Police Can Kick Down Doors In Drug Searches, Some Justices Say - LATimes

[WillyT]

Police can kick down doors in drug searches, some justices say
David Savage -LATimes
January 12, 2011, 1:52 p.m

<snip>

WASHINGTON… Police officers who smell marijuana coming from an apartment can break down the door and burst in if they have reason to believe this evidence might be destroyed, several Supreme Court's justices suggested Wednesday.

In the past, the high court has said police usually cannot enter a home or apartment without a search warrant because of the 4th Amendment's ban on "unreasonable searches and seizures."

But the court's conservatives said during arguments in a drug case Wednesday they favored relaxing that rule when police say they have an urgent need to act fast. Police had banged on the apartment door of Hollis King in Lexington, Ky. about 10 p.m. five years ago after they detected the smell of marijuana. They broke in the door when they heard sounds inside and arrested King for marijuana and cocaine possession.

Last year, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled this search unconstitutional, but the justices sounded as though a majority will reverse that ruling.

"Everything done here was perfectly lawful," commented Justice Antonin Scalia.

"There's nothing illegal about walking down the hall and knocking on somebody's door, and if, as a police officer, you say, 'I smell marijuana', and then your hear the flushing, there's probable cause," said Chief Justice John Roberts.

<snip>

More: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sc-dc-0113-court-search-20110112,0,7017935.story

:wtf:

[villager]

1. Government on our backs, and breaking down doors -- once again. Thanks to the numbskull

idiot, led-by-the-nose self-styled "Libertarians" who are duped into supporting these fascists.

[RC]

2. Why bother with law makers and laws when the police can do what they want?

And the Supreme Court lets them?

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

3. Police have been kicking down doors for years.

[DJ13]

4. Time for someone to make pot scented air freshners

The rash of lawsuits from unjust police searches would put an end to that idiocy.

[RKP5637]

5. +1, n/t

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

6. That was already done in the sixties, it was in incense form.

[Webster Green]

7. This is one reason the corrupt supremes love the phony drug war.

It gives the pigs the right to do anything they want to do.

US = fascist shit-hole.

[kath]

8. The smell of marijuana means that cops "have an urgent need to act fast"?? Really?

I mean REALLY??

Jeebus H. Christ.

The Fourth Amendment really is deader than a doornail. :cry: