Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586 (2006)

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547 U.S. 586 ( 2006)

HUDSON

v.

MICHIGAN

No. 04-1360.

Argued January 9, 2006 .

Reargued May 18,

2006 .

Decided June 15,

2006 .

Supreme Court of United States.

*587

David A. Moran argued and reargued the cause for petitioner. With h im on the briefs were Timothy O'Toole, Steven R.

Shapiro, Michael J. Steinberg, Kary L. Moss, and Richard D. Korn. 587

*588

Timothy A. Baughman argued and reargued the cause and filed a brief for respondent. 588

David B. Salmons argued and reargued the cause for the United States as amicus curiae urging affirmance. With him on the brief

were Solicitor General Clement, Assistant Attorney General F isher, Deputy Solicitor General Dreeben, and Deborah Watson. [*]

JUSTICE SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court, exce

pt as to Part IV.

We decide whether violation of the "knock-and-announce" r ule requires the suppression of all evidence found in the search.

I

Police obtained a warrant authorizing a search for drug s and firearms at the home of petitioner Booker Hudson. They discovered

both. Large quantities of drugs were found, including cocaine rocks in

Hudson's pocket. A loaded gun was lodged between the

cushion and armrest of the chair in which he was sitting.

Hudson was charged under Michigan law with unlawful drug and

firearm possession.

This case is before

us only because of the method of entry into the house. Whe n the police arrived to execute the warrant, they

announced their presence, but waited only a short time—pe rhaps "three to five seconds," App. 15—before turning the knob of the

unlocked front door and entering

Hudson's home. Hudson moved to suppress all the inculpatory evidence, arguing th at the

premature entry violated his Fourth Amendment rights.

The

Michigan trial court granted his motion. On interlocutory review , the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed, relying *589 on

Michigan Supreme Court cases holding that suppression is inappropr iate when entry is made pursuant to warrant but without

proper "`knock and announce.'" App. to Pet. for Cert. 4 (citing People

v. Vasquez, 461 Mich. 235, 602 N. W. 2d 376 (1999) (per

curiam) ; People v. Stevens, 460 Mich. 626, 597 N. W. 2d 53 (1999) ). The Michigan Supreme Court denied leave to appeal. 465

Mich. 932, 639 N. W. 2d 255 (2001).

Hudson was convicted of drug possession. He renewed his Fourth Am endment claim on

appeal, but the Court of Appeals rejected it and affi rmed the conviction. App. to Pet. for Cert. 1-2. The

Michigan Supreme Court

again declined review. 472 Mich. 862, 692 N. W. 2d 385 (2005). We granted certiorari. 545

U. S. 1138 (2005).

589

II

The common-law principle that law enforcement officers m ust announce their presence and provide residents an oppo rtunity to

open the door is an ancient one. See Wilson

v. Arkansas, 514 U. S. 927, 931-932 (1995) . Since 1917, when Congress passed

the Espionage Act, this traditional protection has been part of federal statutory law, see 40 Stat. 229, and is currently codified at

18 U. S. C. § 3109. We applied that statute in Miller

v. United States, 357 U. S. 301 (1958), and again in Sabbath v. United States,

391 U. S. 585 (1968) . Finally, in Wilson, we were asked whether the rule was also a command of th e Fourth Amendment. Tracing

its origins in our English legal heritage, 514

U. S. , at 931-936, we concluded that it was. 2/6/2017Hudson v. Michigan, 547 US 586 - Supreme Court 2006 - Google Scholar

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We recognized that the new constitutional rule we had a nnounced is not easily applied. Wilson and cases following it have noted

the many situations in which it is not necessary to knock and announce. It is not necessary when "circumstances presen[t] a

threat of physical violence," or if there is "reason to be lieve that evidence would likely be destroyed if advance not ice were given,"

id., at 936, or if knocking and

*590 announcing would be "futile," Richards v. Wisconsin, 520 U. S. 385, 394 (1997) . We require

only that police "have a reasonable suspicion . . . under the particular circumstances" that one of these grounds fo r failing to

knock and announce exists, and we have acknowledged that "[t ]his showing is not high." Ibid. 590

When the knock-and-announce rule does apply, it is not e asy to determine precisely what officers must do. How man y seconds'

wait are too few? Our "reasonable wait time" standard , see United States

v. Banks, 540 U. S. 31, 41 (2003), is necessarily vague.

Banks (a drug case, like this one) held that the proper measu re was not how long it would take the resident to reach the door, but

how long it would take to dispose of the suspected drugs—bu t that such a time (15 to 20 seconds in that case) would necessarily

be extended when, for instance, the suspected contraband w as not easily concealed. Id., at 40-41. If our ex post evaluation is

subject to such calculations, it is unsurprising that, ex ante, police officers about to encounter someone who may try to harm them

will be uncertain how long to wait.

Happily, these issues do not confront

us here. From the trial level onward, Michigan has conceded that the entry was a knock-

and-announce violation. The issue here is remedy. Wilson specifically declined to decide whether the exclusionary r ule is

appropriate for violation of the knock-and-announce req uirement. 514

U. S. , at 937, n. 4 . That question is squarely before us

now. III A

In Weeks

v. United States, 232 U. S. 383 (1914), we adopted the federal exclusionary rule for evidence t hat was unlawfully

seized from a home without a warrant in violation of t he Fourth Amendment. We began applying the same rule to the States,

through the Fourteenth Amendment, in Mapp

v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643 (1961) .

*591 Suppression of evidence, however, has always been our last resort, not our first impulse. The exclusionary rule generates

"substantial social costs," United States

v. Leon, 468 U. S. 897, 907 (1984), which sometimes include setting the guilty free and

the dangerous at large. We have therefore been "cautio [

us] against expanding" it, Colorado v. Connelly, 479 U. S. 157, 166

(1986), and "have repeatedly emphasized that the rule's `costly to ll' upon truth-seeking and law enforcement objectives presents

a high obstacle for those urging [its] application," Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole

v. Scott, 524 U. S. 357, 364-365

(1998) . We have rejected "[i]ndiscriminate application" of t he rule, Leon, supra, at 908 , and have held it to be applicable only

"where its remedial objectives are thought most efficaciou sly served," United States

v. Calandra, 414 U. S. 338, 348 (1974) —that

is, "where its deterrence benefits outweigh its `substanti al social costs,'" Scott, supra,

at 363 (quoting Leon, supra, at 907 ).

591

We did not always speak so guardedly. Expansive dicta in Mapp, for example, suggested wide scope for the exclusionary rule .

See, e. g., 367

U. S. , at 655 ("[A]ll evidence obtained by searches and seizures in viol ation of the Constitution is, by that same

authority, inadmissible in a state court"). Whiteley

v. Warden, Wyo. State Penitentiary, 401 U. S. 560, 568-569 (1971), was to the

same effect. But we have long since rejected that approa ch. As explained in Arizona

v. Evans, 514 U. S. 1, 13 (1995) : "In

Whiteley, the Court treated identification of a Fourth Amend ment violation as synonymous with application of the exclusio nary

rule to evidence secured incident to that violation. Subse quent case law has rejected this reflexive application of the exclusionary

rule." (Citation omitted.) We had said as much in Leon, a decade earlier, when we explained that "[w]hether the exclusionary

sanction is appropriately imposed in a particular case . . . is `an issue separate from the question whether the Fourth Amendment

rights of the party seeking

*592 to invoke the rule were violated by police conduct.'" 46 8 U. S. , at 906 (quoting Illinois v. Gates,

462 U. S. 213, 223 (1983) ).

592

In other words, exclusion may not be premised on the mere fact that a constitutional violation was a "but-for" cause of obtaining

evidence. Our cases show that but-for causality is only a nece ssary, not a sufficient, condition for suppression. In this case, of

course, the constitutional violation of an illegal manner of entry was not a but-for cause of obtaining the evidence. Whether th at

preliminary misstep had occurred or not, the police would have executed the warrant they had o btained, and would have

discovered the gun and drugs inside the house. But even if the illegal entry here could be characterized as a but-for cause of

discovering what was inside, we have "never held that evid ence is `fruit of the poisonous tree' simply because `it would not have

come to light but for the illegal actions of the polic e.'" Segura

v. United States, 468 U. S. 796, 815 (1984) . See also id., at 829 2/6/2017Hudson v. Michigan, 547 US 586 - Supreme Court 2006 - Google Scholar

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(Stevens, J., dissenting) ("We have not . . . mechanically applied the [exclusionary] rule to every item of evidence that has a

causal connection with police misconduct"). Rather, but-for cause, or "causation in the logical sense alone," United States

v.

