, and possibly dangerous costs of mistakes made by agents of the state. It's a horrible ruling.

Frankly when a police agency screws up by the numbers like this, I want there to be serious consequences and costs to the officers involved.

If even a warrant isn't protection enough, then it is hard to see why people should respect police.

Or the government that employs them.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Tue - May 22, 2007 at 02:02 PM  Tag


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