Knock-And-Announce

The United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruled this week that while police must comply with the "knock-and-announce" rule when executing a search warrant, if they fail to, then the evidence can still be used in a court of law. These seem to be contradictory positions, but the issue rests with whether the execution of the warrant, not the issuance of it, was improper. Thus, the question becomes one of procedure over substance and which should predominate.

In 1995, a unanimous Court determined that the common-law rule of police knocking on a person’s door prior to entering a house and executing a search warrant was required in order to comply with the Fourth Amendment’s search and seizure provisions. In other cases, it had been determined that if a search is conducted without probable cause, then the evidence illegally procured had to be suppressed and could not be used in a criminal trial.

Technically, nothing has changed the Fourth Amendment requirements that a police officer must knock prior to executing a search warrant; however, practically, there is no immediate ramification for failure to adhere to this requirement since the evidence obtained as a result of the execution of the warrant can still be used in court. The majority said it can be and several organizations have denounced this decision as a loss of civil liberties. However, it must be determined just what has been lost and whether it was actually a civil liberty prior to the decision.

SCOTUS’s decision does not remove the requirement that the police obtain a warrant prior to entering a house and conducting a search. Thus, prior to the police approaching the house, the police had to show probable cause to a neutral judge in order to obtain the warrant. Once probable cause has been established, the Fourth Amendment’s substantive requirements have been met and only procedural execution of the warrant needs to be conducted. Whether they knock is merely a minor procedural matter that does not diminish the validity of the warrant or the fruits of the search.

This matter can be viewed in a different way as well. When a police officer knocks on a door to execute a warrant a person will presumably answer the door. At that time, the officer will state that he is there pursuant to a warrant to search the house. That person can either voluntarily allow the officer in or deny them entry. If entry is denied, then the officer will force entry and conduct the search anyway. Since the court has already determined that probable cause has been met any search conducted within the parameters of the warrant is valid regardless of whether the home owner acquiesces to the police’s entry.

The SCOTUS dissent stated that the cost of replacing the door and the prevention of a person being surprised by the enforcement of a warrant justify the knock-and-announce rule. Such arguments do not instruct the constitutionality of police actions. Rather the reasonableness of their actions is instructive as to whether they acted within the mandates of the Constitution.

In the end, so long as there is probable cause to conduct a search, the procedure of the execution should not denigrate the evidence procured.

Funding the Enemy

Organizations are beginning to use their power as shareholders in corporations as swords to force companies to engage in more appropriate actions as determined by the organizations. Specifically, there are non-profit organizations which request that shareholders assign their proxy vote to them so the non-profit can vote for corporate resolutions that are in the interest of the non-profit organization. For example, environmental groups obtain proxies of oil companies to vote on environmental measures while humanitarian organizations introduce and vote for international humanitarian requirements on similar companies.

There are others who use their money to invest in only "green" companies. These funds allow investors to director their money to socially responsible companies opposed to continuing to fund companies that do nothing but worry about the bottom line regardless of the long term consequences of their actions. Such green funds have not become a major aspect of the mutual fund families available to investors; however, they are gaining strength and are utilized by some investors regardless of whether the returns are as strong as other funds.

As organizations seek to use their money and financial power to influence corporate actions, it is a wonder why unions are funding the enemy. Wal-Mart is currently having its annual shareholders meeting. A resolution has been introduced to require Wal-Mart to publish the amount of money that it contributes to state and federal political campaigns. The irony is that the resolution was introduced by the Teamsters. Apparently, the Teamsters pension fund has invested in Wal-Mart and holds enough shares that it can introduce resolutions and garner support for such resolutions.

For a number of years the AFL-CIO, an organization the Teamsters used to belong to, has been trying to unionize Wal-Mart. Despite all of those years and all of the energy put into the process, it was not successful in unionizing even a single store. In fact, Wal-Mart violated federal law on a number of occasions when it closed stores in which it thought that it would lose a union vote. These efforts have been expensive for the unions involved in the unionization effort and have taken a significant amount of time and effort.

The question then becomes, if the unions are working so hard to unionize Wal-Mart, why is their pension funds investing in Wal-Mart? It may be profitable for the pension fund to invest in the stock, but isn’t it in the long term interest of the Teamsters to only invest in companies which are unionized or at least not adverse to unions? The Teamsters pension fund likely has a lot of money to invest into various companies. If it invested only in companies which were supportive of the Teamsters, then those companies would become stronger based upon having unions and being able to utilize union money. This in turn would allow these companies to become stronger and in turn, the Teamsters would become stronger.

Continuing to invest in companies that are adverse to their positions and existence only undermines the unions. If they continue to invest in companies that are not in their interest and the unions become weaker as a result because such companies become stronger, then the unions deserve to fail and become obsolete. Such failure will be because of their own actions, and we must reap what we sow.