Indiana: Illegal entry by cops okay

[Deleted]

www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_ec169697-a19e-525f-a532-81b3df229697.html

Court: No right to resist illegal cop entry into home

INDIANAPOLIS | Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.
In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer's entry.
"We believe ... a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence," David said. "We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest."
David said a person arrested following an unlawful entry by police still can be released on bail and has plenty of opportunities to protest the illegal entry through the court system.

MORE...

[Politically_Incorrect12]

Wow

[Deleted]

Unbelievable, isn't it?

[Deleted]

You are telling me you support cops being able to enter any residence for any reason or no reason at all illegally??

[ameiko]

May 14, 2011 8:06:09 GMT -5 @toughtimes said:

No, I disagree. There is a long-established precept known as "exigent circumstances" where a cop may enter a home if danger to life is suspected. Imagine that, a man who is busy beating the tar out of his wife refuses entry to a cop. Do you really want a man to be able to do that and let his wife bleed to death unconscious in the corner? He would have avoided the whole problem if he had his wife come to the door. He could not do that because he had committed the crime of assault. I hope he winds up in prison and learns what happens to abusers of women and children there.

That would not be an illegal entry.

Also, please do not bring up the tired "abusive husband" cliche. Many men are abused by their wives and most children are actually abused by ther mothers either alone or with the husband.

Anyway, this is just one more sign that America is becoming a police state. Time to GTFO?

[ameiko]

May 14, 2011 8:16:45 GMT -5 @toughtimes said:

I am saying that the cops in this case did not enter illegally at all. Do you support a standard where Jeffrey Dahmer can be cutting you up with a circular saw while you are alive and if your screaming attracts police notice, they should not enter? Common sense for Petes sake.

No, they are not. But we do not want them coming in willy-nilly or for illegal actions. Also, if they cops ARE in the wrong and people resist, the homeowner should not be prosecuted but he or she CAN be prosecuted now because the courts have said that a homeowner does not have the right to protect themselves in thier own home from abusive law enforcement.

Let's spin a scenario, understanding of course that one can pretty much always spin one that supports their POV: a cop has been harrassing some women that he wants to date. He keeps abusing his power to enter her home. Sure, she has complained to the superiors but stuff like that takes time. Well one night he breaks into her home and she shoots him. He is there ILLEGALLY, performing an ILLEGAL act yet under this rulling she can still be potentially prosecuted for resisting his entry; self defense goes out the window because she did not have the right to defend herself!

This is truly frightening yet not surprising if anyone remembers when the racist and sexist "wise Latina" refused to acknowledge whether a person had a right to defend themselves.

[Politically_Incorrect12]

May 14, 2011 8:17:04 GMT -5 ameiko said:

May 14, 2011 8:06:09 GMT -5 @toughtimes said:

No, I disagree. There is a long-established precept known as "exigent circumstances" where a cop may enter a home if danger to life is suspected. Imagine that, a man who is busy beating the tar out of his wife refuses entry to a cop. Do you really want a man to be able to do that and let his wife bleed to death unconscious in the corner? He would have avoided the whole problem if he had his wife come to the door. He could not do that because he had committed the crime of assault. I hope he winds up in prison and learns what happens to abusers of women and children there.

That would not be an illegal entry.

Also, please do not bring up the tired "abusive husband" cliche. Many men are abused by their wives and most children are actually abused by ther mothers either alone or with the husband.

Anyway, this is just one more sign that America is becoming a police state. Time to GTFO?

The problem with those cases is that you likely won't hear about them until the husband has had enough. Society just looks at these two different types of abuse differently. How many times have you seen a woman either smack a guy or try to do her best to emasculate a man in public? What the response? Want to bet it would have most likely gotten a different one if the roles had been reversed?

[Deleted]

This is not about this one case. First of all-- the people fighting were outside. It did not even say if there was hitting going on, or anything of the sort. The man was arrested for resistance to letting cops come in. NOTHING in there said one word about anyone being beat up. That is not even the point here. The point is the state Supreme Court saying cops can go in anybody's home whenever they feel like it.

