COURT DEALS MORTAL BLOW TO PRIVACY

Last month, the United States Supreme Court, in an 8-1 decision in the
case of Kentucky v. King, told the police in our nation that they may
break into a home without a warrant if they believe that the occupants
might be in the act of destroying evidence.

Only Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg realized that this might be the last
nail in the coffin of one of the most important personal protections
left for Americans. While the politicians in Washington are fiddling
away our economic security, the Supreme Court has lit a match that
will burn up what is left of the right of privacy and the Fourth
Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

While the tax-avoiding patriots were dumping taxable tea in the harbor
at Boston, men like Patrick Henry and John Adams were more concerned,
and rightly so, with the loss of personal liberties in the Colonies.

Perhaps none of the "protective" amendments to the U.S. Constitution
has as much connection with the events leading up to the American
Revolution against England and its king than does the Fourth Amendment.

This amendment, more than all of the other "Bill of Rights," is
directly associated with specific acts that led, ultimately, to the
call for a complete break from England and for the establishment of a
separate nation.

Perhaps the most succinct observation about the dichotomy between
those who see a continuing erosion of the Fourth Amendment and those
who see it as an impediment to law enforcement officers and
prosecutors can be found in a more reasoned Supreme Court decision
from 1948. In that opinion, the court stated:

"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by
zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of
the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence ... [it
demands that] the right of privacy must reasonably yield to the right
of search is, as a rule, to be decided by a judicial officer, not by a
policeman or government enforcement agent."

In February 1761 in Boston, there was a widely publicized debate over
the issuance of general, limitless search warrants called Writs of
Assistance. James Otis, a lawyer in Colonial Massachusetts, in a
famous 1761 debate, condemned the use of these general search
warrants, declaring them to be untenable in a land of free men.

But he did make a suggestion that later formed the basis for part of
the Fourth Amendment. He suggested that any lawful searches be made
only pursuant to warrants that contained explicit restrictions as to
where the search was to take place and to the objects of the search,
and that the warrants be issued only upon the making of specific oaths
by the person seeking to carry out the search.

Patrick Henry followed the news reports of the debate over the use of
these general search warrants (those authorizing searches at any time
the holder of the search warrant deemed it necessary to search
someone's home or business) and he also argued against the abuses of
such writs of assistance.

In 1778, during the constitutional debates before passage of the Bill
of Rights, he argued for congressional consideration of a series of
amendments to the constitution, one of which guaranteed the security
of the citizenry against unreasonable government searches. This
proposed amendment quite clearly presupposed that an "unreasonable"
search could be avoided only by use of a warrant, and only if that
warrant met certain standards.

After the adoption of the Fourth Amendment there appeared to be a
general understanding of the nature and extent of the protections
afforded citizens from searches without proper judicial warrants.

Up until the Supreme Court's decision in Kentucky v. King, there was a
general acknowledgment that the Fourth Amendment is a living creation
with the ability to adapt its protections to new and ever-changing
technology. Despite some erosion of the historical protections found
in the Bill of Rights, there has been the hope that the Supreme Court
would continue to regard the Fourth Amendment as necessary to protect
citizens from the government.

Unfortunately, eight members of the present Supreme Court have decided
that the Fourth Amendment is nothing more than a historical relic that
has outlived its welcome in our "free" society.