ANNAPOLIS, Md. (Feb 28, 2024) – Yesterday, a Maryland House committee held a public hearing on a bill that would ban “no-knock” warrants at private residences in most situations, and set the foundation to nullify several Supreme Court opinions in practice and effect.
Del. Gabriel Acevero introduced House Bill 27 (HB27) on Jan. 10. The legislation would prohibit judges from issuing no-knock warrants defined as “a search warrant that authorizes the executing law enforcement officer to enter a building, apartment, premises, place, or thing to be searched without giving notice of the officer’s authority or purpose.”
The proposed law would also require police officers to execute warrants between the hours of 8 a.m. and 7 p.m.
All search and arrest warrants executed at a residence would be required to contain these parameters to be valid.
On Feb. 27, the House Judiciary Committee held a public hearing on the bill, an important first step in the legislative process.
NULLIFYING THE SUPREME COURT
The passage of HB27 would take a big step toward effectively nullifying and making irrelevant several Supreme Court opinions that give police across the U.S. legal cover for conducting no-knock raids.
In the 1995 case Wilson v. Arkansas, the Supreme Court established that police must peacefully knock, announce their presence, and allow time for the occupants to open the door before entering a home to serve a warrant. But the Court allowed for “exigent circumstance” exceptions if police fear violence, if the suspect is a flight risk, or if officers fear the suspect will destroy evidence.
As journalist Radley Balko notes, police utilized this exception to the fullest extent, “simply declaring in search warrant affidavits that all drug dealers are a threat to dispose of evidence, flee or assault the officers at the door.”
The SCOTUS eliminated this blanket exception in Richards v. Wisconsin (1997) requiring police to show why a specific individual is a threat to dispose of evidence, commit an act of violence, or flee from police. But even with this opinion, the bar for obtaining a no-knock warrant remains low.
“In order to justify a ‘no-knock’ entry, the police must have a reasonable suspicion that knocking and announcing their presence, under the particular circumstances, would be dangerous or futile, or that it would inhibit the effective investigation of the crime by, for example, allowing the destruction of evidence.” [Emphasis added]
Reasonable suspicion is an extremely low legal bar to meet. Through this exception, police can justify no-knock entry on any warrant application. In effect, the parameters in the SCOTUS ruling make no-knock the norm instead of the exception.
A third Supreme Court ruling effectively eliminated the consequences for violating the “knock and announce” requirement even without a no-knock warrant. In Hudson v. Michigan (2006), the High Court held that evidence seized in violation of knock and announce was not subject to the exclusionary rule. In other words, police could still use the evidence in court even though they technically gathered it illegally.
Significantly, were it not for the dubious “incorporation doctrine” made up by the Supreme Court based on the 14th Amendment that purportedly empowers the federal government to apply the Bill of Rights to the states, these cases would have never gone to federal court and we wouldn’t have these blanket rules.
Without specific restrictions from the state, police officers generally operate within the parameters set by the High Court. By passing restrictions on no-knock warrants, states set standards that go beyond the Supreme Court limits and in effect, nullify the SCOTUS opinion.
WHAT’S NEXT
The House Judiciary Committee will need to bring HB27 up for a vote and pass it by a majority before the bill can move forward in the legislative process.
