All warrants are now no-knock warrants

[Telperion]

Anyone being served with a no-knock warrant has the option to bring suit against the agency serving it for violating the law.

In his dissenting opinion, Breyer could find no case where a plaintiff got more than nominal damages.  The attorney for Michigan conceded that "in cases like the present one . . . , damages may be virtually non-existent."  Even the supporting amici briefs for Michigan concluded that immunity statutes prevent civil suits from being an effective substitute for the exclusionary rule.

[The Rabbi]

He could find no case probably because the defendants were guilty as hell.  Alternatively, there were little actual damages in the case.

But curiously, the headline and the article cited at the beginning were clearly wrong and gave wrong information.   Why didnt anyone pick up on this?

[Dannyboy]

For anyone not getting his news from CNN, the Journal's piece about it this AM was a little more informative.
No-knock warrants are illegal.  They were illegal before this decision and remain so.  The issue was the exclusionary rule.  Could violating the no-knock rule result in excluding evidence thus obtained?  The answer here is no, and that was the crux of the case.  Anyone being served with a no-knock warrant has the option to bring suit against the agency serving it for violating the law.  This is what the case is about.
But every time we get one of these people here moan about the coming police state.  It isnt happening.  We are a long long way from it.

Sure, no-knocks are illegal, technically.  In practice, however, it's a different story.  In this case, the police knocked and waited about 4 seconds before breaking the door down.  The appellate court ruled that breaking the "knock and announce" rule was only a minor infraction and allowed the evidence.  The US Supreme Court just upheld that.  The exclusionary rule was the only defense against police abuse of no-knocks and now that is gone.  Yeah, no-knocks are illegal.

[Werewolf]

What must be considered is that now if the police choose not to knock and announce and a court rules that any evidence found would have been found even if the police had knocked and announced, evidence acquired as a result of that same search is admissable. Prior to the ruling the evidence would have been subject to the exclusionary rule.

If one assumes that all agents of the government are honest, honorable and behave in accordance with the intent of the law then nothing has really changed. (I believe that most - probably 95% fall into the aforementioned category - it's the 5% we've got to worry about.)

On the other hand, as a practical matter,  knock and announce (a practice that dates back at least 500 or so years under English common law) is now an option to be exercised at the discretion of the agent serving a legal warrant since the recent ruling of the supremes takes away the one disincentive that made failing to knock and annouce a practice to be avoided by agents of the government.

It is all about the practical consequences of the ruling...

[publius]

The exclusionary rule was the only defense against police abuse of no-knocks and now that is gone.

Not the only defense. We're going to fall back on the old standby: Bad cop, no donut.