[Politically_Incorrect12]

May 14, 2011 8:31:24 GMT -5 @toughtimes said:

Very few men die at the hands of a women, while a leading cause of death in pregnant women is murder. Right now, we are digging the bodies of men, women and children out of Gilgo Beach in Long Island. Nearly every one of the dead was female, with a single male who was probably not killed by the same murderer. Women and children are the overwhelming victims of real violence.

So far as women "Immaculating" I believe you mean, "emasculating" a man in public, regardless of men or women, being insulted or taunted in public is no excuse for violence. Many times I have wanted to haul off and smack a smart-ass, but I would end in durance vile. No one should feel leave to strike another without fearing consequences.

The point is that if a man were to do it, people are more likely to step in. Your making excuses as if it's not a big deal is part of the problem.

[Deleted]

This is NOT a domestic violence thread! Did you even read the article?

[Deleted]

You got it right with your first post, P_I. WOW is right.

[Deleted]

Jesus, what is your PROBLEM??? This thread is about a court ruling that cops can go in anyone's home for any reason or no reason.
But carry on with your DV talk.

[Deleted]

I could give a crap what this case was. My problem is with what the Supreme Court did. NOW-- I'm out of here until you either leave or get on topic.

[ty]

May 14, 2011 8:10:24 GMT -5 @krickitt said:

You are telling me you support cops being able to enter any residence for any reason or no reason at all illegally??

Krickitt, for some people it takes them a little longer to process things. Don't waste time auguring with those that have no real sense on what is happening in America.

[handyman2]

To me it would depend on each particular circumstance. If an officer had reasonable cause that a crime was being commited and there was no response to a knock on the door then yes the officer should enter the home. However just busting in without probable cause or no warrent then that would be a case of illegal entry to me.

[Deleted]

From the link:

In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer's entry.
"We believe ... a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence," David said. "We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest."

I'll never live in Indiana, I don't think. Don't want to live in a police state.

[ty]

I'm sure the NYPD officers that went in and out and repeatedly raped a woman had every right in doing so. Officers should never have the right to enter anyone's home or property without cause.

[Deleted]

Well, in Indiana they no longer need cause. State SC said so.

[Deleted]

Found this elsewhere re. this article. Don't want to plagiarize..
Karin says:
May 13, 2011 at 11:56 pm
The right to resist unlawful violence may not be exercised in every appropriate circumstance, but it must be recognized as valid in all cases.
In the first chapter of The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn offers a detailed reflection on the “cataclysm” that results when one hears an armed stranger pronounce the dreadful phrase, “You are under arrest.”
“At what exact point … should one resist?” he wrote. “When one’s belt is taken away? When one is ordered to face into a corner? When one crosses the threshold of one’s home?”
By the Brezhnev era, after tens of millions had been exterminated in the gulag, many Russians lamented that “submissiveness had softened our brains to such a degree” that resistance was no longer possible. All of this could have been avoided, Solzhenitsyn contended, if resistance had begun “at the moment of arrest itself.”
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive?” mused Solzhenitsyn in a famous footnote to that chapter. “Or, if during the periods of mass arrests, as for example in Lenin-grad, where they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang on the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood that they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?…. The [Security] Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers … and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!”
“If … if …. We didn’t love freedom enough,” he concluded. “We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
Solzenitsyn’s words will be a suitable epitaph for American liberty if we do not restore, and practice, the right to resist.
- From an essay entitled, ‘Resistance’, author unspecified.

[pappyjohn99]

>>Loudmouth tell his wife to speak to the cops outside and then remain inside while they talked? It is because wifey would say something Mr. Control Freak would not like or her bruises would be visible.<<

This man was not charged with harming his wife. He was tazed and arrested for resisting cops that were unlawfully entering his premises. If he had been harming anyone you can bet your ass he would have been charged with that as well. It is a common police practice to pad charges against people just to find one that will stick.

