The erosion of our constitutional rights that many predicted would happen with the departure of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor from the Supreme Court has begun.
Yesterday, SCOTUS (the Supreme Court of the United States)
essentially ruled that it’s OK if police don’t follow the current search and seizure rules to the letter — courts will now be allowed to admit evidence that was seized even if police don’t follow the letter of the law, taking a chunk out of the long-standing exclusionary rule. It should be no surprise that the opinion was penned by ultra-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, a long-time advocate of loosening up evidence gathering restrictions on the police.
The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution is supposed to protect us from unreasonable searches and seizures. But now, thanks to Scalia and the majority in the 5 to 4 opinion that included Justices Roberts, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy, police who have a warrant to come into your house, only have to knock and wait a few seconds before they knock down the door and come in after you. While Kennedy wrote a separate opinion stating that he did not believe this would have a major impact on the current state of the exclusionary rule, I think he’s kidding himself. Some say Justice Alito is even more amenable to giving the police more leeway, so that doesn’t bode well.
Basically, Scalia says it’s more important to catch the bad guys than it is to protect our civil liberties. For those who say this doesn’t sound so bad, think of it as the first little slide down that slippery slope of how much the government can do to infringe on your personal freedoms. You know that famous Miranda warning all the bad guys get on Law & Order and all those other cop shows? That could be out the door next if the justices continue to follow the logic of yesterday’s ruling in Hudson v. Michigan.
Complaining about SCOTUS isn’t going to help save our constitutional rights. The only way to change things is to elect a president who will appoint justices to the court who aren’t inclined to eviscerate and reverse decades of established law — people who really give credence to precedent, and not just lip-service. I fear that our laws are going to be seriously trampled in the next few years if John McCain of some other ultra-conservative Republican takes the White House in 2008. Our only recourse is electing someone who respects the law more than their own personal ideology.
Fri, June 16, 2006
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