Kennedy’s concurring opinion is particularly slithery.

First, the knock-and-announce requirement protects rights and expectations linked to ancient principles in our constitutional order. See Wilson v. Ar- kansas, 514 U. S. 927, 934 (1995). The CourtÂ’’s decision should not be interpreted as suggesting that violations of the requirement are trivial or beyond the law’Â’s concern.

Except that (1) by eliminating the only real penalty for violating knock-and-announce, the court had in fact violations of the rule both “trivial” and “beyond the Court’s concern.” If you establish that a rule is grounded in the Fourth Amendment, then 11 years later remove the only real way to enforce that rule, you have rendered the rule meaningless.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 15th, 2006 at 12:14 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.