Georgia Criminal Law Blog

Today the United States Supreme Court decided Hudson v. Michigan (Slip opinion 04-1360).  The opinion was authored by Justice Scalia in four parts.  Thomas, Alito, Roberts concurred with all four parts, while Kennedy concurred with only parts One, two and three and concurred in Judgment.  Breyer filed a dissent which Stevens, Souter and Ginsburg joined.

It is a 51 page opinion, so it doesn’t exactly qualify as “light reading.”  Here is my extremely “boiled down” summary.

The majority has taken a combination historical and societal interest approach in deciding this case.  They weigh the societal interest in not letting off criminals against the deterrent effect of the exclusionary rule on law enforcement.  Scalia says,

“the grave adverse consequence that excluding relevant incriminating evidence always entails the risk of releasing dangerous criminals. Imposing such a massive remedy would generate a constant flood of alleged failures to observe the rule, and claims that any asserted justification for a no-knock entry had inadequate support. Another consequence would be police officers refraining from timely entry after knocking and announcing, producing preventable violence against the officers in some cases, and the destruction of evidence in others.”

The majority opines that there is not much need for deterrence in this arena because where an officer has a reasonable suspicion to believe that destruction of evidence will take place or that life-threatening resistance will result, the knock-and-announce requirement is not required anyway.  They say that deterrence can be achieved through civil rights suits, internal police investigation and increasing police professionalism.

The dissent authored by Justice Breyer is very lengthy and can be summed up better by Breyer himself, rather than me:

“In Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U. S. 927 (1995), a unanimous Court held that the Fourth Amendment normally requires law enforcement officers to knock and announce their presence before entering a dwelling. Today’s opinion holds that evidence seized from a home following a violation of this requirement need not be suppressed As a result, the Court destroys the strongest legal incentive to comply with the Constitution’s knock-and-announce requirement. And the Court does so without significant support in precedent. At least I can find no such support in the many Fourth Amendment cases the Court has decided in the near century since it first set forth the exclusionary principle in Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383 (1914). See Appendix, infra. Today’s opinion is thus doubly troubling. It represents a significant departure from the Court’s precedents. And it weakens, perhaps destroys, much of the practical value of the Constitution’s knock-and-announce protection. “

For more analysis, go see SCOTUS Blog.

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