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TomServo

I dont really post here anymore, but I think that this is pretty important. I did try to submit this on the main page, but Im pretty sure I messed something up because its not showing up. This is from http://www.cnn.com/LAW/;

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Police violate the Constitution if they use a heat-sensing device to peer inside a home without a search warrant, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.

An unusual lineup of five justices voted to bolster the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and threw out an Oregon man's conviction for growing marijuana.

Monday's ruling reversed a lower court decision that said officers' use of a heat-sensing device was not a search of Danny Lee Kyllo's home and therefore they did not need a search warrant.

In an opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia, by many measures the most conservative member of the court, the majority found that the heat detector allowed police to see things they otherwise could not.

"Where, as here, the government uses a device that is not in general public use to explore details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a 'search' and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant," Scalia wrote.

While the court has previously approved some warrantless searches, this one did not meet tests the court has previously set, Scalia wrote.

The decision means the information police gathered with the thermal device -- namely a suspicious pattern of hot spots on the home's exterior walls -- cannot be used against Kyllo.

The court sent the case back to lower courts to determine whether police have enough other basis to support the search warrant that was eventually served on Kyllo, and thus whether any of the evidence inside his home can be used against him.

Justices Clarence Thomas, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer joined the majority.

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a dissenting opinion joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy.

 

KWhite

This is very important.
And should help the members out.
Thaks for thinking of us.
Kelly

__________________
"Your mind is your own, your body as well, from the soul we need not speak, tend it well, making those decisions you deem worthy, aware all responsibility is in your hands when the smoke clears" Kelly L. White

"It is a principle of natural justice that when bad men make bad laws, or when unprincipled authorities compromise good ones, citizens are justified in protecting themselves from the very authority that compromised law and order." Gandhi

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jorje

Finally, the court got one right! It's hard to believe after all of their recent rulings, that they would stand up for our Fourth Amendment rights. It's about time the public won one!

Pothead returns

This is wonderful news. I am glad to know that the obsurdity of the extremely right wing supreme court didn't get too out of hand. One small step closer. . .

S2

Jeez the popular press does a great job of demonizing conservatives... Scalia is the most conservative member on the court and he wrote the opinion! Look who the majority included: Thomas, Souter, Ginsberg. .. Conservatives were the majority on this one!!! The conservatives are going to respect the constitution and will not legilslate from the bench and support decisions that go against it for the sake of their own social agenda. Even the war on drugs!!! That is what liberal judges do folks!!! Our best hope for decriminalization is a conservative bench and a constituionally based argument!!!


S2

 

cajunyank

hehehe....good one S2

and here I've been thinking that the best hope for legalization was those conservatives dying off until there is no more of that older generation in power.

Silly me!

cy

S2

Hey Yank

You will find many of those old fogies remember alcohol prohibition and how unconstitutional the enforcement of it was. They can be quite symathetic to our cause when it is framed in constitutional terms. The progressive socialists (liberals) don't want to discuss it in these terms becasue it interferes with thier re-writing the constitution from the bench.

S2