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Authors ›› Stevens
...[U]nder the Court's holding, every citizen is subject to being seized and questioned by any officer who is prepared to testify that the warrantless stop was based on an anonymous tip predicting whatever conduct the officer just observed. Fortunately, the vast majority of those in our law enforcement community would not adopt such a practice. But the Fourth Amendment was intended to protect the citizen from the overzealous and unscrupulous officer as well as from those who are conscientious and truthful. This decision makes a mockery of that protection.
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...[T]he particularly troubling aspect of this case is not that the State provides a weak excuse for failing to obtain a warrant either before or after White's arrest, but that it offers us no reason at all. The justification cannot be that the authorities feared their narcotics investigation would be exposed and hindered if a warrant had been obtained. Ex parte warrant applications provide neutral review of police determinations of probable cause, but such procedures are by no means public. And the officers had months to take advantage of them. On this record, one must assume that the officers who seized White's car simply preferred to avoid the hassle of seeking approval from a judicial officer. I would not permit bare convenience to overcome our established preference for the warrant process as a check against arbitrary intrusions by law enforcement agencies "engaged in the often competitive" -- and, here, potentially lucrative -- "enterprise of ferreting out crime." Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 14-15, 92 L. Ed. 436, 68 S. Ct. 367 (1948).
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Today, instead of adhering to the settled distinction between drivers and passengers, the Court fashions a new rule that is based on a distinction between property contained in clothing worn by a passenger and property contained in a passenger's briefcase or purse.
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JUSTICE KENNEDY's dramatic suggestion that our construction of the 1984 amendment [providing for the innocent owner defense] "rips out," the "centerpiece of the Nation's drug enforcement laws," rests on what he characterizes as the "safe" assumption that the innocent owner defense would be available to "an associate" of a criminal who could "shelter the proceeds from forfeiture, to be reacquired once he is clear from law enforcement authorities." As a matter of fact, forfeitable proceeds are much more likely to be possessed by drug dealers themselves than by transferees sufficiently remote to qualify as innocent owners; as a matter of law, it is quite clear that neither an "associate" in the criminal enterprise nor a temporary custodian of drug proceeds would qualify as an innocent owner; indeed, neither would a sham bona fide purchaser.
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In this case, the Wisconsin Supreme Court concluded that police officers are never required to knock and announce their presence when executing a search warrant in a felony drug investigation. [...] We disagree with the court's conclusion that the Fourth Amendment permits a blanket exception to the knock-and-announce requirement for this entire category of criminal activity.
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