Ceccolini, 435 U. S. 268, 274 (1978), can be too attenuated to justify exclusion, id., at 274-275. Even in the early days of the

exclusionary rule, we declined to

"hold that all evidence is `fruit of the poisonous tree' simply because it would not have come to light but for the

illegal actions of the police. Rather, the more apt qu estion in such a case is `whether, granting establishment o f the

primary illegality, the evidence to which instant object ion is made has been come at by exploitation of that illegality

or instead by means sufficiently distinguishable to be purg ed of the primary taint.'" Wong Sun

v. United States, 371

U. S. 471, 487-488 (1963) (quoting J. Maguire, Evidence of Guilt 221 (1959); em phasis added).

*593 Attenuation can occur, of course, when the causal connecti on is remote. See, e. g., Nardone v. United States, 308 U. S. 338,

341 (1939) . Attenuation also occurs when, even given a direct causal connection, the interest protected by the constitutional

guarantee that has been violated would not be served by suppression of the evidence obtained. "The penalties visit ed upon the

Government, and in turn upon the public, because its of ficers have violated the law must bear some relation to t he purposes

which the law is to serve." Ceccolini, supra,

at 279 . Thus, in New York v. Harris, 495 U. S. 14 (1990), where an illegal warrantless

arrest was made in Harris's house, we held:

593

"[S]uppressing [Harris's] statement taken outside the house would not serve the purpose of the rule that made

Harris' in-house arrest illegal. The warrant requireme nt for an arrest in the home is imposed to protect the home,

and anything incriminating the police gathered from a rresting Harris in his home, rather than elsewhere, has been

excluded, as it should have been; the purpose of the rul e has thereby been vindicated." Id., at 20.

For this reason, cases excluding the fruits of unlawful war rantless searches, see, e. g., Boyd

v. United States, 116 U. S. 616

(1886) ; Weeks, 232 U. S. 383 ; Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U. S. 385 (1920) ; Mapp, supra , say nothing about

the appropriateness of exclusion to vindicate the interest s protected by the knock-and-announce requirement. Until a valid

warrant has issued, citizens are entitled to shield "the ir persons, houses, papers, and effects,"

U. S. Const., Amdt. 4, from the

government's scrutiny. Exclusion of the evidence obtained b y a warrantless search vindicates that entitlement. The interests

protected by the knock-and-announce requirement are quit e different—and do not include the shielding of potential evidence

from the government's eyes.

*594 One of those interests is the protection of human life and limb, because an unannounced entry may provoke violence in

supposed self-defense by the surprised resident. See, e. g., McDonald

v. United States, 335 U. S. 451, 460-461 (1948) (Jackson,

J., concurring) . See also Sabbath, 391 U. S. , at 589 ; Miller, 357 U. S. , at 313, n. 12 . Another interest is the protection of property.

Breaking a house (as the old cases typically put it) absent a n announcement would penalize someone who "`did not kno w of the

process, of which, if he had notice, it is to be presumed that he would obey it . . . .'" Wilson,

514 U. S. , at 931-932 (quoting

Semayne's Case, 5 Co. Rep. 91a, 91b, 77 Eng. Rep. 194, 195-196 (K. B. 1603)). The knock-and- announce rule gives individuals

"the opportunity to comply with the law and to avoid th e destruction of property occasioned by a forcible entry." Richards,

520 U.

S., at 393, n. 5 . See also Banks, 540 U. S. , at 41 . And thirdly, the knock-and-announce rule protects tho se elements of privacy

and dignity that can be destroyed by a sudden entrance. I t gives residents the "opportunity to prepare themselves for" the entry of

the police. Richards,

520 U. S. , at 393, n. 5 . "The brief interlude between announcement and entr y with a warrant may be the

opportunity that an individual has to pull on clothes or get out of bed." Ibid. In other words, it assures the opportunity to collect

oneself before answering the door.

594

What the knock-and-announce rule has never protected, howe ver, is one's interest in preventing the government from seeing or

taking evidence described in a warrant. Since the interest s that were violated in this case have nothing to do with the seizure of

the evidence, the exclusionary rule is inapplicable. B

Quite apart from the requirement of unattenuated cau sation, the exclusionary rule has never been applied except "where its

deterrence benefits outweigh its `substantial social costs,'" Scott,

524 U. S. , at 363 (quoting Leon, 468 U. S. , *595 at 907 ). The

costs here are considerable. In addition to the grave adve rse consequence that exclusion of relevant incriminating e vidence

always entails (viz., the risk of releasing dangerous crimin als into society), imposing that massive remedy for a knock-an d-

announce violation would generate a constant flood of alleged failures to observe the rule, and claims that any asserted 595 2/6/2017Hudson v. Michigan, 547 US 586 - Supreme Court 2006 - Google Scholar

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Richards justification for a noknock entry, see 520 U. S. , at 394, had inadequate support. Cf. United States v. Singleton, 441 F. 3d

290, 293-294 (CA4 2006 ). The cost of entering this lottery would be small, but the jackpot enormous: suppression of all evidence,

amounting in many cases to a get-out-of-jail-free card. Courts would experience as never before the reality that "[t]he

exclusionary rule frequently requires extensive litigation to determine whether particular evidence must be excluded ." Scott,

supra, at 366 . Unlike the warrant or Miranda requirements, compliance with which is readily determine d (either there was or was

not a warrant; either the Miranda warning was given, or it was not), what constituted a "reasonable wait time" in a particular case,

Banks, supra,

at 41 (or, for that matter, how many seconds the police in fa ct waited), or whether there was "reasonable suspicion"

of the sort that would invoke the Richards exceptions, is difficult for the trial court to determin e and even more difficult for an

appellate court to review.

Another consequence of the incongruent remedy

Hudson proposes would be police officers' refraining from time ly entry after

knocking and announcing. As we have observed, see supra, at 590, the amount of time they must wait is necessaril y uncertain. If

the consequences of running afoul of the rule were so ma ssive, officers would be inclined to wait longer than the law requires—

producing preventable violence against officers in some case s, and the destruction of evidence in many others. See Gates,

462

U. S. , at 258 (White, J., concurring in judgment) . We deemed these consequences severe enough to produce ou r unanimous

agreement

*596 that a mere "reasonable suspicion" that knocking and ann ouncing "under the particular circumstances, would be

dangerous or futile, or that it would inhibit the e ffective investigation of the crime," will cause the requi rement to yield. Richards,

supra, at 394 .

596

Next to these "substantial social costs" we must consider the deterrence benefits, existence of which is a necessary condi tion for

exclusion. (It is not, of course, a sufficient condition: "[ I]t does not follow that the Fourth Amendment requires adoption of every

proposal that might deter police misconduct." Calandra,

414 U. S. , at 350 ; see also Leon, supra, at 910 .) To begin with, the value

of deterrence depends upon the strength of the incentive to commit the forbidden act. Viewed from this perspective, deterrence of

knock-and-announce violations is not worth a lot. Violatio n of the warrant requirement sometimes produces incrimin ating

evidence that could not otherwise be obtained. But igno ring knock-and-announce can realistically be expected to achi eve

absolutely nothing except the prevention of destruction of evidence and the avoidance of life-threatening resistance by

occupants of the premises—dangers which, if there is even " reasonable suspicion" of their existence, suspend the knock-and-

announce requirement anyway. Massive deterrence is hardly required.

It seems to

us not even true, as Hudson contends, that without suppression there will be no det errence of knock-and-announce

violations at all. Of course even if this assertion were a ccurate, it would not necessarily justify suppression. Assuming (as the

assertion must) that civil suit is not an effective deterren t, one can think of many forms of police misconduct that ar e similarly

"undeterred." When, for example, a confessed suspect in t he killing of a police officer, arrested (along with incriminating

evidence) in a lawful warranted search, is subjected to p hysical abuse at the station house, would it seriously be su ggested that

the evidence must be excluded, since that is the only "ef fective deterrent"?

