Court Backs Evidence Found in “Knock-Announce” Case
Justices’ 5-4 Decision Narrows Exclusionary Rule in Police Searches

DNA Evidence Cited in High court Ruling
Expect More Innocence Claims to Come, Experts Say

Court Backs Evidence Found in “Knock-Announce” Case
Justices’ 5-4 Decision Narrows Exclusionary Rule in Police Searches

The U.S. Supreme Court limited the time-honored exclusionary rule when it held that evidence seized in a home search may continue to be used for trial even after police failed to “knock and announce” before entering. Hudson v. Michigan, No. 04-1360.

Now that Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. has replaced Sandra Day O’Connor the 5-4 decision also underlines the change in the make-up of the court. After Alito joined the court, hinting at a 4-4 split among the justices in the wake of O’Connor’s departure, Hudson was one of two cases reargued this term. Alito tilted the decision toward more restrictive use of the exclusionary rule elaborated in the majority opinion of Justice Antonin Scalia. 

Scalia wrote, the Knock-and-Announce Rule in which police are required to wait before entering a suspect’s residence, “has never protected one’s interest in preventing the government from seeing or taking evidence described in a (search) warrant. “The exclusionary rule is inapplicable since, the interests that were violated in this case have nothing to do with the seizure of evidence.” The exclusionary rule – which evidence is suppressed if, law enforcement agents violate a defendant’s constitutional rights – “ has always been our last resort, not our first impulse.”

Many state and federal courts hold that suppression remains the appropriate remedy for violations of the “Knock-and-Announce” rule, although Michigan Supreme Court among others has carved out an exception. The exception allows for the introduction of evidence that would have been inevitably discovered regardless of the constitutional violation. And, while suppression has been looked upon as a deterrent, Scalia directed it to a more sophisticated and professional police forces and, too civil litigation as alternative curbs on improper police tactics.

David A. Moran, who represented Hudson on appeal says as a result of Thursday’s Opinion, that its likely police across the nation will stop knocking and announcing before entering. Moran, a Law Professor at Detroit’s Wayne State University says “I suspect the Knock-and-Announce Rule will become a joke”. “No longer can Americans expect that they have the chance to answer the door in a dignified manner.” On the other hand, prosecutors says Scalia’s opinion represents a “common sense” approach to executing warrants.

Hudson was prosecuted by Chief of Appeals Timothy A. Baughman with the Wayne County, Michigan Prosecutor’s Office. He says law enforcement there will not change their search policies and, that evidence in the case did not come from police failing to wait long enough to enter the residence. Baughman argued the case before the court stated that “the evidence found was the fruit of the warrant”. And, “that the only way you can say there was a causal connection between the discovery of drugs and, (the police) failure to wait is if the purpose of waiting is to allow the people inside a reasonable chance to destroy or hide the drugs.”

In 1998, police entered Booker T. Hudson, Jr., was arrested in his Detroit home with a search warrant. Police admitted that they violated the “Knock-and-Announce” requirement of waiting a few seconds before entering when they found the door was unlocked. Inside Hudson’s pocket was five rocks of crack cocaine that was found by officers; other drugs and a gun as discovered elsewhere in the home. He was charged with possession of cocaine with intent to deliver and, illegal firearm possession. After, a bench trial, a Wayne County Circuit Court Judge sentenced Hudson to 18 months probation for cocaine that was found inside his pocket. 

Scalia wrote, had police waited to enter the residence, they still would have executed the warrant and, found drugs and guns in Hudson’s home. It was also noted by Scalia that the “Knock-and-Announce” rule is intended to prevent violence from surprised search targets.

Concurred and, in writing by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy that police ignoring privacy rights is a serious matter. He also, urged legislatures to create new laws if, it appears that police are not following the Knock-and-Announce Policy. “Today’s decision does not address any demonstrated pattern of Knock-and-Announce violations, as he wrote. “If, a widespread pattern of violations were shown, particularly if, those violations were committed against persons who lacked means or, voice to mount an effective protest there would be reason for grave concern.”

Justice Stephen G. Breyer in a 27-page dissent scolded the majority for overturning decades of case law. “There may be instances in the law where text or history or tradition leaves room for a judicial decision that rests upon little more than an unvarnished judicial instinct. But, Breyer wrote, this is not one of them. “Rather, our Fourth Amendment traditions place high value upon protecting privacy in the home.”

