Decisions: No bar on evidence in police entry case
UPDATE: 10:29 a.m.
The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled on Thursday that a violation by the police of the “knock-and-announce” rule when they enter a home with a warrant does not bar the use of evidence gathered in the search. “What the knock-and-announce rule has never protected…is one’s interest in preventing the government from seeing or taking evidence described in a warrant. Since the interests that were violated in this case have nothing to do with the seizure of the evidence, the exclusionary rule is inapplicable,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the majority opinion in Hudson v. Michigan (04-1360) — a case that had been argued twice during this Term. A part of Scalia’s opinion, saying that the result was dictated by the Court’s prior precedents, had the support of only three other Justices. (Justice Kennedy’s concurrence is available here; Justice Breyer’s dissent is here.)
That was the last of four decisions announced on Thursday. The Court is expected to have more decisions next Monday. The Court expects to release 19 more opinions before beginning its summer recess. (The figure 19 assumes that the Court will issue separate opinions to decide two sequels to Crawford v. Washington, the 2004 decision limiting the use in criminal trials of out-of-court statements. The two new cases were argued separately, and the facts are different in each, thus indicating two opinions dealing with the differing nature of the “testimonial” statements in each.)
In a unanimous decision, the Court concluded that a federal judge’s order returning a securities lawsuit against mutual funds back to state court is not open to appeal to a Circuit Court. Justice David H. Souter wrote the unanimous decision in Kircher v. Putnam Funds Trust (05-409).
In another ruling, the Court decided that claims for unpaid workers’ compensation premiums owed by an employer do not have a priority status in bankruptcy. The 6-3 decision came in Howard Delivery Service v. Zurich American Insurance (05-128). (Justice Kennedy’s dissent is available here.)
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that decision. In a second ruling which she authored, the Court decided that a government contractor providing health benefits for federal employees may not sue in federal court to enforce the terms of its contract with the government. That decision, also dividing the Court 6-3, came in Empire Healthchoice v. McVeigh (05-200). (Justice Breyer’s dissent is available here.) (Correction: as a reader notes, the division was 5-4, not 6-3.)
The Court at 10:23 a.m. recessed until 3:15 p.m., when it will return to the bench to receive a resolution of memorial for the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. The next public session will be at 10 a.m. next Monday.
The Empire Health case is actually 5-4, and quite a remarkable 5-4 split it is: the majority opinion, written by Justice Ginsburg, was joined by Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Stevens, Justice Scalia, and Justice Thomas. The dissent, by Justice Breyer, was joined by Justice Kennedy, Justice Souter, and Justice Alito. I’ll be amazed if we ever see this 5-4 lineup again.
Comment by Paul Wolfson — June 15, 2006 @ 1:16 pm
Hudson is the first case where having Alito and Roberts instead of O’Connor and Rehnquist has made a clear difference. Both of the departed justices voted with the majority in Dickerson, both the new justices joined the dissenters. Because the majority decision is based on their distaste with exclusion as a remedy, a position clearly rejected in Dickerson, as the dissent notes, the new justices can be seen in their true light as radical activists.
Comment by r.friedman — June 15, 2006 @ 1:19 pm
Hudson is truly an awful opinion. The majority forgets that the life of thelaw is not logic but experience. We can expect more doors battered in at night and more wild shoot outs with the police. Maybe the gun nuts have been right all along. Protect your castle. Shame on the Court. Deep disappointment with Kennedy.
Michael R. Levine
Portland, Oregon
Comment by supremecourt — June 15, 2006 @ 1:24 pm
I’m not convinced the lineup in Empire Health is so strange. The fairly common formalist/realist lineup before this year was Stevens / Scalia / Thomas / Ginsburg versus Rehnquist / O’Connor / Kennedy / Breyer / Souter. This lineup is the same, just with Alito on the realist side and Roberts on the formalist side. Given that we haven’t seen much, as I recall, to indicate how Roberts and Alito would come down on that sort of case, this would seem to be a clue that perhaps the change in personnel has helped the formalist side. (Which means, among other things, any post-Booker sentencing guideline cases coming up should be interesting.)
On another note, it’s interesting (but not particularly surprising) to see much of Roberts’ apparent skill for creating unanimity decline in the last days of the term.
Comment by Roger — June 15, 2006 @ 2:12 pm
I’m sorry to be dense, R. Friedman, but could you please explain what is so radical about this? Also, I thought Dickerson was a 5th Amendment case; and if you’re casting the exclusionary rule as spreading evenly over the 4th and 5th Amendments, how do you account for the decision in U.S. v. Patane? It seems the majority position is perfectly justifiable.
