Law enforcement: What does it mean

[Vexari]

Police intrusion for evidence allowed


Knock, announce not always needed, high court rules


Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, June 16, 2006


Police who enter a home illegally without knocking and find incriminating evidence can use it in a trial, the U.S. Supreme Court declared Thursday, carving an important exception in the 45-year-old rule that keeps unlawfully seized evidence out of court.

In a 5-4 ruling, with new Justice Samuel Alito casting a crucial vote, the court said police intrusions on residential privacy are adequately restrained by several factors -- including "the increasing professionalism of police forces' -- without suppressing evidence that is obtained with a search warrant.

The reasons for requiring police to knock on the door, announce their presence and wait a reasonable period before entering "do not include the shielding of potential evidence from the government's eyes,' Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the majority opinion.

Those requirements -- part of English law since the 13th century, enacted as a U.S. statute in 1917 and declared a constitutional standard by the court in 1995 -- remain intact, Scalia said. But dissenters said the rule was now toothless.

"The court destroys the strongest legal incentive to comply with the Constitution's knock-and-announce requirement,' said Justice Stephen Breyer. "Officers will always know ... that they can ignore the knock-and-announce requirement without risking the suppression of evidence discovered after their unlawful entry.'

The case reflected the importance of President Bush's appointment of Alito to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who retired in January. No ruling was issued before she left, and with the court evidently deadlocked 4-4, the case was reargued after Alito was seated.

The ruling upheld the conviction of Booker Hudson of Detroit for possessing cocaine and a loaded gun that police found in his home in 1998. Officers went to the home with a warrant, announced their presence and waited three to five seconds before entering.

Past rulings have required police to wait at least 15 to 20 seconds before entering, allowing immediate entry only when officers have reason to fear that announcing their presence or waiting would lead to violence or the destruction of evidence.

A number of states, not including California, authorize search warrants that excuse police from knocking before entering if they convince a judge that announcing their presence would be dangerous.

The court said police entered Hudson's home too quickly but could nonetheless use the drugs and gun as evidence, because the warrant authorized them to take those items. Scalia said the purposes of the knock-and-announce requirement -- to avoid the indignities or potential violence that might result from a sudden entrance -- were unrelated to the seizure of the evidence against Hudson and would not be promoted if the evidence was suppressed.

Wayne State University law Professor David Moran, who represented Hudson before the court, said the same rationale could allow evidence from searches that violate the terms of a warrant -- for example, nighttime searches with warrants that specify daytime entries, or searches after a warrant has expired.

He also said a portion of the ruling signed by Scalia and three other justices, one short of a majority, "calls into question the legitimacy of Mapp,' the historic 1961 ruling that barred evidence seized in searches that violate constitutional standards.

That ruling, which aimed to deter police lawbreaking, has been scaled back by more conservative majorities in subsequent cases, most notably a 1984 ruling that allowed evidence from illegal searches that were conducted in good faith.

Scalia said much has changed since 1961, including the availability of new types of civil damage suits and increasing evidence that "police forces across the United States take the constitutional rights of citizens seriously,' reducing the need to suppress evidence.

But Moran said civil suits are meaningless -- most are dismissed because of government immunity, and no one has gotten more than $1 in token damages in the past 30 years, according to his research. And he said improvements in police training were a direct result of the 1961 ruling.

But Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, which filed arguments supporting the Michigan prosecutors, said those predictions are unfounded. He said the ruling indicates only that "the court is not inclined to expand rules suppressing evidence' and does not foreshadow a major rollback.

Dave LaBahn, executive director of the California District Attorneys Association, predicted that police in California still will knock before they enter. "It is a good officer safety procedure,' he said.

The case is Hudson vs. Michigan, 04-1360. E-mail Bob Egelko at [e-mail].


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