Pure speculation. You're assuming this ruling means that police have no need for a search warrant anymore. That they can target anyone they jolly well please on the flimsiest of excuses. But I think you're wrong in your interpretation of the decision. This decision means that when police are confronted with a crime (or have justifiable reason to think they are confronted with a crime) that they may not need a search warrant to abate the crime. But the litmus test is that they must have just cause AND they have to show they had not the time to obtain a search warrant in order to abate the crime. Those are difficult hurdles to overcome. This decision just doesn't create the totalitarianism police state people think it does. Otherwise the decision would not have been 8-1 with only a fruit cake dissenting.
I think the concern, and it's valid, is that the police will be emboldened to search without warrants due to these rulings. Going to the courts after the fact to make a claim against the government is costly and time consuming, so too many people won't bother. I mean, unless the courts grant huge sums of penalties as remedy, and I don't see that happening. In the exceptions I listed, we all benefit from the nuke not going off, no matter what the court decides later. In the case of smelling pot smoke, the cops will be violating the "home is one's castle" with little benefit to society and not a big deal what the courts decide later. Even worse, the cops can simply hassle anyone they want and for whatever actual reason, simply by claiming they smelled pot smoke. A judge is likely to believe the cops if it's a matter of he said/he said.
I think I'm still going to disagree even with the concern. I think the kool aid needs to be put away now. You've all had plenty enough to drink. Oh wait, there's a knock at my door and I hear muffled voices. Golly, I wonder who it could be....
This doesn't create a police state. It proves we already live in one. These are state supreme court justices, deliberately attacking our most basic Constitutional protections against a police state. It's clear you didn't read the ruling, as it is purposely so broad as to excuse illegal entry based on any flimsy reason offered. I predict 4 results from this, all bad for Indiana. 1. Certainly some police will be killed by innocent citizens protecting their homes from armed intrusions. 2. Law enforcement levies will fail to pass in Indiana at a record level. 3. Citizens charged under this law will be defended for free by the ACLU and numerous high profile defense attorneys who will appeal to the Federal courts and win 100% of the time. 4. Indiana will suffer additional economic woes from the publicity as nobody is going to want to live there.
Nonsense. This ruling says if police say they heard a toilet flush as they passed a door, they can break the door down and trash the place searching for drugs and use deadly force if the terrified homeowner resists the assault on his castle. The ruling is clearly the result of Alzheimers running rampant in our court system, which gives judges jobs for life without any mental fitness standard or review.
What other liberals? Ginsberg is the only remotely liberal judge on the court. The others are generally all moderate to extreme right, except for some personal issues they support.
You misread the decision. It doesn't say that it's OK if the entry is unlawful. And the state court didn't rule that unlawful entry is OK, either - it spoke to resisting arrest in the situation where there's unlawful entry.
In both decisions, the entry under question was clearly unlawful under the Constitution. It's pretty obvious the police (the lawbreakers here) concocted the pertinent parts of their story to create an implication of probable cause. The smell of pot outside an apartment building is no evidence at all against a single apartment. A toilet flushing is an ordinary occurrence in every home and cannot be credibly used as a "sound of evidence being destroyed". The courts said it was okay anyway. Clearly a police-state move, backed by police-state judges. Our Constitution is nothing more than a piece of paper until we replace these facists with "people".
There is a long series of cases involving the 4th amendment to protect police officers from physical harm when performing their duties. If the police are not given these protections, they'll shoot first and ask questions later. There are also numerous cases determining exigent circumstances, like the ones I mentioned earlier (no warrant needed to stop a beating occurring on the other side of a door). The opening post clearly states: “[We] hold that the right to reasonably resist an unlawful police entry into a home is no longer recognized under Indiana law,” the court ruled in the case of Richard L. Barnes v. Indiana. So the court clearly states the entry in question was unlawful. Thought that wasn't the question they were asked to rule upon. In the second case, the police chased a man they saw selling drugs on the street into the apartment complex. The man got into one of the apartments before the police could catch him. They determined which apartment it was from the smell and the sound of the toilet flushing over and over again as the evidence was being destroyed. They chose the wrong apartment, though, but caught people smoking pot, found other drugs and money (e.g. a drug dealer). If you read the rest of the Post article: The Kentucky court recognizes the police have the right to enter premises under emergency circumstances.
BTW, the same court that ruled 8-1 in the 2nd case also ruled 6-3 against the police in Lawrence v. Texas on 4th amendment grounds.