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

Ahhh, my dear law and order conservative friends...you finally got what you wanted. Indiana is no longer creeping ever closer to becoming a police-state. It IS a police state. This ought to be fairly quickly over-turned. There's already established precedent to allow law enforcement to enter upon probable cause. Otherwise, a person has every legal right to resist illegal entry by police.

[EVT1]

Also disturbing:

This is the second major Indiana Supreme Court ruling this week involving police entry into a home.

"On Tuesday, the court said police serving a warrant may enter a home without knocking if officers decide circumstances justify it. Prior to that ruling, police serving a warrant would have to obtain a judge's permission to enter without knocking."

Allowing police discretion to use no knock warrants is very dangerous.

This isn't over- Constitutional issues.

Come to think of it, Indiana was the defendant in the SC case involving unconstitutional roadblocks- it appears they have a history of overreaching with police power.

[cme1201]

From the Article:

"Justice Robert Rucker, a Gary native, and Justice Brent Dickson, a Hobart native, dissented from the ruling, saying the court's decision runs afoul of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

"In my view the majority sweeps with far too broad a brush by essentially telling Indiana citizens that government agents may now enter their homes illegally -- that is, without the necessity of a warrant, consent or exigent circumstances," Rucker said. "I disagree."

Rucker and Dickson suggested if the court had limited its permission for police entry to domestic violence situations they would have supported the ruling.

But Dickson said, "The wholesale abrogation of the historic right of a person to reasonably resist unlawful police entry into his dwelling is unwarranted and unnecessarily broad."

This is the second major Indiana Supreme Court ruling this week involving police entry into a home.

On Tuesday, the court said police serving a warrant may enter a home without knocking if officers decide circumstances justify it. Prior to that ruling, police serving a warrant would have to obtain a judge's permission to enter without knocking."

I believe that the dissent will be the reason the law is overturned, overly broad, for any simple reason an officer can decide to enter any "premises" without the owner's permission.

[pappyjohn99]

We need a civilian review board. Cops watching cops is a recipe for disaster. I sure get tired of cops overstepping themselves and never having to account for their actions. Police shoot some poor sap 87 times and walk scott free because he had a cell phone in his hand. His peers at the station "review" the incident and call it justified.

[EVT1]

Wow- just read the case. They could have ruled narrowly-but the implications of what they just did is huge. They could have asked the woman if they could come in- she didn't say no or refuse entry.

ALSO! The defendant was acting under a right he had and the court allowed the conviction because they said he no longer had the right- EX POST FACTO!

This will be tossed aside in a hurry.

[ty]

May 14, 2011 11:39:40 GMT -5 pappyjohn99 said:

We need a civilian review board. Cops watching cops is a recipe for disaster. I sure get tired of cops overstepping themselves and never having to account for their actions. Police shoot some poor sap 87 times and walk scott free because he had a cell phone in his hand. His peers at the station "review" the incident and call it justified.

[Deleted]

In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer's entry.

As a general statement I would say that a rule specific for one case when applied by the federal government is changed to apply to every case. I "assume" that the local Indiana state government will apply & abuse it in the same way as the federal government would.

I'm glad that policy hasn't hit Texas yet because it's a HUGE loss of individual rights. Answering it with "you mean they could be cutting up someone & they yell for help but a policemen can't go in" just means that you have no clue what's at stake here or what the laws are now.

[ty]

May 14, 2011 13:54:46 GMT -5 @toughtimes said:

No, I have every idea of what laws are involved here and I do believe that the police had a right to enter under the "Exigent circumstances" clause. I also have first-hand experience of Domestic violence and know that women can be carved up while everyone crosses the T's.

Making me think of t-Bones now...

We need more people like Dexter in the series Dexter to deal with criminals and lowlife officers.



Time to right all of the societies wrongs...

Dexter is a serial killer that kills the people that kill others. Great series.

[henryclay]

Heck, why limit it to real cops? Let's put some blue suits, masks and cop paraphanelia on the local gang of robbers and have them just push the door open while a couple of them stand guard outside to placate the neighbors.

[Deleted]

Indiana police should stock up on the bullet proof vests. I don't thing this will be a good thing for them either.