*597 And what, other than civil suit, is the "effective

deterrent" of police violation of an already-confessed su spect's Sixth Amendment rights by denying him prompt access to

counsel? Many would regard these violated rights as more si gnificant than the right not to be intruded upon in one's nightclothes

—and yet nothing but "ineffective" civil suit is available a s a deterrent. And the police incentive for those violations is arguably

greater than the incentive for disregarding the knock-an d-announce rule. 597

We cannot assume that exclusion in this context is necessary dete rrence simply because we found that it was necessary

deterrence in different contexts and long ago. That wou ld be forcing the public today to pay for the sins and inadequacies of a

legal regime that existed almost half a century ago. Dol lree Mapp could not turn to Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983, for

meaningful relief; Monroe

v. Pape, 365 U. S. 167 (1961), which began the slow but steady expansion of that remed y, was

decided the same Term as Mapp. It would be another 17 years before the § 1983 remed y was extended to reach the deep pocket

of municipalities, Monell

v. New York City Dept. of Social Servs., 436 U. S. 658 (1978) . Citizens whose Fourth Amendment rights

were violated by federal officers could not bring suit un til 10 years after Mapp, with this Court's decision in Bivens

v. Six Unknown

Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U. S. 388 (1971) .

Hudson complains that "it would be very hard to find a lawyer to take a case such as this," Tr. of Oral Arg. 7, but 42 U . S. C. §

1988(b) answers this objection. Since some civil-rights viol ations would yield damages too small to justify the expense of

litigation, Congress has authorized attorney's fees for ci vil-rights plaintiffs. This remedy was unavailable in the heydays of our

exclusionary-rule jurisprudence, because it is tied to the availability of a cause of action. For years after Mapp, "very few lawyers

would even consider representation of persons who had civil rights claims against the police," but now "much has changed.

Citizens and lawyers

*598 are much more willing to seek relief in the courts for police misconduct." M. Avery, D. Rudovsky, & K.

Blum, Police Misconduct: Law and Litigation, p. v (3d ed. 2005); see generally N. Aron, Liberty and Justice fo r All: Public Interest 598 2/6/2017Hudson v. Michigan, 547 US 586 - Supreme Court 2006 - Google Scholar

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Law in the 1980s and Beyond (1989) (describing the grow th of public-interest law). The number of public-interest law firms and

lawyers who specialize in civil-rights grievances has greatly e xpanded.

Hudson points out that few published decisions to date announce huge awards for knock-and-announce violations. But this i s an

unhelpful statistic. Even if we thought that only large damages would deter police misconduct (and that police somehow are

deterred by "damages" but indifferent to the prospect of large § 1988 attorney's fees), we do not know how m any claims have

been settled, or indeed how many violations have occurred that produced anything more than nominal injury. It is clear, at least,

that the lower courts are allowing colorable knock-and-a nnounce suits to go forward, unimpeded by assertions of qu alified

immunity. See, e. g., Green

v. Butler, 420 F. 3d 689, 700-701 (CA7 2005) (denying qualified immunity in a knock-and-announce

civil suit); Holland ex rel. Overdorff

v. Harrington, 268 F. 3d 1179, 1193-1196 (CA10 2001) (same); Mena v. Simi Valley, 226 F. 3d

1031, 1041-1042 (CA9 2000) (same); Gould v. Davis, 165 F. 3d 265, 270-271 (CA4 1998) (same). As far as we know, civil liability

is an effective deterrent here, as we have assumed it is in other contexts. See, e. g., Correctional Services Corp.

v. Malesko, 534

U. S. 61, 70 (2001) ("[T]he threat of litigation and liability will ade quately deter federal officers for Bivens purposes no matter that

they may enjoy qualified immunity" (as violators of knock-and -announce do not)); see also Nix

v. Williams, 467 U. S. 431, 446

(1984) .

Another development over the past half-century that dete rs civil-rights violations is the increasing professionalism o f police

forces, including a new emphasis on internal police discipl ine. Even as long ago as 1980 we felt it proper to

*599 "assume" that

unlawful police behavior would "be dealt with appropr iately" by the authorities, United States

v. Payner, 447 U. S. 727, 733-734,

n. 5 (1980), but we now have increasing evidence that police forces acr oss the United States take the constitutional rights of

citizens seriously. There have been "wide-ranging reforms in the education, training, and supervision of police officers." S.

Walker, Taming the System: The Control of Discretion in Criminal Justice 1950-1990, p. 51 (1993). Numerous source s are now

available to teach officers and their supervisors what is re quired of them under this Court's cases, how to respect co nstitutional

guarantees in various situations, and how to craft an ef fective regime for internal discipline. See, e. g., D. Waksman & D.

Goodman, The Search and Seizure Handbook (2d ed.

2006 ); A. Stone & S. DeLuca, Police Administration: An Int roduction (2d

ed. 1994); E. Thibault, L. Lynch, & R. McBride, Proacti ve Police Management (4th ed. 1998). Failure to teach and enforce

constitutional requirements exposes municipalities to fina ncial liability. See Canton

v. Harris, 489 U. S. 378, 388 (1989) .

Moreover, modern police forces are staffed with profession als; it is not credible to assert that internal discipline, which can limit

successful careers, will not have a deterrent effect. There is also evidence that the increasing use of various forms of citizen

review can enhance police accountability.

599

In sum, the social costs of applying the exclusionary rule to knock-and-announce violations are considerable; the incentive to

such violations is minimal to begin with, and the extant deterrences against them are substantial—incomparably gre ater than the

factors deterring warrantless entries when Mapp was decided. Resort to the massive remedy of suppressing evi dence of guilt is

unjustified. IV

A trio of cases— Segura

v. United States, 468 U. S. 796 (1984) ; New York v. Harris, 495 U. S. 14 (1990) ; and United *600 States v.

Ramirez, 523 U. S. 65 (1998) —confirms our conclusion that suppression is unwarranted in this case.

600

Like today's case, Segura involved a concededly illegal entry. Police conducting a drug crime investigation waited for Segura

outside an apartment building; when he arrived, he de nied living there. The police arrested him and brought him to the apartment

where they suspected illegal activity. An officer knocked. W hen someone inside opened the door, the police entered, taking

Segura with them. They had neither a warrant nor con sent to enter, and they did not announce themselves as pol ice—an entry

as illegal as can be. Officers then stayed in the apartmen t for 19 hours awaiting a search warrant. 468

U. S. , at 800-801 ; id., at

818-819 (Stevens, J., dissenting). Once alerted that the search warrant had been obtained, the police—still insid e, having

secured the premises so that no evidence could be removed— co nducted a search. Id., at 801. We refused to exclude the

resulting evidence. We recognized that only the evidence g ained from the particular violation could be excluded, see id., at 799,

804-805, and therefore distinguished the effects of th e illegal entry from the effects of the legal search: "None of the information

on which the warrant was secured was derived from or rela ted in any way to the initial entry into petitioners' apartment . . .," id., at

814. It was therefore "beyond dispute that the informa tion possessed by the agents before they entered the apar tment constituted

an independent source for the discovery and seizure of the evidence now challenged." Ibid. 2/6/2017Hudson v. Michigan, 547 US 586 - Supreme Court 2006 - Google Scholar

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If the search in Segura could be "wholly unrelated to the prior entry," ibid., when the only entry was warrantless, it would be

bizarre to treat more harshly the actions in this case, whe re the only entry was with a warrant. If the probable cause backing a

warrant that was issued later in time could be an "independent source" for a search that proce eded after the officers illegally

entered and waited, a search warrant

*601 obtained before going in must have at least this much effect. [1] 601

In the second case, Harris, the police violated the defendant's Fourth Amendment rights by arresting him at home without a

warrant, contrary to Payton

v. New York, 445 U. S. 573 (1980) . Once taken to the station house, he gave an incriminati ng

statement. See 495

U. S. , at 15-16 . We refused to exclude it. Like the illegal entry which led to discovery of the evidence in

today's case, the illegal arrest in Harris began a process that culminated in acquisition of the evi dence sought to be excluded.

While Harris's statement was "the product of an arrest an d being in custody," it "was not the fruit of the fact that the arrest was

made in the house rather than someplace else." Id., at 20. Likewise here: While acquisition of the gun a nd drugs was the product

of a search pursuant to warrant, it was not the fruit o f the fact that the entry was not preceded by knock-and-a nnounce.

