Fourth Amendment Enforced By Appeals Court

This seems like a good ruling to me.

The 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the decision to allow the drugs and gun as evidence against Darnell Ellis, who was sentenced to nearly six years in prison, according to the ruling released this week. “The problem in this case is that the officers and agents lacked a warrant when they approached the home and utilized tactics that, if allowed to go unchecked, would eliminate the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement for a home with any connection to drugs,” the opinion written by Appeals Court Judge Michael Kanne says.

[...]

According to the opinion, the case started with a drug deal between a federal informant and another man. Agents watched the transaction March 21, 2005, and followed the man’s suspected supplier to a house in the 3700 block of N. 40th St. The man wouldn’t identify his supplier, so five officers and agents went to the house for a “knock and talk,” where officers try to get into a home without a search warrant by getting the occupant’s consent.

Besides knowing the suspected supplier went there, officers knew a man who lived there in the past had two drug convictions, but they had no other basis for probable cause.

The uniformed officers knocked and asked Ellis, 27, if they could come in because they were investigating a missing child, which was a lie. Ellis said he didn’t live in the house, also a lie, and refused to let them in.

An officer at a side door said he heard running on stairs in the house and concluded someone was trying to destroy drugs, calling that out to the others. They broke down the door and found cocaine residue. Then they got a warrant signed by a state judge, searched more and found a gun and 2.5 kilograms of cocaine.

The appeals court found that people running inside a house surrounded by police wasn’t enough to conclude drugs were being destroyed.

1. I concur. There wasn’t any probable cause and no one was in imminent danger. Lying to get a person’s consent to search is also a problem. I wonder what factor that played in the appellate decision.

   Posted by Peter on August 30, 2007 at 2246 hrs




2. If the cops had played by the rules, and the evidence had gotten flushed, there’d be five and half fewer pounds of marching powder in the city, which is the outcome society wanted in the first place.

   In the long run, the only answer is to learn enough about the dopamine re-uptake system that anyone could safely use coke as the delicacy it should be, New Year’s Eve and the third night of the honeymoon, without ending up putting their kid’s college fund up their nose.

   Posted by triticale on August 31, 2007 at 0450 hrs




3. Spot on. I think the pendulum is finally starting to swing the other way with the way the war on drugs has made assaults on the Bill of Rights.

   Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 31, 2007 at 0816 hrs




4. Lying to get a person’s consent to search is also a problem.

   I tend to agree with this.  Although, I also would agree that the government’s ability to catch criminals would be seriously hampered if they were not allowed to lie.

   The problem I have is that it’s illegal for me to lie to the government, even if I’m doing nothing wrong.  Why is that?

   Posted by David on August 31, 2007 at 1041 hrs




5. The problem I have is that it’s illegal for me to lie to the government, even if I’m doing nothing wrong.  Why is that?

   Law enforcement walks a fine line over the issue of entrapment. Look at all the trouble NBC’s Dateline is in with To Catch A Predator right now. That stuff makes good TV but encouraging people to break the law just to catch them bothers me.

   As far as sting operations and putting law enforcement officers undercover in criminal operations, I don’t consider that lying.

   Here, the cops basically went up to the guy’s house and lied in order to get inside.

   Posted by Peter on August 31, 2007 at 1115 hrs




6. The officers simply forgot to declare the suspects “enemy combatants.”  That would’ve taken care of all those pesky 4th Amendment obstacles.

   hiho
   Mp

   Posted by Mpeterson on August 31, 2007 at 2258 hrs




7. They’ll lie to get in but somehow they won’t lie about what they find?

   Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on September 01, 2007 at 0051 hrs




8. Enemy combatants aren’t US citizens and as such don’t have the protection of the US Constitution no matter how much you bastards on the Left want to extend the protection of that document to people who want to kill us ... take some toilet paper and wipe the s*** out from between your ears.

   Posted by Peter on September 02, 2007 at 1606 hrs