Police don't have to knock, CNN article

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Arguably defective knock and announce?? No, not arguably, I repeat:

There was never an argument by anyone (except you) that the knock and Announce was defective.

I don't think that given the circumstances that it was defective, but Michigan chose not to argue that point.

Note that the opinion observes that there's endless potential argument down that path (if five seconds after the announce isn't enough, is six? How about seven? How many knocks do there have to be? Is one enough? Two?)

Have you ever argued with a five year old? Anytime there is a secondary gain to them from extending debate with you, once you legitimize that there's something at issue there will be no end to the arguing. Hudson didn't give a shit about privacy or dignity here, that could indeed be addressed with a civl suit. What Hudson wanted here--his secondary gain--was a walk on the gun and the drugs, he could care less about your front door or whether you get your pants on when the cops serve a warrant, even though those are the very interests protected by knock-and-announce.

Because it presented a cleaner case, Michigan's strategy was to simply argue that the remedy demanded by Hudson was inappropriate even if they stipulate knock-and-announce was defective. The Court agreed. I do too.

As you can see from the cites, the exclusionary rule has always been subject to competing interests, it isn't suddenly somehow crippled by this opinion.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I agree Hudson was looking for the get out of jail free card.

What bothers me is Scalia's statements:

"As far as we know, civil liability is an effective deterrent here, as we have assumed it is in other contexts."

and

Massive deterrence is hardly necessary. Contrary to Hudson’s argument that without suppression there will be no deterrence, many forms of police misconduct are deterred by civil-rights suits, and by the consequences of increasing professionalism of police forces, including a new emphasis on internal police discipline.

These statement sound like a man living in a world where if you are suspected of doing something wrong, they call your lawyer and set up an appointment to question you at your convenience.

For those of us in the alternate reality, cops are people.
They make mistakes.
Most are A type personalities.
Some of them are plain mean.
They cover each others backs as a matter of course.

I feel they should be held accountable for violating the law and my rights.
I also feel that won't happen if there's no penalty for not doing so.

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

I feel they should be held accountable for violating the law and my rights.
I also feel that won't happen if there's no penalty for not doing so.

There's a big space between "no penalty" and whipping out the exclusionary rule to release felons any time the cops didn't wait "long enough" between announcing and opening an unlocked door to execute a search warrant.

There's gotta be a balancing done between the egregiousness of the police behavior and the harm of excluding the evidence, and that's what this opinion says. Alito didn't say that the other remedies should be the only recourse, he said Hudson's claim that there was no other recourse than giving Hudson an exclusionary rule walk was bogus, and cited the other recourses as counterexamples. To carp that the other recourses are insufficient to an unjustified warrantless no-knock door-crashing crisis entry with tear gas and flashbangs is to sign up for Hudson's theory that it's either toss all the evidence every time there's a complaint or nothing. Nothing Alito said supports discarding the exclusionary rule.