[2]

*602 United States v. Ramirez, supra , involved a claim that police entry violated the Fourth Amendment because it was effected

by breaking a window. We ultimately concluded that the p roperty destruction was, under all the circumstances, reasona ble, but in

the course of our discussion we unanimously said the follow ing: "[D]estruction of property in the course of a search may violate

the Fourth Amendment, even though the entry itself is lawful and the fruits of the search are not subject to suppression." Id., at 71.

Had the breaking of the window been unreasonable, the Court said, it would have been necessary to determine w hether there

had been a "sufficient causal relationship between the b reaking of the window and the discovery of the guns to w arrant

suppression of the evidence." Id., at 72, n. 3. What clearer expression could there be of the proposition that an impermissible

manner of entry does not necessarily trigger the exclusionar y rule? 602

* * *

For the foregoing reasons we affirm the judgment of the

Michigan Court of Appeals.

It is so ordered.

JUSTICE KENNEDY, concurring in part and concurring in t he judgment.

Two points should be underscored with respect to today's de cision. First, the knock-and-announce requirement protects rights

and expectations linked to ancient principles in our constit utional order. See Wilson

v. Arkansas, 514 U. S. 927, 934 (1995) . The

Court's decision should not be interpreted as suggesting that violations of the requirement are

*603 trivial or beyond the law's

concern. Second, the continued operation of the exclusiona ry rule, as settled and defined by our precedents, is not in doubt.

Today's decision determines only that in the specific context of the knock-and-announce requirement, a violation is not sufficiently

related to the later discovery of evidence to justify suppr ession. 603

As to the basic right in question, privacy and security in t he home are central to the Fourth Amendment's guarantees as explained

in our decisions and as understood since the beginnings of the Republic. This common understanding ensures respect f or the

law and allegiance to our institutions, and it is an i nstrument for transmitting our Constitution to later g enerations undiminished in

meaning and force. It bears repeating that it is a ser ious matter if law enforcement officers violate the sancti ty of the home by

ignoring the requisites of lawful entry. Security must n ot be subject to erosion by indifference or contempt.

Our system, as the Court explains, has developed procedures for training police officers and imposing discipline for failures to act

competently and lawfully. If those measures prove ineffec tive, they can be fortified with more detailed regulations or legislation.

Supplementing these safeguards are civil remedies, such as t hose available under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983, that

provide restitution for discrete harms. These remedies a pply to all violations, including, of course, exceptional cases in which

unannounced entries cause severe fright and humiliation.

Suppression is another matter. Under our precedents the causal link between a violation of the knock-and-announce

requirement and a later search is too attenuated to al low suppression. Cf. United States

v. Ramirez, 523 U. S. 65, 72, n. 3 (1998)

(application of the exclusionary rule depends on the existe nce of a "sufficient causal relationship" between the unlawful conduct

and the discovery of evidence). When, for example, a violat ion results from want of a 20-second pause but an ensuing, lawful

search lasting five hours discloses evidence

*604 of criminality, the failure to wait at the door cann ot properly be described as

having caused the discovery of evidence. 604 2/6/2017Hudson v. Michigan, 547 US 586 - Supreme Court 2006 - Google Scholar

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Today's decision does not address any demonstrated pattern of knock-and-announce violations. If a widespread pattern of

violations were shown, and particularly if those violatio ns were committed against persons who lacked the means or voice to

mount an effective protest, there would be reason for grave concern. Even then, however, the Court would have t o acknowledge

that extending the remedy of exclusion to all the evidence seized following a knock-and-announce violation would mea n revising

the requirement of causation that limits our discretion in applying the exclusionary rule. That type of extension also would have

significant practical implications, adding to the list of issues requiring resolution at the criminal trial questi ons such as whether

police officers entered a home after waiting 10 seconds o r 20.

In this case the relevant evidence was discovered not because of a failure to knock and announce, but because of a subsequent

search pursuant to a lawful warrant. The Court in my vi ew is correct to hold that suppression was not required. While I am not

convinced that Segura

v. United States, 468 U. S. 796 (1984), and New York v. Harris, 495 U. S. 14 (1990), have as much

relevance here as Justice Scalia appears to conclude, the C ourt's holding is fully supported by Parts I through III of its opinion. I

accordingly join those Parts and concur in the judgment.

JUSTICE BREYER, with whom JUSTICE STEVENS, JUSTICE SOU TER, and JUSTICE GINSBURG join, dissenting.

In Wilson

v. Arkansas, 514 U. S. 927 (1995), a unanimous Court held that the Fourth Amendment no rmally requires law

enforcement officers to knock and announce their presence be fore entering a dwelling. Today's opinion holds that evidence

seized from a home following a violation of this requir ement need not be suppressed.

*605 As a result, the Court destroys the strongest legal incent ive to comply with the Constitution's knock-and-announce

requirement. And the Court does so without significant support in precedent. At least I can find no such support in the many

Fourth Amendment cases the Court has decided in the near century since it first set forth the exclusionary principle in Weeks

v.

United States, 232 U. S. 383 (1914) . See Appendix, infra.

605

Today's opinion is thus doubly troubling. It represents a significant departure from the Court's precedents. And it weakens,

perhaps destroys, much of the practical value of the Constit ution's knock-and-announce protection.

I

This Court has set forth the legal principles that ought to have determined the outcome of this case in two sets o f basic Fourth

Amendment cases. I shall begin by describing that underlyin g case law.

A

The first set of cases describes the constitutional knockand-an nounce requirement, a requirement that this Court initially set forth

only 11 years ago in Wilson, supra

. Cf. Sabbath v. United States, 391 U. S. 585 (1968) (suppressing evidence seized in violation

of federal statutory knockand-announce requirement); Miller

v. United States, 357 U. S. 301 (1958) (same). In Wilson, tracing the

lineage of the knock-and-announce rule back to the 13th ce ntury, 514

U. S. , at 932, and n. 2, we wrote that

"[a]n examination of the common law of search and seizure leaves no doubt that the reasonableness of a search

of a dwelling may depend in part on whether law enfo rcement officers announced their presence and authority

prior to entering." Id., at 931.

We noted that this "basic principle" was agreed upon by " [s]everal prominent founding-era commentators," id., at 932,

*606 and

"was woven quickly into the fabric of early American law" via state constitutions and statutes, id., at 933. We further concluded

that there was 606

"little doubt that the Framers of the Fourth Amendme nt thought that the method of an officer's entry into a dwelling

was among the factors to be considered in assessing the rea sonableness of a search or seizure." Id., at 934.

And we held that the "common-law `knock and announce' pr inciple forms a part of the reasonableness inquiry under the Fourth

Amendment." Id., at 929. Thus, "a search or seizure of a dwelling might be constitutionally defective if police officers enter with out

prior announcement." Id., at 936; see United States

v. Banks, 540 U. S. 31, 36 (2003) ; United States v. Ramirez, 523 U. S. 65, 70

(1998) ; Richards v. Wisconsin, 520 U. S. 385, 387 (1997) . 2/6/2017Hudson v. Michigan, 547 US 586 - Supreme Court 2006 - Google Scholar

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B

The second set of cases sets forth certain well-established principles that are relevant here. They include:

Boyd

v. United States, 116 U. S. 616 (1886) . In this seminal Fourth Amendment case, decided 120 yea rs ago, the Court wrote, in

frequently quoted language, that the Fourth Amendmen t's prohibitions apply

"to all invasions on the part of the government and its employés of the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies

of life. It is not the breaking of his doors, and the r ummaging of his drawers, that constitutes the essence of th e

offence; but it is the invasion of his indefeasible right of personal security, personal liberty and private prope rty." Id.,

at 630.

Weeks, supra

. This case, decided 28 years after Boyd, originated the exclusionary rule. The Court held that the Federal

Government could not retain evidence seized unconstitutiona lly

*607 and use that evidence in a federal criminal trial. The Court

pointed out that "[i]f letters and private documents" could be unlawfully seized from a home "and used in evid ence against a

citizen accused of an offense, the protection of the Fourt h Amendment declaring his right to be secure against such searches and

seizures is of no value, and . . . might as well be stricke n from the Constitution." 232

U. S. , at 393 .

607

Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U. S. 385 (1920) . This case created an exception to (or a qualification of) Weeks '

exclusionary rule. The Court held that the Government cou ld not use information obtained during an illegal search to subpoena

documents that they illegally viewed during that search. Writing for the Court, Justice Holmes noted that the exclusionary rule

"does not mean that the facts [unlawfully] obtained beco me sacred and inaccessible. If knowledge of them is gained from an

independent source they may be proved like any others . . . ." 251

U. S. , at 392 . Silverthorne thus stands for the proposition that

the exclusionary rule does not apply if the evidence in qu estion (or the "fruits" of that evidence) was obtained through a process

unconnected with, and untainted by, the illegal search. Cf. Nix

v. Williams, 467 U. S. 431, 444 (1984) (describing related

"inevitable discovery" exception).

