Your Home Is The GOVERNMENT'S Castle

Justices: Cops with warrant don't have to knock

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.

The outcome might have been different if O’Connor were still on the bench. She seemed ready, when the case was first argued in January, to rule in favor of Booker Hudson, whose house was searched in 1998.

O’Connor had worried aloud that officers around the country might start bursting into homes to execute search warrants. She asked: “Is there no policy of protecting the home owner a little bit and the sanctity of the home from this immediate entry?”

In a dissent, four justices complained that the decision erases more than 90 years of Supreme Court precedent.

“It weakens, perhaps destroys, much of the practical value of the Constitution’s knock-and-announce protection,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for himself and the three other liberal members.

Full Article, MSNBC, June 15, 2006