Justices Ease Limits on Police Entry

A divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that police armed with a search warrant may rush into a house without giving a required warning to the occupants and may use the evidence they find there.

In a 5-4 decision, the court said it would be rash to bar evidence in a criminal trial simply because police did not wait long enough before entering, a technical violation of the “knock and announce” rule.

Criminals should not be handed a “get out of jail free card” in cases where the police have a valid search warrant, said Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the opinion for the majority.

The dissenters said the court’s ruling all but repealed a decision that had protected the privacy and dignity of homeowners.

New Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. cast the decisive vote. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor heard the case when it was argued in January but retired in February before the case was decided. At that point, the court was evenly split. The case was reargued when Alito replaced her, and he became the tie-breaker.

Until Thursday, the court had usually insisted that evidence be thrown out in cases where the police violate the Constitution’s ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures.” This so-called exclusionary rule was among the most controversial legal developments of the 1960s, and many law-and-order conservatives continue to chafe at it.

Scalia is among them. Suppressing evidence should be “our last resort, not our first impulse,” he said, and his opinion was joined in full by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Clarence Thomas and Alito.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy voted with the majority but wrote separately to emphasize that the exclusionary rule is “settled” and “not in doubt.” The issue in this case, Kennedy wrote, was whether the police’s failure to give a proper warning even when they had a valid warrant to enter a home, merited an extension of the exclusionary rule.

In 1995, the justices agreed unanimously that the 4th Amendment usually requires officers to knock on the door and call out “Police!” before they burst into a home. This rule helps ensure the safety of the police and the privacy of the residents, the court said then.

Officers have been advised in other cases that they should usually wait about 20 seconds after knocking and announcing their presence before trying to enter a house, but the court has said in past rulings that officers may move faster if they suspect residents are going to flush drugs down a toilet.

In the current case, Detroit police admitted they did not wait long before entering the home of Booker T. Hudson Jr.

They had obtained a search warrant to look for drugs and guns at his residence. On a summer afternoon in 1998, seven officers approached Hudson’s house and saw nothing unusual. Several called out “Police! Search warrant!” but less than five seconds later, the lead officer turned the doorknob and walked into the living room.

There sat Hudson with 23 bags that contained crack cocaine. Under the cushion of his chair, they also found a loaded revolver and five rocks of cocaine. Elsewhere in the house, police found more bags of drugs.

Hudson was charged with drug and gun crimes, but his lawyers urged the judge to suppress the evidence because police had violated the “knock and announce” rule.

A prosecutor agreed the police had violated the rule, and a trial judge suppressed the evidence. But the Michigan Supreme Court disagreed and said disallowing the evidence was “not an appropriate remedy” for such a violation.

Hudson appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed last year to hear his case.

Scalia said this was not an instance where police obtained evidence by breaking the law. They had a valid warrant to search for and seize the drugs. Since the homeowner’s privacy rights were not violated, “the exclusionary rule is inapplicable,” he said in Hudson vs. Michigan.

The four dissenters said the requirement to “knock and announce” will be meaningless if it can be ignored and the evidence used in court.

Thursday’s decision “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,” wrote Justice Stephen G. Breyer.

Scalia responded that people like Hudson still have recourse against the city and the police by suing them for violating their constitutional rights. He also pointed to the “increasing professionalism of police forces, including a new emphasis on internal police discipline.”

These checks, he suggested, will deter the police from being overly aggressive and reckless.

Breyer scoffed at this notion and insisted that the exclusionary rule was adopted because it was the only effective deterrent for misconduct by the police.

In 1914, the Supreme Court first announced the exclusionary rule but applied it only to federal agents who violated the Constitution. Even then, it was a disputed notion. Benjamin Cardozo, then a New York state judge, said in 1926 that “the criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered.”

The Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren gave this rule a national reach in 1961 when it said evidence must be suppressed when state and local police violate the 4th Amendment. Critics charged the Warren Court was too friendly to the rights of criminal defendants at the expense of law enforcement.

The high court has issued a mixed bag of rulings on the exclusionary rule in recent cases. The justices have given police more leeway to search cars and their passengers, but they have usually held the line against searches of homes without a warrant.

In March, the court ruled the police had violated the rights of a Georgia homeowner who disagreed with his wife and refused to consent to their entering his residence. In that 5-3 decision, Kennedy sided with the court’s liberal faction.

Last month, the justices in a 9-0 decision said police may enter a home without a warrant to break up a fight in progress.