Wolf

v. Colorado, 338 U. S. 25 (1949), and Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643 (1961) . Both of these cases considered whether Weeks'

exclusionary rule applies to the States. In Wolf, the Court held that it did not. It said that "[t]he security of one's privacy against

arbitrary intrusion by the police. . . is . . . implicit in `the concept of ordered liberty' and as such enforceabl e against the States

through the Due Process Clause." 338

U. S. , at 27-28 . But the Court held that the exclusionary rule is not e nforceable against the

States as "an essential ingredient of the right." Id., at 29. In Mapp, the Court overruled Wolf. Experience, it said, showed that

alternative methods of enforcing the Fourth Amendment' s requirements

*608 had failed. See 367 U. S. , at 651-653 ; see, e. g.,

People

v. Cahan, 44 Cal. 2d 434, 447, 282 P. 2d 905, 913 (1955) (ma jority opinion of Traynor, J.) ("Experience [in California] has

demonstrated, however, that neither administrative, crim inal nor civil remedies are effective in suppressing lawle ss searches and

seizures"). The Court consequently held that "all evidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the Const itution is,

by that same authority, inadmissible in a state court." Mapp,

367 U. S. , at 655 . "To hold otherwise," the Court added, would be "to

grant the right but in reality to withhold its privile ge and enjoyment." Id., at 656.

608

II

Reading our knock-and-announce cases, Part I—A, supra, in light of this foundational Fourth Amendment case l aw, Part I—B,

supra, it is clear that the exclusionary rule should apply. For one thing, elementary logic leads to that conclusion. We have held

that a court must "conside[r]" whether officers complied w ith the knock-and-announce requirement "in assessing the

reasonableness of a search or seizure." Wilson,

514 U. S. , at 934 ; see Banks, supra, at 36 . The Fourth Amendment insists that an

unreasonable search or seizure is, constitutionally speaking, an illegal search or seizure. And ever since Weeks (in respect to

federal prosecutions) and Mapp (in respect to state prosecutions), "the use of evidence secu red through an illegal search and

seizure" is "barred" in criminal trials. Wolf, supra,

at 28 (citing Weeks, 232 U. S. 383 ); see Mapp, supra, at 655 .

For another thing, the driving legal purpose underlyin g the exclusionary rule, namely, the deterrence of unla wful government

behavior, argues strongly for suppression. See Elkins

v. United States, 364 U. S. 206, 217 (1960) (purpose of the exclusionary

rule is "to deter—to compel respect for the constitutional guaranty . . . by removing the incentive to disregard it"). In Weeks,

Silverthorne, and Mapp, the Court based its holdings requiring suppression of un lawfully obtained

*609 evidence upon the

recognition that admission of that evidence would seriou sly undermine the Fourth Amendment's promise. All three cases

recognized that failure to apply the exclusionary rule wou ld make that promise a hollow one, see Mapp, supra,

at 657 , reducing it

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to "a form of words," Silverthorne, supra, at 392 , "of no value" to those whom it seeks to protect, Weeks, supra, at 393 . Indeed, this

Court in Mapp held that the exclusionary rule applies to the States in large part due to its belief that alternative state mechanisms

for enforcing the Fourth Amendment's guarantees had pr oved "worthless and futile." 367

U. S. , at 652 .

Why is application of the exclusionary rule any the less neces sary here? Without such a rule, as in Mapp, police know that they

can ignore the Constitution's requirements without riskin g suppression of evidence discovered after an unreasonable entry. As in

Mapp, some government officers will find it easier, or belie ve it less risky, to proceed with what they consider a necessar y search

immediately and without the requisite constitutional (sa y, warrant or knock-andannounce) compliance. Cf. Mericli, The

Apprehension of Peril Exception to the Knock and Announce Rule—Part I, 16 Search and Seizure L. Rep. 129, 130 (1989)

(hereinafter Mericli) (noting that some "[d]rug enfor cement authorities believe that safety for the police lie s in a swift, surprising

entry with overwhelming force—not in announcing their of ficial authority").

Of course, the State or the Federal Government may provi de alternative remedies for knock-and-announce violations. But that

circumstance was true of Mapp as well. What reason is there to believe that those rem edies (such as private damages actions

under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983), which the Court found inadequate in Mapp, can adequately deter unconstitutional

police behavior here? See Kamisar, In Defense of the Se arch and Seizure Exclusionary Rule, 26 Harv. J. L. & Pub. Pol'y 119,

126-129 (2003) (arguing that "five decades of post- Weeks `freedom' from the inhibiting effect

*610 of the federal exclusionary

rule failed to produce any meaningful alternative to t he exclusionary rule in any jurisdiction" and that there is no evidence that

"times have changed" post- Mapp). 610

The cases reporting knock-and-announce violations are legion . See, e. g., 34 Geo. L. J. Ann. Rev. Crim. Proc. 31-35 (2005)

(collecting Courts of Appeals cases); Bremer, 85 A. L. R. 5th 1 (2001) (collecting state-court cases); Brief for Petitioner 16-17

(collecting federal and state cases). Indeed, these cases o f reported violations seem sufficiently frequent and serious as to

indicate "a widespread pattern." Ante, at 604 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Yet the majority, like

Michigan and the United States, has failed to cite a single re ported case in which a plaintiff has collected more than nominal

damages solely as a result of a knock-and-announce violatio n. Even

Michigan concedes that, "in cases like the present one . . .,

damages may be virtually nonexistent." Brief for Responden t 35, n. 66. And

Michigan's amici further concede that civil

immunities prevent tort law from being an effective su bstitute for the exclusionary rule at this time. Brief for Criminal Justice Legal

Foundation 10; see also Hope

v. Pelzer, 536 U. S. 730, 739 (2002) (difficulties of overcoming qualified immunity defenses).

As Justice Stewart, the author of a number of significant Fourth Amendment opinions, explained, the deterrent effect of damages

actions "can hardly be said to be great," as such actions ar e "expensive, time-consuming, not readily available, and rarely

successful." The Road to Mapp v. Ohio and Beyond: The Origins, Development and Future of t he Exclusionary Rule in Search-

and-Seizure Cases, 83 Colum. L. Rev. 1365, 1388 (1983) . The upshot is that the need for deterrence—the critical factor driving

this Court's Fourth Amendment cases for close to a century—ar gues with at least comparable strength for evidentiary exclusion

here.

*611 To argue, as the majority does, that new remedies, such as 42 U. S. C. § 1983 actions or better trained police, make

suppression unnecessary is to argue that Wolf, not Mapp, is now the law. (The Court recently rejected a similar argument in

Dickerson

v. United States, 530 U. S. 428, 441-442 (2000) .) To argue that there may be few civil suits because vio lations may

produce nothing "more than nominal injury" is to confir m, not to deny, the inability of civil suits to deter violations. See ante, at

598. And to argue without evidence (and despite myriad reported cases of violations, no reported case of civil dam ages, and

Michigan's concession of their nonexistence) that civil suits may provide deterrence because claims may "have been settled" is,

perhaps, to search in desperation for an argument. See ibid. Rather, the majority, as it candidly admits, has simply " assumed"

that, "[a]s far as [it] know[s], civil liability is an effe ctive deterrent," ibid., a support-free assumption that Mapp and subsequent

cases make clear does not embody the Court's normal approach to difficult questions of Fourth Amendment law.

611

It is not surprising, then, that after looking at virtually every pertinent Supreme Court case decided since Weeks, I can find no

precedent that might offer the majority support for it s contrary conclusion. The Court has, of course, recognized t hat not every

Fourth Amendment violation necessarily triggers the exclu sionary rule. Ante, at 590-592; cf. Illinois

v. Gates, 462 U. S. 213, 223

(1983) (application of the exclusionary rule is a separate quest ion from whether the Fourth Amendment has been violat ed). But

the class of Fourth Amendment violations that do not resu lt in suppression of the evidence seized, however, is limite d.

