Violation of constitutional no-knock requirement by SWAT team deciding on its own to enter without knocking without sufficient legal justification required suppression of the search under the Indiana Constitution. Lacey v. State, 931 N.E.2d 378 (Ind. App. 2010):
Here, no circumstances bearing upon officer safety or escape arose after the issuance of the warrant and before its execution. There has been no allegation of furtive movement, attempted flight, or destruction of evidence. Under the totality of the circumstances, we find the unilateral decision to dispense with the knock-and-announce rule unreasonable under Article 1, Section 11 of the Indiana Constitution where the relevant facts could have been presented in application for a “no-knock” warrant.
Accordingly, we must decide whether the evidence obtained in the search should be excluded. The State urges that we follow Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586, 590 (2006),which discussed the appropriateness of the exclusionary rule where a “no-knock” entry concededly violated the Fourth Amendment. At the outset, the Court observed that ”indiscriminate application of the exclusionary rule” had been rejected, and it was applicable only when its deterrence benefits outweigh its substantial social costs. Id. at 591. …
. . .
In this case, the criminal histories of the targeted individuals were known well in advance of the execution of the search warrant. Nonetheless, the officer seeking the warrant did not advise a neutral judicial officer of the circumstances that would arguably have supported a “no-knock” authorization. Rather, the critical decision was made by a person charged with a duty of law enforcement.
Further, it was admittedly routine and systemic for the Emergency Service Team officers, as opposed to a neutral magistrate, to decide to serve warrants in a “no-knock” manner. Although police officers at times confront emerging exigent circumstances, to which an emergency response is appropriate under the Indiana Constitution, the instant situation did not involve exigencies arising when there was no opportunity to seek judicial sanction for a “no-knock” entry. As Sergeant Strausborger explained, “no-knock” entries into a residence increase the potential for violence against police officers due to misapprehension of circumstances by the occupants. In light of our Indiana Supreme Court’s pronouncement in Holder, acknowledging that intrusions based upon security concerns will be tolerated only “so long as they are reasonably aimed toward those concerns,” 847 N.E.2d at 940, we believe that such entries should remain rare and, where practicable, subject to review by a detached and neutral judicial officer.
And Wilkins v. State, 2010 Ind. App. LEXIS 1364 (July 27, 2010) holds blanket no-knock is unconstitutional:
Indiana Code Section 35-33-5-7 does not constitute a blanket prohibition upon no-knock warrants in this State. The “no-knock” execution of the search warrant was supported by reasonable suspicion and thus no Fourth Amendment violation is established. However, under the totality of the circumstances, the “no-knock” execution was unreasonable under the Indiana Constitution. We find suppression of the evidence to be an appropriate remedy in the particular circumstances of this case.
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"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." —Me
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well." –Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others)
“I am still learning.” —Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848)
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced." —Williams v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold, J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence." —Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today." — Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property." —Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth Amendment." —United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth." —Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable." —Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected." —Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” —United States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.” —United States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
"You can't always get what you want / But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need." —Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, Let it Bleed (album, 1969)
"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration camp]
“Children grow up thinking the adult world is ordered, rational, fit for purpose. It’s crap. Becoming a man is realising that it’s all rotten. Realising how to celebrate that rottenness, that’s freedom.” – John le Carré, The Night Manager (1993), line by Richard Roper
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime." —Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)
The book was dedicated in the first (1982) and sixth (2025) editions to Justin William Hall (1975-2025). He was three when this project started in 1978.