Comment by Commentator — June 15, 2006 @ 2:25 pm
I do not agree with r. friedman that the replacement of Rehnquist with Roberts made a difference here. Although the late Chief did write Dickerson, that was a case where the Court was asked to overrule a landmark precedent. In cases like the present one, where the question was whether to expand the exclusionary rule, he voted consistently not to. I think most SCOTUS-watchers would agree that Rehnquist would almost certainly have joined today’s majority.
R.’s thesis is also very doubtful regarding Justice O’Connor. Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole v. Scott, 524 U.S. 357 (1998) is very similar to today’s case. The Court had to decide whether to expand the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule to a context it had not previously addressed: parole revocation hearings. It was a 5-4 decision with Rehnquist and O’Connor in the majority, and the other seven lined up exactly as they did today.
To call today’s decision “activist” would require a definition of that word far different from what I understand it to mean. Judicial activism is when courts overrule the democratic process by engrafting their personal opinions onto the Constitution, creating a restriction on democratic policy choices that is not really there. By no stretch of the imagination does today’s decision fit that definition. If the people of Michigan, or any other state, want to enact a statute excluding evidence as a remedy for knock-notice violations, nothing in today’s decision stands in the way.
Comment by Kent Scheidegger — June 15, 2006 @ 2:38 pm
Judicial activism is when courts overrule the democratic process by engrafting their personal opinions onto the Constitution, creating a restriction on democratic policy choices that is not really there.
What is interesting is that Justice Breyer makes the charge that judicial activism is exactly what happened here. Then again, he also bizarrely cites to texts on causation in torts law to explain how causation works in criminal law. Nevermind that the burden of proof is higher in the criminal context (so proving causation in the criminal context is harder) and the defendant is a real person who has finite foreknowledge, as opposed to the legal fiction of a reasonable person into which infinite counterfactual foreknowledge can be crammed.
Comment by Commentator — June 15, 2006 @ 3:12 pm
And, just to head off the pass, I realize the discussion centered on “but-for” causation. My point, which should be reasonably clear if one reads the decision, is that both the majority and dissent are discussing causation in a broader sense without directly stating so.
Comment by Commentator — June 15, 2006 @ 3:19 pm
When I say “radical”, I mean going to the root as opposed to the margins. When I say “activist”, I mean the extent to which judges are constrained by the facts of a case and precedent. I think the dissent shows well how this is not refusal to “extend” the exclusionary rule, but instead a statement that even if the search was found to be unreasonable (as required by prior precedent, the unconvincing figleaf notwithstanding — the figleaf being Alito’s favorite outfit in his activist 3rd circuit opinions), exclusion came at too high a cost. This goes to the core of the exclusionary rule, just as Dickerson went to the core of the Miranda rule, as Lyle’s subsequent post shows.
Comment by r.friedman — June 15, 2006 @ 4:26 pm
R. Friedman: This goes to the core of the exclusionary rule, just as Dickerson went to the core of the Miranda rule, as Lyle’s subsequent post shows.
I guess you think U.S. v. Patane was a radical, activist decision too, then? And, if not, why not?
Comment by Commentator — June 15, 2006 @ 5:22 pm
r. friedman: “When I say ‘activist’, I mean the extent to which judges are constrained by the facts of a case and precedent.”
If I read you correctly, you are using the term “activist” to refer to any decision where you disagree with the court’s reading of precedent. Perhaps you should change your nom de blog to Humpty Dumpty.
Comment by Kent Scheidegger — June 15, 2006 @ 7:20 pm
Commentator, you wrote:
My point, which should be reasonably clear if one reads the decision, is that both the majority and dissent are discussing causation in a broader sense without directly stating so.
I have just read the opinions, and I must confess that your point is not clear to me (although this may be due to a deficiency with my brain rather than your point.) It would help me if you could tell me what “sense” you think the justices should be limiting their discussing of causation? I’m not sure it is the criminal sense, since the discussion is about the unconsitutional search rather than Hudson’s drug and firearm possesion, and this is not a crime.
Comment by Adamos — June 15, 2006 @ 9:44 pm
It would help me if you could tell me what “sense” you think the justices should be limiting their discussing of causation?
When did I say the discussion of causation should be limited? My point was only that tort law causation was rrelevant. There is a difference between a limit and irrelevance. Forking the word “sense” won’t help.
Comment by Commentator — June 16, 2006 @ 2:36 pm