Late last month, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam signed a bill into
law that bans “no-knock” warrants and nullifies the impact of
several Supreme Court opinions in practice and effect.
Del. Dan Helmer (D-Fairfax) introduced House Bill 5099 (HB5099) on Aug.
20. The new law prohibits any Virginia law-enforcement officer from
seeking, executing, or participating in the execution of a no-knock
search warrant. Under the law, all search warrants must be executed
by an officer “recognizable and identifiable as a uniformed
law-enforcement officer.”
Police must provide “audible notice” of their authority and
purpose “reasonably expected to be heard by occupants of such
place to be searched prior to the execution of such search
warrant.”
All warrants must be executed during the day, “unless (i) a
judge or magistrate, if a judge is not available, authorizes the
execution of such search warrant at another time for good cause
shown.” The new law also requires officers to provide a copy of
the warrant to the owner or occupant of the place after the search
is complete.
Any evidence gathered in violation of the law will be
inadmissible in court.
The House gave final approval to HB5099 by a 56-41
vote. The Senate passed the bill in its final form 22-16. Gov.
Northam signed the bill on Oct. 28 and it will go into effect on
March 1, 2021.
Nullifying the Supreme Court
Passage of HB5099 effectively nullifies and make irrelevant
Supreme Court opinions that give police across the U.S. legal cover
for conducting no-knock raids.
In the 1995 case�Wilson
v. Arkansas, the Supreme Court established that police must
peacefully knock, announce their presence, and allow time for the
occupants to open the door before entering a home to serve a
warrant. But the Court allowed for “exigent circumstanceâ€
exceptions if police fear violence, if the suspect is a flight
risk, or if officers fear the suspect will destroy evidence.
As journalist Radley
Balko notes, police utilized this exception to the fullest
extent, “simply declaring in search warrant affidavits
that all drug dealers are a threat to dispose of evidence,
flee or assault the officers at the door.â€
The SCOTUS eliminated this blanket exception in Richards
v. Wisconsin (1997) requiring police to show why a
specific individual is a threat to dispose of evidence, commit an
act of violence or flee from police. But even with the opinion, the
bar for obtaining a no-knock warrant remains low.
“In order to justify a ‘no-knock’ entry, the police must
have a reasonable suspicion that knocking and
announcing their presence, under the particular circumstances,
would be dangerous or futile, or that it would inhibit the
effective investigation of the crime by, for example, allowing the
destruction of evidence.†[Emphasis added]
Reasonable suspicion is an extremely low legal bar to meet.
Through this exception, police can justify no-knock entry on any
warrant application. In effect, the parameters in the SCOTUS ruling
make no-knock the norm instead of the exception.
A third Supreme Court ruling effectively eliminated the
consequences for violating the “knock and announce†requirement
without a no-knock warrant. In Hudson v.
Michigan (2006), the High Court held that evidence seized in
violation of knock and announce was not subject to the exclusionary
rule. In other words, police could still use the evidence in court
even though they technically gathered it illegally.
Significantly, were it not for the dubious “incorporation
doctrine†made up by the Supreme Crout based on the 14th
Amendment that purportedly empowers the federal government to apply
the Bill of Rights to the states, these cases would have never gone
to federal court and we wouldn’t have these blanket rules.
Without specific restrictions from the state, police officers
generally operate within the parameters set by the High Court. By
passing restrictions on no-knock warrants, states set standards
that go beyond the Supreme Court limits and in effect, nullify the
SCOTUS opinion.
Source:
The Tenth Amendment Center
Michael Maharrey [send him
email] is the Communications Director for the Tenth Amendment
Center. He is from the original home of the Principles of ’98 –
Kentucky and currently resides in northern Florida. See his blog
archive
here and his article archive
here. He is the author of the book,
Our Last Hope: Rediscovering the Lost Path to
Liberty. You can visit his personal website at
MichaelMaharrey.com
and like him on Facebook HERE
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