This just in...
Here we go:
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that police armed with a warrant can barge into homes and seize evidence even if they don't knock, a huge government victory that was decided by President Bush's new justices.
-snip-
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, said Detroit police acknowledge violating that rule when they called out their presence at a man's door then went inside three seconds to five seconds later.
"Whether that preliminary misstep had occurred or not, the police would have executed the warrant they had obtained, and would have discovered the gun and drugs inside the house," Scalia wrote.
But suppressing evidence is too high of a penalty, Scalia said, for errors by police in failing to properly announce themselves.
I'm currently living in New York City, and I also worked here briefly last summer, when in the wake of a terrorist scare, the police implemented random bag searches on the subway. These searches, to my chagrin, have continued, I suppose, since last summer to the present.
While I have a visceral distaste for these services, I'm hard pressed to think of an alternative. Obviously the threat to the subway system is dire, and something needs to be done. However, these searches, and the above, strike me as invasive and potentially unconstitutional.
What are your thoughts on this? I'm struggling with an answer to this, as I'm dealing with it every day. You can refuse to be searched, I believe, but then the flip side is that you are expelled from the subway. So... if you want to get to work, you better prepare to be searched. If you haven't got anything to hide, you shouldn't have anything to worry about, right?
Lay it down - what does the Fourth Amendment mean in our modern society? How narrowly (or widely) should it be interpreted?
posted by Kevin @ 12:34 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
So basically, I think the random searches are more of a problem than the search warrant. When the police get a search warrant, they have ample reason to suspect that something illegal is going on in the house, or that there is evidence of it. The process of obtaining a search warrant is very well documented, so any irregularity there should be pretty easily spotted. So I don't think having to knock or not is that big a deal.
With random searches, it's harder to monitor. people may be getting profiled, and it's very decentralized.
On the other hand, the government is providing this good, and if you don't want to take it, you don't have to.
Frankly, I'm more worried about phone tapping and library records than either of these things you brought up.
As Dave will tell you, I don't actually believe this. We talked about these things in our political philosophy class, and I pretty much followed your line of argument. I was kinda trying to give the other side of the debate. That said, I still do have a bigger problem with the items mentioned above than subway searches.
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