NEWS: U.S. Court: No-Warrant Search Evidence OK.

W ORLEANS -- A federal appeals court has opened the door for police officers in Texas and two other states to search homes and buildings for evidence without a warrant -- a ruling that two dissenting judges called "the road to hell."

www.chron.com...
Acting on a Baton Rouge case, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that police do not need an arrest or search warrant to conduct a swift sweep of private property to ensure their own safety.
I thought I'd let you people in on this before I headed to work.

It seems the cops here in Texas and a few other states dont need a warrant or your permission to enter your home, arrest you, and seize evidence now just as long as someone else in your home lets them in your door. At least that's the way I read this article about a
5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling.

What do you think?

[Edited on 26-3-2004 by John bull 1]

This is ridiculous. It reminds me of the South Park episode where they had to shout "it's coming right for us" before they blew away whatever it was. That was funny, this is reality which makes it scary. If this continues privacy will only be a word, not a right.

There's no way this can stand to a federal appeal without an ammendment. So there's a dumb judge in Texas. That's a surprise. That's why he's on the state appelate instead of a federal court. Boy needs to learn the law.

This will get appealed to the Supreme Court, no doubt about it. It saddens me to see the Constitution butchered like this. The founding fathers are probably rolling in their graves...

Read the article people it states that officers can make a swift sweep of the residence to ensure the officers safety. It does not say an officer can enter your residence search at will, seizse at will, and arrest at will. If an officer or officers are at a residence there is usually a reason they were called there to begin with.

"A swift sweep." That's a pretty vague term. So during this sweep a cop sees a toy gun, now he has reasonable suspicion. Jack it up a notch. Next thing you know forensics is going through your place because Jimmy didn't pick up his toys.

The Arkansas Supreme court ruled against something similer here.

We are big on privicy here

Originally posted by gravriderX
It saddens me to see the Constitution butchered like this.

Completely understandable, but this ought to be viewed as testing the law in a positive fashion.

The Judge was probubly following guidelines set before him in law and the case presented, and his decision mearly 'paves' the way to the Supreme Court for resolution, as suggested thru an expected appeal.

It is unlikely the decision will be upheld, but either way the appeal will help to clarify the law, and firm-up perameters used for deciding what can and cant be done by the police.

Without testing a law with a case variant, there is no method to demonstrate any validity of the law in certain applications, nor expose any Constitutional violations or coverages.

..

This is horrible. We have had several invasions of privacy (telemarketing etc..) but this is horrible. But I agree this will probably go to the a federal court. This can't be allowed in my opinion, if you ask me this judge probably has a good resume for a shadow goverment.

Hello everyone.

I'm just a little disapointed at the responses of some of you so far and maybe it's due to my lack of experence at posting stories on an international group like this. Check this out.

Please read the article. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling is a federal court ruling that IS in place now for Texas and two other states. This ruling Will superseade (spelling) all lower court rulings until the U.S. Supreme Court rules if at all on this case.

I appreciate the responses so far. I feel that some of you dont know the true impact of what is going on here. A lot of you are not in the U.S. and I feel like I didn't do a good job explaining this the first time, excuse me.

It was not one judge. It was the whole 5th circuit panel of judges, the whole court. Whatever comes out of this court out-does any state court in the district. The state[s] must listen to the court in question if the state[s] are in the 5th district. If and/or until the Supreme Court rules on this matter which may take years then as far as Texas goes because Texas is in the district mentioned, the cops in the home state of Bush can do a lot more now than they could last week.

Again plese read the article. I dont post a lot but I feel this is being shruged off by the standard media.

i could of sworn this applied to every state, as long as someone in the house lets the officers in an if whatever was out in the open or clearly seen to be agianst the law then they are allowed to follow up on it. otherwise without anything being out in the open they cant do a thing. if im mistaken even if they are there for a noise complaint if they have resonable cause an they are let in then they will follow up.