Breyer was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The dissent included an appendix listing 41 cases decided since 1914 – when the Supreme Court first adopted the exclusionary rule (Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383) – requiring the suppression of evidence seized from a private residence after an illegal arrest or search.

John Wesley Hall, a Little Rock, Arkansas Criminal Defense Lawyer, who argued a 1995 Knock-and-Announce case before the Supreme Court says that while preparing the appeal he came across reports of police shot during raids. “It was never mentioned whether they knocked, they just barged in.” This opinion is just going to lead to more violence, and, blood will be on the supreme Court’s hands. Apparently, in the Supreme Court, life is cheap.”

The majority also, questions Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, the 1961 opinion in which the Supreme Court applied the exclusionary rule to the states, according to Moran.

His Co-Counsel Steven R. Shapiro, a New York City-based American Civil Liberties Union Lawyer agrees. “There are valid reasons to be concerned with how this court will approach Fourth Amendment issues,” “The language in Scalia’s opinion for a broader attack on the exclusionary rule, not just in the knock-and-announce context.”

Timothy Lynch, Director of the Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice authored an Amicus Brief on Hudson’s behalf. He says, in the past decade, unannounced searches have increased. The D.C. Lawyer says “there’s been a disturbing trend going on in Law Enforcement with paramilitary-type raids that are very aggressive.” The courts had an opportunity to put on brakes by saying “slow things down, but they didn’t”. This rule was weakening and, our fear is that the brake which was needed has not been applied.”

Joshua K. Marquis, Vice President of the National District Attorney’s Association says, while citizens do have a right to be notified before police enter their residence, they do not have a right to possess illegal drugs. “There’s a right to be free of unreasonable searches and, seizures, not reasonable searches and seizures,” says Marquis, the district attorney of Clatsop County, Oregon. “There are cases where police have broken down someone’s door, entered some innocent person’s home and, violence ensued. That’s not the circumstance here.” “Hudson demonstrates the court basing an opinion on common sense rather than the minutiae of police procedure.

Marquis says, “the goal in our system is to apply the Constitution to the facts, to best enable the jury to know the truth. “Its not a game, if, the police don’t stomp their feet three times and, circle to the left they can’t serve a warrant.”

Kennedy noted, in his concurrence, that civil remedies are available if, police violate Knock-and-Announce rules. Defense Lawyers however, say such filings are rare. Few actual damages result from searches and, in cases where a plaintiff was convicted, jurors would have little sympathy.

Moran asks, “if you sue the police, they’ll probably pay for your door, but what is the damage for being barged in on when you’re in the shower or, being terrified? The problem is the damages tend to be very unattainable. “No one nationwide has every won anything other than one dollar.
  

DNA Evidence Cited in High court Ruling
Expect More Innocence Claims to Come, Experts Say
 
The U.S. Supreme court gave inmate Paul Gregory House a new lease on life on a Monday after spending 20 years on death row for a murder “he says he didn’t commit” still has an uphill battle on his hands. House v. Bell, No. 04-8990.

This was the first case to come before a court 5-3 decision that gives House’s case a boost that has legal significance that goes far beyond this case: DNA evidence was not available to the courts at the time of conviction to support a claim of innocence.
Paul Rothstein, Georgetown University Law Professor says, “there will undoubtedly be many more cases like this now that DNA testing becoming a rountine part of criminal investigations.

Sufficient doubt was raised about House’s guilt to warrant a new hearing in Federal Court on his claim of innocence by the majority opinion justice Anthony M. Kennedy for the murder of a neighbor in 1985, who was sentenced to death in 1986.

As a rule, in general, Inmates that fail to raise any legal issues in their state appeals that they didn’t raise in their federal appeals are barred. An exception, by the courts has been carved out for newly discovered evidence of actual innocence to prevent the occurrence of what is called “manifest injustice.”

House would have to prove not only that his constitutional rights were violated, but the probable outcome would have been different except for the violation.

Rothstein says, “the House decision helps clarify the standard for federal habeas review of an inmate’s claims that would otherwise be foreclosed when an inmate has exhausted his state court remedies. And, that the standard the court set is subjective, the decision is clear that it’s not impossible to meet, as some lower courts have held.” The standard favored by Rothstein to “an abiding feeling in the gut” that a prisoner may be innocent. Rothstein says, the decision also keeps alive the hope that an innocent person cannot be executed, even if he or she had a fair trial. The exception previously carved out by the court applies only to inmates who claim their constitutional rights were violated at trial. But, for the inmates who may be innocent but had a fair trial, it doesn’t apply.

