Supreme Court Eviscerates 4th Amendment over Marijuana smell

[bobbyw24]

In a case decided yesterday, Kentucky v. King, the US Supreme Court has ruled that cops who smell marijuana coming from your home can break down your door and arrest you, just as long as they knock first and claim to have heard you destroying evidence.

They don’t need a warrant or probable cause, either. Today in America, police can now randomly patrol neighborhoods and apartment complexes sniffing around for pot. When they smell it, they can knock on your door and then break it down, claiming they heard noises from within.

The 4th Amendment to the US Constitution plainly states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Writing for the Supreme Court in a 1980 case called Payton v. New York, Justice Stevens reiterated:

http://blog.norml.org/2011/05/17/supreme-court-eviscerates-4th-amendment-over-marijuana-smell/

[IBleedNavyAndOrange]

The probable cause is the smell of pot.
The destruction of evidence is the pot burning when it smoked.

Im not saying I agree with this logic, but this is how the drug nazis will get around the 4th amendment.


Somewhat off subject -
There is a teevee program called DEA on SpikeTV. Watch it some time if you want to see how reliable drug dogs are. I watched one episode where the dog indicated it smelled drugs falsely at least 10 times, and that was just what didn't get edited out.

[CaptUSA]

Wasn't this like a month ago?

At any rate, this ruling completely destroyed the 4 amendment. It gave the police a "right" to collect evidence. That has never been the case before. In effect, any time you knock on any door without a warrant and you have a suspicion that someone may be destroying evidence, you can now enter.

What other crimes can this be attributed to? White collar? If the police think you may be deleting files from your computer, they can enter without a warrant? Online football pool? If they have reason to think you are clearing your history, they can enter.

This ruling was horrible and lets you know that because of the unconstitutional drug war, you are no longer secure in your person or property. These are objects of the state, now.

[aGameOfThrones]

The probable cause is the smell of pot.
The destruction of evidence is the pot burning when it smoked.

Im not saying I agree with this logic, but this is how the drug nazis will get around the 4th amendment.


Somewhat off subject -
There is a teevee program called DEA on SpikeTV. Watch it some time if you want to see how reliable drug dogs are. I watched one episode where the dog indicated it smelled drugs falsely at least 10 times, and that was just what didn't get edited out.

http://reason.com/archives/2011/02/21/the-mind-of-a-police-dog


[Researchers] asked 18 professional dog handlers and their mutts to complete two sets of four brief searches. Thirteen of those who participated worked in drug detection, three in explosives detection, and two worked in both. The dogs had been trained to use one of two signals to indicate to their handlers that they had detected something. Some would bark, others would sit.

The experimental searches took places in the rooms of a church, and each team of dog and human had five minutes allocated to each of the eight searches. Before the searches, the handlers were informed that some of the search areas might contain up to three target scents, and also that in two cases those scents would be marked by pieces of red paper.

What the handlers were not told was that two of the targets contained decoy scents, in the form of unwrapped, hidden sausages, to encourage the dogs' interest in a false location. Moreover, none of the search areas contained the scents of either drugs or explosives. Any "detections" made by the teams thus had to be false. Recorders, who were blind to the study, noted where handlers indicated that their dogs had raised alerts.

The results? Dog/handler teams correctly completed a search with no alerts in just 21 of the 144 walk-throughs. The other 123 searches produced an astounding 225 alerts, every one of them false. Even more interesting, the search points designed to trick the handlers (marked by the red slips of paper) were about twice as likely to trigger false alerts as the search points designed to trick the dogs (by luring them with sausages). This phenomenon is known as the "Clever Hans effect," after a horse that won fame in the early 1900s by stomping out the answers to simply arithmetic questions with his hoof. Hans was indeed clever, but he couldn't do math. Instead he was reading subtle, unintentional cues from the audience and his trainer, who would tense up as Hans began to click his hoof, then relax once Hans hit the answer.*

[aGameOfThrones]

Wasn't this like a month ago?

At any rate, this ruling completely destroyed the 4 amendment. It gave the police a "right" to collect evidence. That has never been the case before. In effect, any time you knock on any door without a warrant and you have a suspicion that someone may be destroying evidence, you can now enter.

What other crimes can this be attributed to? White collar? If the police think you may be deleting files from your computer, they can enter without a warrant? Online football pool? If they have reason to think you are clearing your history, they can enter.

This ruling was horrible and lets you know that because of the unconstitutional drug war, you are no longer secure in your person or property. These are objects of the state, now.

Yeah, it's been posted already.