More from Kennedy:

Today’s decision does not address any demonstrated pattern of knock-and-announce violations. If a widespread pattern of violations were shown, and particularly if those violations were committed against persons who lacked the means or voice to mount an effective protest, there would be reason for grave concern.

Well, there most certainly is a pattern of violations, though Kennedy here is talking about cases in which police violated a warrant that did not call for a no-knock raid. Excluded, then, would be cases in which a court issued a no-knock warrant, but due to errors in procedure, bad tips from informants, or other miscues, police then burst in on the wrong home, or burst in on the right home, but the homeowner mistook them for criminal intruders, and attempted to defend himself.

Still, Kennedy is mistaken. The defense counsel did provide a long list of no-knock violations, as was indicated in Breyer’s dissent.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 15th, 2006 at 12:22 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.