{"id":517,"date":"2006-06-15T09:13:18","date_gmt":"2006-06-15T16:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/?p=517"},"modified":"2006-06-15T11:24:59","modified_gmt":"2006-06-15T18:24:59","slug":"scotus-shift-toward-law-and-order","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/2006\/06\/15\/scotus-shift-toward-law-and-order\/","title":{"rendered":"SCOTUS Shift Toward Law and Order"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a decision today, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 in favor of law and order over a whining (and guilty) perpetrator. Thanks to President Bush<\/strong> for his appointments of Justices Roberts <\/strong>and Alito<\/strong>, both of whom voted in favor of the ruling. The dark side of the court, now in the minority thanks to the departure of Justice O’Connor<\/strong>, all voted against this important step in ultimately letting justice prevail.<\/p>\n

Of course, The Associated Press <\/strong>is whining about it (emphasis added):<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that police armed with a warrant can barge into homes and seize evidence<\/em> even if they don’t knock, a huge government victory that was decided by President Bush’s new justices<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The 5-4 ruling signals the court’s conservative shift <\/em>following the departure of moderate Sandra Day O’Connor.<\/p>\n

The case tested previous court rulings that police armed with warrants generally must knock and announce themselves or they run afoul of the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

But suppressing evidence is too high of a penalty<\/em>, Scalia said, for errors by police in failing to properly announce themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We should all be thankful that the court is finally ruling against criminal behavior when technicalities are involved. In Justice Scalia’s (and the rest of the majority’s) opinion, capriciously forgiving criminal behavior because of minor errors is, in itself, an injustice<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a decision today, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 in favor of law and order over a whining (and guilty) perpetrator. Thanks to President Bush for...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-judiciary","category-law-and-order"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}