The Court has declined to apply the exclusionary rule onl y:

(1) where there is a specific reason to believe that appl ication of the rule would "not result in appreciable

deterrence," United States

v. Janis, 428 U. S. 433, 454 (1976) ; see, e. g., United States v. Leon, 468 U. S. 897, 2/6/2017Hudson v. Michigan, 547 US 586 - Supreme Court 2006 - Google Scholar

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919-920 *612 (1984) (exception where searching officer executes defective search warrant in "good faith");

Arizona

v. Evans, 514 U. S. 1, 14 (1995) (exception for clerical errors by court employees); Walder v. United States,

347 U. S. 62 (1954) (exception for impeachment purposes), or

612

(2) where admissibility in proceedings other than crimin al trials was at issue, see, e. g., Pennsylvania Bd. of

Probation and Parole v. Scott, 524 U. S. 357, 364 (1998) (exception for parole revocation proceedings); INS v.

Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U. S. 1032, 1050 (1984) (plurality opinion) (exception for deportation proceedings); Janis,

supra, at 458 (exception for civil tax proceedings); United States v. Calandra, 414 U. S. 338, 348-350 (1974)

(exception for grand jury proceedings); Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465, 493-494 (1976) (exception for federal

habeas proceedings).

Neither of these two exceptions applies here. The second does not apply because this case is an ordinary criminal tri al. The first

does not apply because (1) officers who violate the rule a re not acting "as a reasonable officer would and should act in similar

circumstances," Leon, supra,

at 920, (2) this case does not involve government employees other tha n police, Evans, supra , and

(3), most importantly, the key rationale for any exceptio n, "lack of deterrence," is missing, see Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation,

supra, at 364 (noting that the rationale for not applying the rul e in noncriminal cases has been that the deterrence achieve d by

having the rule apply in those contexts is "minimal" because "application of the rule in the criminal trial context already provides

significant deterrence of unconstitutional searches");

Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U. S. 433, 447 (1974) (noting that deterrence

rationale would not be served if rule applied to pol ice officers acting in good faith, as the "deterrent pu rpose of the exclusionary

rule necessarily assumes that the police have engaged in wi llful, or at the very least negligent, conduct"). That critical latter

rationale, which underlies every exception,

*613 does not apply here, as there is no reason to think tha t, in the case of knock-

and-announce violations by the police, "the exclusion of evi dence at trial would not sufficiently deter future errors," Evans, supra,

at 14 , or "`further the ends of the exclusionary rule in any appreciable way,'" Leon, supra, at 919-920 .

613

I am aware of no other basis for an exception. The Cour t has decided more than 300 Fourth Amendment cases since Weeks. The

Court has found constitutional violations in nearly a th ird of them. See W. Greenhalgh, The Fourth Amendmen t Handbook: A

Chronological Survey of Supreme Court Decisions 27-130 (2 d ed. 2003) (collecting and summarizing 332 post-Weeks cases

decided between 1914 and 2002). The nature of the con stitutional violation varies. In most instances officers lacked a warrant; in

others, officers possessed a warrant based on false affidavit s; in still others, the officers executed the search in an

unconstitutional manner. But in every case involving evidence seized during an illegal search of a home (federally since Weeks,

nationally since Mapp), the Court, with the exceptions mentioned, has either explicitly or implicitly upheld (or required) the

suppression of the evidence at trial. See Appendix, infra. In not one of those cases did the Court "questio[n], i n the absence of a

more efficacious sanction, the continued application of the [exclusionary] rule to suppress evidence from the State 's case" in a

criminal trial. Franks

v. Delaware, 438 U. S. 154, 171 (1978) .

I can find nothing persuasive in the majority's opinion t hat could justify its refusal to apply the rule. It certainly is not a justification

for an exception here (as the majority finds) to find od d instances in other areas of law that do not automatically demand

suppression. Ante, at 596-597 (suspect confesses, police beat him up afterwards; suspect confesses, then police apparently

arrest him, take him to station, and refuse to tell hi m of his right to counsel). Nor can it justify an exceptio n to say that some police

may knock at the door

*614 anyway (to avoid being mistaken for a burglar), for oth er police (believing quick entry is the most

secure, effective entry) will not voluntarily do so. Cf. M ericli 130 (describing Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team

practices); R. Balko, No SWAT (Apr. 6,

2006 ), available at http://www. cato.org/pub_display.php?p ub_id=6344 (all Internet

materials as visited June 7,

2006 , and available in Clerk of Court's case file).

614

Neither can the majority justify its failure to respect t he need for deterrence, as set forth consistently in the Court's prior case law,

through its claim of "`substantial social costs'"—at least if it means that those "`social costs'" are somehow special here . Ante , at

596. The only costs it mentions are those that typically accom pany any use of the Fourth Amendment's exclusionary principle: (1 )

that where the constable blunders, a guilty defendant m ay be set free (consider Mapp itself); (2) that defendants may assert

claims where Fourth Amendment rights are uncertain (consi der the Court's qualified immunity jurisprudence), and (3) that

sometimes it is difficult to decide the merits of those u ncertain claims. See ante, at 595-596. In fact, the "no-knock" warrants that

are provided by many States, by diminishing uncertainty, may make application of the knock-and-announce principle le ss

"`cost[ly]'" on the whole than application of comparable Fourth Amendment principles, such as determining whethe r a particular

warrantless search was justified by exigency. The majority' s "substantial social costs" argument is an argument against the

Fourth Amendment's exclusionary principle itself. And it is an argument that this Court, until now, has consistently rejected. 2/6/2017Hudson v. Michigan, 547 US 586 - Supreme Court 2006 - Google Scholar

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III

The majority,

Michigan, and the United States make several additional argumen ts. In my view, those arguments rest upon

misunderstandings of the principles underlying this Court' s precedents.

*615 A 615

The majority first argues that "the constitutional violation of an illegal manner of entry was not a but-for cause of obtaining the

evidence." Ante, at 592. But taking causation as it is commonly understood in the law, I do not see how that can be so. See W.

Keeton, D. Dobbs, R. Keeton, & D. Owen, Prosser and Ke eton on Law of Torts 266 (5th ed. 1984). Although the police might have

entered

Hudson's home lawfully, they did not in fact do so. Their unla wful behavior inseparably characterizes their actual entr y;

that entry was a necessary condition of their presence in

Hudson's home; and their presence in Hudson's home was a

necessary condition of their finding and seizing the eviden ce. At the same time, their discovery of evidence in

Hudson's home

was a readily foreseeable consequence of their entry and t heir unlawful presence within the home. Cf. 2 Restatement (Second)

of Torts § 435 (1963-1964).

Moreover, separating the "manner of entry" from the re lated search slices the violation too finely. As noted, Pa rt I—A, supra, we

have described a failure to comply with the knock-and-anno unce rule, not as an independently unlawful event, but as a factor

that renders the search "constitutionally defective." Wilson,

514 U. S. , at 936 ; see also id., at 934 (compliance with the knock-and-

announce requirement is one of the "factors to be conside red in assessing the reasonableness of a search or seizure " (emphasis

added)); Ker

v. California, 374 U. S. 23, 53 (1963) (opinion of Brennan, J.) ("[A] lawful entry is the indispensable predicate of a

reasonable search").

The Court nonetheless accepts

Michigan's argument that the requisite but-for causation is not sa tisfied in this case because,

whether or not the constitutional violation occurred (wh at the Court refers to as a "preliminary misstep"), "the police would have

executed the warrant they had obtained, and would have discovered the gun and drugs inside the

*616 house." Ante, at 592. As

support for this proposition,

Michigan rests on this Court's inevitable discovery cases.

616

This claim, however, misunderstands the inevitable discovery d octrine. Justice Holmes in Silverthorne, in discussing an

"independent source" exception, set forth the principles u nderlying the inevitable discovery rule. See supra, at 607. That rule

does not refer to discovery that would have taken place if the police behavior in question had (contrary to fact) been lawful. The

doctrine does not treat as critical what hypothetically could have happened had the police acted lawfully in the fir st place. Rather,

"independent" or "inevitable" discovery refers to discovery t hat did occur or that would have occurred (1) despite (not simply in

the absence of ) the unlawful behavior and (2) independently of that unlawful behavior. The government cannot, for example,

avoid suppression of evidence seized without a warrant (or pursuant to a defective warrant) simply by showing that it could have

obtained a valid warrant had it sought one. See, e. g., Coolidge

v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443, 450-451 (1971) . Instead, it

must show that the same evidence "inevitably would have been discovered by lawful means." Nix

v. Williams, 467 U. S. , at 444

(emphasis added). "What a man could do is not at all the same as what he would do." Austin, Ifs And Cans, 42 Proceedings of the

British Academy 109, 111-112 (1956).

