Elections have consequences
Yesterday, on a 5-4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court all but threw out the exclusionary rule requiring evidence tainted by police misconduct to be suppressed at trial. In so doing, the Court overturned its own precedent dating to 1914 and based on English common law dating back to the Middle Ages. Need I say that Bush's two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito cast the deciding votes in a decision written by Justice Antonin Scalia?
The case in question involved a drug raid in Detroit (important Constitutional cases rarely involve Rotary Club presidents). Police announced themselves, but waited only 3-5 seconds before opening the unlocked door and rushing into the house, where they found evidence of illegal drugs that was ultimately used to convict. Precedent said the police must knock, announce themselves, and then wait 15-20 seconds to allow the homeowner time to answer the door. Precedent also said the trial judge should have thrown out the evidence and let the drug dealer go free. As repugnant as that is, there is no other effective check on police misconduct. It is the price we must occasionally pay for Constitutional protections that affect us all.
What is particularly troubling about this decision, other than opening the door, so to speak, to door-busting, Gestapo-style midnight police raids, is that the conservatives on the Court seem willing to throw precedent aside and decide cases more on right-wing mythology than the law. Ever since the 1960s, when the Warren Court wisely put checks on police misconduct in criminal investigations, the American Right has screamed and wailed about the supposed "handcuffs" placed on police. That little solid evidence of this ever materialized, and that police chiefs themselves tended to say the Court rulings made them do their job better, had little impact on this mythology. It was an effective fund-raising tool for the Right.
Technically, the Court did not throw out the exclusionary rule, just left it bleeding on the ground. Scalia and the majority appeared to have little sympathy for the rule, and a direct assault on it by some prosecutor somewhere seems likely in the future. It also seems likely that attacks on other settled principles of Constitutional law affecting police work, namely the Miranda Rule on police interrogations ("You have the right to remain silent..."), are coming.
Elections, even (or especially) stolen ones, do have consequences. Bush appointed Roberts and Alito. His father appointed two other members of the majority, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. Anthony Kennedy, the fifth vote, was a Reagan appointee. The Republican Right has worked hard for this moment, and I shudder to think what may be ahead.