COURT GIVES SEARCH LATITUDE

Gamble Rogers, the late Florida folksinger and story-teller, used to
spin a hilarious tale about the execution of what he called an
"Alabama search warrant." That, Rogers would say, is when the sheriff
stands at the front door and knocks, whereupon the deputy standing at
the back door yells "Come on in!"

But now the U.S. Supreme Court has spun a different kind of
knock-knock joke, albeit not nearly so amusing. In this one, the
sheriff doesn't even have to bother to knock. Just shout "Police!"
and burst through the door.

The Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches of
one's home simply doesn't mean much anymore. That's because this
court seems less committed to protecting the constitutional rights of
Americans than expanding the already fearsome authority of government
to intrude upon our privacy.

In deciding, on a 5-4 vote, that police executing search warrants no
longer have much incentive to observe a "knock-and-announce" rule
that has its roots in 13th-century English common law, the court has
fairly gutted the constitutional right of Americans to feel secure in
the privacy of their own homes.

Indeed, so far as Justice Antonin Scalia, author of the majority
opinion, is concerned, all that Fourth Amendment expectation really
boiled down to was "the right not to be intruded upon in one's
nightclothes." Reduced to such triviality, it was certainly not
deemed to be of significant weight to offset the government's right
to send squads of masked SWAT officers into private homes in the dead
of night in search of evidence of criminal activity.

While officers are at least theoretically subject to punishment for
improperly executing a search warrant, this decision for all
practical purposes voids the "exclusionary rule" that prohibits the
prosecution from using evidence that was seized illegally. That rule
is the best incentive for officers to conduct searches within the
confines of the law, because the fruits of the illegal search are of
no value. The ruling is a disturbing indication that this new Supreme
Court majority has a frightening bias toward government authoritarianism.

When even the formality of an "Alabama search warrant" is no longer
deemed necessary, is the Fourth Amendment still worth the parchment
it was printed on?