The inevitable discovery exception rests upon the principle that the remedial purposes of the exclusionary rule are not served by

suppressing evidence discovered through a "later, lawful seizure" that is " genuinely independent of an earlier, tainted one."

Murray

v. United States, 487 U. S. 533, 542 (1988) (emphasis added); see also id., at 545 (Marshall, J., joined by Stevens and

O'Connor, JJ., dissenting) ("When the seizure of the evide nce at issue is `wholly independent of' the constitutional violation, then

exclusion arguably will have no effect on a law enforcemen t officer's incentive to commit an unlawful search").

*617 Case law well illustrates the meaning of this principle. In Nix, supra , police officers violated a defendant's Sixth Amendment

right by eliciting incriminating statements from him af ter he invoked his right to counsel. Those statements led to the discovery of

the victim's body. The Court concluded that evidence obta ined from the victim's body was admissible because it wou ld ultimately

or inevitably have been discovered by a volunteer search part y effort that was ongoing—whether or not the Sixth Amendment

violation had taken place. Id., at 449. In other words, the evidence would have been f ound despite, and independent of, the Sixth

Amendment violation. 617

In Segura v. United States, 468 U. S. 796 (1984), one of the "trio of cases" Justice Scalia says "confirms [th e Court's] conclusion,"

ante, at 599-600 (plurality opinion), the Court held that an earlier illegal entry into an apartment did not require suppression of 2/6/2017Hudson v. Michigan, 547 US 586 - Supreme Court 2006 - Google Scholar

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evidence that police later seized when executing a search wa rrant obtained on the basis of information unconnected to the initial

entry. The Court reasoned that the "evidence was discovere d the day following the entry, during the search conducted under a

valid warrant "—i. e., a warrant obtained independently without use of any i nformation found during the illegal entry—and that "it

was the product of that search, wholly unrelated to the prior [unlawful] ent ry." Segura, supra,

at 814 (emphasis added).

In Murray, supra

, the Court upheld the admissibility of seized evidence whe re agents entered a warehouse without a warrant,

and then later returned with a valid warrant that wa s not obtained on the basis of evidence observed during th e first (illegal) entry.

The Court reasoned that while the agents' "[k]nowledge that the marijuana was in the warehouse was assuredly a cquired at the

time of the unlawful entry . . . it was also acquired at the time of entry pursuant to the warrant , and if that later acquisition was not

the result of the earlier entry there is no reason why the independent

*618 source doctrine should not apply." Id., at 541

(emphasis added). 618

Thus, the Court's opinion reflects a misunderstanding of what "inevitable discovery" means when it says, "[i]n this case , of course,

the constitutional violation of an illegal manner of entry was not a but-for cause of obtaining the evidence." Ante, at 592. The

majority rests this conclusion on its next statement: "Wheth er that preliminary misstep had occurred or not, the police . . . would

have discovered the gun and drugs inside the house." Ibid. Despite the phrase "of course," neither of these stateme nts is correct.

It is not true that, had the illegal entry not occurre d, "police. . . would have discovered the gun and drugs i nside the house."

Without that unlawful entry they would not have been i nside the house; so there would have been no discovery. Se e supra, at

615.

Of course, had the police entered the house lawfully, they would have found the gun and drugs. But that fact is beside the point.

The question is not what police might have done had the y not behaved unlawfully. The question is what they did do. Was there

set in motion an independent chain of events that would have inevitably led to the discovery and seizure of the evi dence despite,

and independent of, that behavior? The answer here is "no."

B

The majority,

Michigan , and the United States point out that the officers he re possessed a warrant authorizing a search. Ante, at

592. That fact, they argue, means that the evidence woul d have been discovered independently or somehow diminishe s the

need to suppress the evidence. But I do not see why that is so. The warrant in question was not a "no-knock" warran t, which

many States (but not

Michigan ) issue to assure police that a prior knock is not necessary. Richards, 520 U. S. , at 396, n. 7

(collecting state statutes). It did not authorize a search that fails to comply with knockand-announce *619 requirements. Rather, it

was an ordinary search warrant. It authorized a search th at complied with, not a search that disregarded, the Constitution's

knock-andannounce rule. 619

Would a warrant that authorizes entry into a home on T uesday permit the police to enter on Monday? Would a wa rrant that

authorizes entry during the day authorize the police to e nter during the middle of the night? It is difficult for me to see how the

presence of a warrant that does not authorize the entry in question has anything to do with the "inevitable disco very" exception or

otherwise diminishes the need to enforce the knock-and-ann ounce requirement through suppression.

C

The majority and the United States set forth a policyre lated variant of the causal connection theme: The Unite d States argues that

the law should suppress evidence only insofar as a Fourth Amendment violation causes the kind of harm that the particular

Fourth Amendment rule seeks to protect against. It adds t hat the constitutional purpose of the knock-and-announce rule is to

prevent needless destruction of property (such as breaking d own a door) and to avoid unpleasant surprise. And it concludes that

the exclusionary rule should suppress evidence of, say, damage to property, the discovery of a defendant in an "intimate or

compromising moment," or an excited utterance from the o ccupant caught by surprise, but nothing more. Brief for United States

as Amicus Curiae 12, 28.

The majority makes a similar argument. It says that evidence should not be suppressed once the causal connection betwee n

unlawful behavior and discovery of the evidence becomes too "attenuated." Ante, at 592. But the majority then makes clear that it

is not using the word "attenuated" to mean what this C ourt's precedents have typically used that word to mean, na mely, that the

discovery of the evidence has come about long after the un lawful behavior took

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through "`means sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint.'" Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U. S. 471, 487-

488 (1963) ; see Brown v. Illinois, 422 U. S. 590, 603-604 (1975) .

Rather, the majority gives the word "attenuation" a ne w meaning (thereby, in effect, making the same argumen t as the United

States). "Attenuation," it says, "also occurs when, even give n a direct causal connection, the interest protected by the

constitutional guarantee that has been violated would n ot be served by suppression of the evidence obtained." Ante, at 593. The

interests the knock-andannounce rule seeks to protect, the Co urt adds, are "human life" (at stake when a householder is

"surprised"), "property" (such as the front door), and "t hose elements of privacy and dignity that can be destroyed b y a sudden

entrance," namely, "the opportunity to collect oneself before answering the door." Ante, at 594. Since none of those interests led

to the discovery of the evidence seized here, there is no r eason to suppress it.

There are three serious problems with this argument. Fi rst, it does not fully describe the constitutional values, purposes, and

objectives underlying the knock-and-announce requirement. T hat rule does help to protect homeowners from damaged doors; it

does help to protect occupants from surprise. But it does more than that. It protects the occupants' privacy by assurin g them that

government agents will not enter their home without co mplying with those requirements (among others) that dim inish the

offensive nature of any such intrusion. Many years ago, Just ice Frankfurter wrote for the Court that the "knock at the door, . . . as a

prelude to a search, without authority of law . . . [i s] inconsistent with the conception of human rights enshri ned in [our] history"

and Constitution. Wolf,

338 U. S. , at 28 . How much the more offensive when the search takes place without any knock at all. Cf.

Wilson,

514 U. S. , at 931 (knock-and-announce rule recognizes that "the common law *621 generally protected a man's house as

`his castle of defence and asylum'" (quoting 3 W. Blackstone , Commentaries *288)); Miller,

357 U. S. , at 313 (federal knock-and-

announce statute "codif[ied] a tradition embedded in Anglo-American law" that reflected "the reverence of th e law for the

individual's right of privacy in his house").