The court has never explicitly held that executing an innocent person would be unconstitutional. Although it was suggested in as much in the 1993 decision Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390, but it warned then that the “threshold showing” for an inmate who tried would “necessarily be extraordinarily high.”

The court, two years later, in Schlup v. Delo, 513 U.S. 298, addressed again a claim of actual innocence within the context of the death penalty. Only, this time it held that a Federal court may consider the merits of a procedurally defaulted habeas claim if, a prisoner offers newly discovered evidence showing that no reasonable juror, more likely than not would have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. 

Even though the case against House was circumstantial, prosecutors claimed that House, a paroled rapist from Utah, murdered 29 year old Carolyn Muncey, a mother of two and, a neighbor, in the course of a rape. Two witnesses, at his trial, claimed they saw House walking on a road near the spot where the body was found later. Evidence was also presented in those pre-DNA days where the semen on the victim’s housecoat and underwear came from someone with Type A blood and, was also a secretor, the same as House. The jeans that belonged to House was found with bloodstains, not of his but, that was consistent with the victim’s blood.

DNA testing (twelve years later) was not available at the time of the murder showed that Muncey’s clothing was found with semen from the victims husband, Hubert, who lied about his whereabouts on the night of the murder and, shortly before she disappeared, he had been seen arguing with her on the parking lot of a dance hall. It was stated by two witnesses that came forward to say that Muncey had confessed drunkenly to have killed his wife during an argument. House sought to show that the blood on his jeans had come from samples taken from the victim at the time of her autopsy.

In 1999, ruled by a federal in Knoxville, Tenn., that House didn’t fall within the “actual innocence” exception for procedurally defaulted claims outlined in Schlup. In 2004, the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a sharply divided en banc ruling affirmed the District Court’s denial of House’s appeal. In the court’s opinion, the majority conceded that House had made a colorable claim of actual innocence, but said the case against him remained strong. 

The court was asked by House to rule that death row inmates with particularly strong claims of innocence should be allowed to raise them even if, they have no other legal claims to make or have exhausted their appeals. The court didn’t go that far.

It was said by Kennedy that there was still enough evidence against House to support an inference of guilt. But, he also stated that the central forensic proof connecting House to the crime – the blood on his jeans and the semen on the victim’s clothes – had been questioned. He also noted that House had put forth “substantial evidence” pointing to the victim’s husband as the killer.

He wrote “accordingly, and although the issue is close, we conclude that this is the rare case where – had the jury heard all of the conflicting testimony – it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror viewing the record as a whole would lack reasonable doubt.”
However, the three dissenting justices stated the majority should have given more deference to the factual findings of the district court. They also stated the evidence, taken as a whole, suggests that at least one juror, acting reasonably, would vote to convict house.

“The majority essentially disregards the district court’s role in assessing the reliability of House’s new evidence.” Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., wrote in a dissent joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. “By casting aside the District Court’s factual determinations made after a comprehensive evidentiary hearing, the majority has done little more than reiterate the factual disputes presented below”:

Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., did not participate in the decision, who joined the court after the case was argued.

Knoxville, Tenn., Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Kissinger, House’s representative, says he couldn’t be happier with the court’s decision, which he likened to a declaration that his client is innocent. All Kissinger has to do now he says, is convince a judge that his clients’ constitutional rights were violated, he believes this can be done fairly easily. Kissinger also stated “with the exception of the DNA, a lot of this evidence was either available at the time of trial and, should have either been turned over by the state or developed by trial counsel.

State Representative for Tennessee’s Associate Deputy Attorney General Jennifer Smith, says she is disappointed with the majority opinion, “misdirected.”
And, she agrees completely with the thrust of the chief justice’s dissent, as she says, better explains the state’s position than she could. “We think our case is very strong” and, “we feel very strongly that the conviction is proper and, the evidence supports it,” she says.


California Deputy Attorney General Ward Campbell wrote an amicus brief in support of Tennessee on behalf of fourteen (14) other death penalty states including his own, stating he’s just thankful that the court didn’t flat-out declare that House is innocent. Campbell says, the rest of the majority opinion is just “a fact-intensive application of long-standing doctrine which doesn’t add much to existing death penalty jurisprudence.”

The ABA filed an amicus brief on House’s behalf,urges the court to adopt a standard for evaluating the merits of actual innocence claims that would otherwise be procedurally barred. No particular standard was suggested, but said the standard should be “robust enough” to fairly evaluate nonfrivolous claims on the merits.