Originally posted by Trance
i could of sworn this applied to every state, as long as someone in the house lets the officers in an if whatever was out in the open or clearly seen to be agianst the law then they are allowed to follow up on it. otherwise without anything being out in the open they cant do a thing. if im mistaken even if they are there for a noise complaint if they have resonable cause an they are let in then they will follow up.

No, this is not what the ruling says. please let me explain before my next call, working tonite.

The cops can come into your home IF someone not on the lease or not an owner says, "come on in" if they are called out do to you complaining about the neighbors dog barking. No problem so far. It's always been that way.

After entry if the cops are; quote, "in fear of their saftey", the cops can (sweep) the residence in question looking for threats, search for weapons. Anything found in the search is NOW admisible (spelling) in a Texas court as evidence in a criminal trial. No need for a warrant.

See the difference?

Can't a bounty hunter do this already? If I recall due to some old laws that have not been changed since the 1800's a bounty hunter can kick your door in and hold you at gunpoint while they search the house and you can't do anything at all about it and if i am not mistaken this applies to all 50 states. I was so mad when I saw this on tv once, when a family tried to press charges against the bounty hunters for breaking into their home and holding them at gunpoint and the people who did it was laughing about it. I could not understand why the law had not been changed. The sad part is now the courts are going to allow officers to do this as well.

yes once again it's always been that way. Have you ever heard of plain view? If a cop is called to my residence on a dog barking call, and I allow him/her to enter my residence to discuss the matter, the cop had better have one hell of a good explination justification for making a sweep of my home for his/her safety.

In order to have fear for their safety they had dam well better be able to articulate that fear in a report so that any reasonable person can understand that so called concern for their safety and realize it was justified and that "sweeping" the residence was a necessary action.

Just a barking dog call would not do that.

Don't ya think you should consider all of the scenerios before passing judgement?

Originally posted by Curiousone
yes once again it's always been that way. Have you ever heard of plain view? If a cop is called to my residence on a dog barking call, and I allow him/her to enter my residence to discuss the matter, the cop had better have one hell of a good explination justification for making a sweep of my home for his/her safety.

In order to have fear for their safety they had dam well better be able to articulate that fear in a report so that any reasonable person can understand that so called concern for their safety and realize it was justified and that "sweeping" the residence was a necessary action.

Just a barking dog call would not do that.

Don't ya think you should consider all of the scenerios before passing judgement?

I feel a barking dog call or any other call would be enough for the police to sweep your home after reading the article again.

All it would take is one lie by your neighbor because he already hates you for calling the police over the dog barking, or the cop might have a bad attitude that day after getting into a fight with his girlfriend and he might not follow all the rules when coming to your door. What if you curse him out through the door if he tells you the neighbors dog wasn't barking when he pulled up so because he didn't hear the dog, there was nothing he could do to help you?

We both know that most cops by far are professional in what they do. There are also bad apples just like there are in any other profession. This gives those few bad cops and for that matter any cop just one more way to bust into your home and hall you off to jail over nothing.

The barking dog call wouldn't be enough in a perfect world but it may well be enough here in Texas in my opinion now that this new ruling is in effect. This to me is just another step toward a police state. I'm not passing judgement, just expressing my interpretation of this new ruling and I am open to your opinion as well. I agree with what you are saying about plain sight. What I'm saying is the cops don't have to worry about that now. If they're in your house just to interview you for any reason they can dig something up on you and hall you away much easier now an make it stick.

I really don't like this at all.

This is definitely an invasion of privacy. This is a violation of our rights. The American people are quite blind to not see some of the things happening these days. Our rights are slowly being taken away.

The problem is not a new one at all. I was listening to a 1962 campaign speech Ronald Reagan was making for Barry Goldwater, in which he mentioned the same thing. If I can possibly find that speech on the net, I'll provide a link.

its just totally sick, and disgusting. Our rights are being erroded.