Why are Americans silent about losing our Fourth Amendment?
On June 10, 1215 AD, after prolonged rebellion and frustrating negotiation, a group of England’s most influential barons entered London to force the disastrous King John Softsword into accepting a revolutionary charter of individual freedoms.
Five days later in the Runnymede meadow of Surrey County, John affixed his royal seal onto what became known as the Magna Carta. It still exists on the books today in England and Wales.
This document was one of the more important antecedents to the US Constitution; its proclamations ended the absolutism of England’s monarchy and spelled out very clear rights and freedoms, including, among others, the right of a man to enjoy his private property without trespass from government officials.
Over 550 years later, the framers of the Constitution codified this right in the 4th Amendment to be secure in one’s private property. Last week, the Indiana Supreme Court effectively rejected both documents in two separate cases.
Two recent Supreme Court cases have served to virtually abolish the Fourth Amendment in the United States of America, with citizens no longer being “secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”
In a precedent described by dissenting justices as “breathtaking” and “unnecessarily broad,” the Indiana Supreme Court ruled last week in a 3-2 vote that doing anything to resist police busting down your door and conducting an illegal search is now a criminal act.
“We hold that the right to reasonably resist an unlawful police entry into a home is no longer recognized under Indiana law,” the court ruled in the case of Richard L. Barnes v. Indiana.
Dissenting Justices Brent E. Dickson and Robert D. Rucker made it clear that the ruling represented a total rejection of rights enshrined in the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution.
“In my view, the wholesale abrogation of the historic right of a person to reasonably resist unlawful police entry into his dwelling is unwarranted and unnecessarily broad,” Dickson wrote.
“In my view it is breathtaking that the majority deems it appropriate or even necessary to erode this constitutional protection based on a rationale addressing much different policy considerations,” added Rucker. “There is simply no reason to abrogate the common law right of a citizen to resist the unlawful police entry into his or her home.”
The ruling was made under the justification that resisting a police officer had the potential to escalate and cause violence against the officer, meaning that the God-like status bestowed upon police officers now trumps both the 220-year-old Fourth Amendment and the 796-year-old Magna Carta on which it is based.
In a separate case, on Monday the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that the police can now also bust down a door and enter your property without a warrant if they smell marijuana or hear sounds that are suggestive of destruction of evidence. The case revolved around the warrantless search of an apartment in Kentucky, Lexington.
“Where, as here, the police did not create the exigency by engaging or threatening to engage in conduct that violates the Fourth Amendment, warrantless entry to prevent the destruction of evidence is reasonable and thus allowed,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the majority.
Links:
http://www.infowars.com/while-you-were-sleeping-they-abolished-the-fourth-amendment/
http://www.infowars.com/indiana-supreme-court-dispenses-with-magna-carta-constitution/