The title of the WaPo article should give you an idea of the importance of this case: "Justices consider when police may enter without warrant." The transcript of the debate can be found here. The case involves some cops initially banging on a door and identifying themselves as police after smelling marijuana. As the WaPo tells it:
The officers said they heard a noise and feared evidence was being destroyed. They kicked down the door and found King, two friends, some drugs and cash.
King was sentenced to 11 years in prison, but the Kentucky Supreme Court overturned his conviction. It said that the officers had entered the apartment illegally and that the evidence they found should not have been considered in court.
Here's the crux of the case:
The case before the court was about one of the exceptions Kagan mentioned: so-called exigent circumstances. Those arise when police have reason to suspect criminal activity is underway, but think that if they take the time to get a warrant, a life may be endangered, a suspect may escape or evidence may be destroyed.
In this case, the Kentucky high court said police could not create the emergency they say prevented them from obtaining a warrant.
Kentucky Assistant Attorney General Joshua Farley said the Lexington police officers in this case had probable cause to search the apartment - the smell of marijuana led them to think a crime was being committed.
But there was no time to get a warrant, he said, because they heard noises that led them to think the evidence was being destroyed.
I have a bad feeling about this.
Giving cops the authority to search homes without warrants based on what they smell and hear is a disaster waiting to happen. We are not talking about a murder suspect entering a house as he actively flees the police, we are talking about a drug user merely suspected of destroying evidence based on noises the police hear.
I must admit I have not looked at the transcript yet, but to hear the WaPo describe it, the conservatives such as Scalia sound like arrogant pricks:
Justice Antonin Scalia said the police did nothing wrong. When they knocked on the door, the occupants could have answered and told police that they could not come in without a warrant.
"Everything done was perfectly lawful," Scalia said. "It's unfair to the criminal? Is that the problem? I really don't understand the problem."
Law enforcement, he said, has many constraints, "and the one thing that it has going for it is that criminals are stupid."
Whatever happened to "A man's home is his castle"? Or does that not apply to damn dirty stoners in their apartments?
I plan on updating this diary as soon as I read the transcript for more analysis. Hopefully it isn't as bad as the media is making it seem for the Fourth Amendment.
On a side note: I'm glad we'll be seeing how much the GOP new found love of the Constitution holds out when it's being used to defend the rights of criminal defendants.