Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Apparently Fourth Amendment no longer restricts police officers

http://www.criminaldefenseprovo.com/2011/05/the-emerging-decay-of-fourth-amendment-protection/
Apparently according to the Indiana Supreme Court:

The Indiana Supreme Court this past week basically found that the Fourth Amendment no longer restricts police officers from entering a home without a valid warrant.  Traditional law dating back to the Magna Carta as well as the Fourth Amendment prohibit officers from entering one’s home without either permission or a valid search warrant issued by a court.  In Barnes v. State, however, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that a police officer does not need permission from a homeowner to enter a dwelling even if the officer doesn’t have a warrant.

After reading stories now online, I have no doubt now that had I grabbed my video camera on my way up the stairs to see what all the commotion was about, I likely would have been arrested had I refused to turn it off. Apparently I would have needed their consent to document the events that unfolded, yet they do not believe they even needed my consent to enter my home!

Clearly there was no crime being committed that they were responding to prior to them entering our home, but how one reacts to their presence once they have already entered and their refusal to exit once they are inside your home and asked to leave, can somehow be turned into some kind of a crime. So was this a case of them seizing upon an opportunity at the urging of an animal control officer to save a life allegedly in possible harms way or just to possibly create a test case here in Georgia to hopefully get a similar favorable ruling from our courts giving them the right to do as they please? Their reaction to being asked to leave and their refusal to do so upon being asked to exit makes me really wonder now!

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