621

Over a century ago this Court wrote that "[i]t is not th e breaking of his doors" that is the "essence of the offen ce," but the "invasions

on the part of the government . . . of the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life." Boyd,

116 U. S. , at 630 . And just this

Term we have reiterated that "`it is beyond dispute tha t the home is entitled to special protection as the cente r of the private lives

of our people.'" Georgia v. Randolph, ante, at 115 (quoting Minnesota

v. Carter, 525 U. S. 83, 99 (1998) (Kennedy, J.,

concurring) ). The knock-and-announce requirement is no less a part o f the "centuries-old principle" of special protection for the

privacy of the home than the warrant requirement. See Randolph, ante, at 115 (citing Miller, supra,

at 307 ). The Court is therefore

wrong to reduce the essence of its protection to "the ri ght not to be intruded upon in one's nightclothes." Ante, at 597; see

Richards,

520 U. S. , at 393, n. 5 ("[I]ndividual privacy interest[s]" protected by the rule are "not inconsequential" and "should not

be unduly minimized").

Second, whether the interests underlying the knock-andanno unce rule are implicated in any given case is, in a sense, beside the

point. As we have explained, failure to comply with the knock-and-announce rule renders the related search unlawfu l. Wilson,

supra, at 936 . And where a search is unlawful, the law insists upon su ppression of the evidence consequently discovered, even if

that evidence or its possession has little or nothing to d o with the reasons underlying the unconstitutionality of a search. The

Fourth Amendment does not seek to protect contraband, yet we have required suppression of contraband seized in an unlawful

search. See, e. g., Kyllo

v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 40 (2001) ; Coolidge, *622 403 U. S. , at 473 . That is because the

exclusionary rule protects more general "privacy values throu gh deterrence of future police misconduct." James

v. Illinois, 493 U.

S. 307, 319 (1990) . The same is true here.

622

Third, the majority's interest-based approach departs fro m prior law. Ordinarily a court will simply look to see if the

unconstitutional search produced the evidence. The majorit y does not refer to any relevant case in which, beyond that,

suppression turned on the far more detailed relation b etween, say, (1) a particular materially false statement made to the

magistrate who issued a (consequently) invalid warrant and (2) evidence found after a search with that warrant. But cf. ante, at

601-602, n. 2 (plurality opinion) (citing New York

v. Harris, 495 U. S. 14 (1990), as such a case in section of opinion that Justice

Kennedy does not join). And the majority's failure does not surprise me, for such efforts to trace causal connection s at retail could

well complicate Fourth Amendment suppression law, threat ening its workability.

D

The United States, in its brief and at oral argument , has argued that suppression is "an especially harsh remedy given the nature

of the violation in this case." Brief as Amicus Curiae 28; see also id., at 24. This argument focuses upon the fact that enterin g a

house after knocking and announcing can, in some cases, prove dangerous to a police officer. Perhaps someone inside has a 2/6/2017Hudson v. Michigan, 547 US 586 - Supreme Court 2006 - Google Scholar

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gun, as turned out to be the case here. The majority ad ds that police officers about to encounter someone who m ay try to harm

them will be "uncertain" as to how long to wait. Ante, at 595. It says that, "[i]f the consequences of running a foul" of the knock-and-

announce "rule were so massive," i. e., would lead to the exclusion of evidence, then "officers w ould be inclined to wait longer

than the law requires—producing preventable violence agai nst officers in some cases." Ibid.

To argue that police efforts to assure compliance with t he rule may prove dangerous, however, is not to argue ag ainst

*623

evidence suppression. It is to argue against the validity of the rule itself. Similarly, to argue that enforcement means uncertainty,

which in turn means the potential for dangerous and lo nger-than-necessary delay, is (if true) to argue against meaningful

compliance with the rule.

623

The answer to the first argument is that the rule itsel f does not require police to knock or to announce their presence where police

have a "reasonable suspicion" that doing so "would be da ngerous or futile" or "would inhibit the effective investigation of the

crime by, for example, allowing the destruction of evide nce." Richards, supra,

at 394 ; see Banks, 540 U. S. , at 36-37 ; Wilson, 514

U. S. , at 935-936 .

The answer to the second argument is that States can, an d many do, reduce police uncertainty while assuring a neut ral

evaluation of concerns about risks to officers or the destruc tion of evidence by permitting police to obtain a "no-knock" search

warrant from a magistrate judge, thereby assuring police that a prior announcement is not necessary. Richards,

520 U. S. , at 396,

n. 7 (collecting state statutes). While such a procedure cannot remove all uncertainty, it does provide an easy way for officers to

comply with the knock-andannounce rule.

Of course, even without such a warrant, police maintain t he backup "authority to exercise independent judgment conce rning the

wisdom of a no-knock entry at the time the warrant is bei ng executed." Ibid. "[I]f circumstances support a reasonable suspicion of

exigency when the officers arrive at the door, they may go straight in." Banks, supra,

at 37 . And "[r]easonable suspicion is a less

demanding standard than probable cause . . . ." Alabama

v. White, 496 U. S. 325, 330 (1990) ; see Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 21-

22 (1968) (no Fourth Amendment violation under the reasonable suspicion standard if "the facts available to the officer at the

moment of the seizure or the search `warrant a man of r easonable caution in the belief' that the action taken was appropriate").

Consider this very case. The police obtained a search warran t that authorized a search, not only for drugs, but also

*624 for guns.

App. 5. If probable cause justified a search for guns, why would it not also have justified a no-knock warrant, thereby diminishing

any danger to the officers? Why (in a State such as

Michigan that lacks no-knock warrants) would it not have justified the very no-

knock entry at issue here? Indeed, why did the prosecutor n ot argue in this very case that, given the likelihood of guns, the no-

knock entry was lawful? From what I have seen in the recor d, he would have won. And had he won, there would have been no

suppression here.

624

That is the right way to win. The very process of arguing the merits of the violation would help to clarify the contours of the knock-

and-announce rule, contours that the majority believes ar e too fuzzy. That procedural fact, along with noknock warrants, back up

authority to enter without knocking regardless, and use of the "reasonable suspicion" standard for doing so should resolve the

government's problems with the knock-and-announce rule whi le reducing the "uncertain[ty]" that the majority discusses to levels

beneath that found elsewhere in Fourth Amendment law (e. g., exigent circumstances). Ante, at 595. Regardless, if the Court

fears that effective enforcement of a constitutional requ irement will have harmful consequences, it should face th ose fears directly

by addressing the requirement itself. It should not argu e, "the requirement is fine, indeed, a serious matter, just don't enforce it."

E

It should be apparent by now that the three cases upon which Justice Scalia relies—Segura

v. United States, 468 U. S. 796 ; New

York v. Harris, 495 U. S. 14 ; and Ramirez, 523 U. S. 65 —do not support his conclusion. See ante, at 599-602. Indeed, Justice

Kennedy declines to join this section of the lead opinion because he fails to see the relevance of Segura and Harris, though he

does rely on Ramirez. Ante, at 604 (opinion concurring in part and concurring in judgment).

*625 JUSTICE SCALIA first argues that, if the "search in Segura could be `wholly unrelated to the prior entry,' . . . when the only

entry was warrantless, it would be bizarre to treat more harshly the actions in this case, where the only entry was with a warrant."

Ante, at 600. Then he says that, "[i]f the probable cause backi ng a warrant that was issued later in time could be an `independent

source' for a search that proceeded after the officers ill egally entered and waited, a search warrant obtained before going in must

have at least this much effect." Ante, at 600-601. I do not understand these arguments. As I have explained, the presence of a

warrant that did not authorize a search that fails to co mply with knock-and-announce requirements is beside the po int. See Part III 625 2/6/2017Hudson v. Michigan, 547 US 586 - Supreme Court 2006 - Google Scholar

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—B, supra. And the timing of the warrant in Segura made no difference to the case. The relevant fact about the warrant there was

that it was lawfully obtained and arguably set off an i ndependent chain of events that led the police to seize t he evidence. 468

U.

S., at 814 ; see also ibid. ("The valid warrant search was a `means sufficiently dist inguishable' to purge the evidence of any `taint'

arising from the entry"). As noted, there is no such inde pendent event, or intervening chain of events that woul d purge the taint of

the illegal entry, present here. See supra, at 618. The search that produced the relevant eviden ce here is the very search that the

knock-and-announce violation rendered unlawful. There sim ply is no "independent source."

As importantly, the Court in Segura said nothing to suggest it intended to create a major exclusionary rule exception,

notwithstanding the impact of such an exception on deterr ence. Indeed, such an exception would be inconsistent with a critical

rationale underlying the independent source and inevita ble discovery rules, which was arguably available in Segura, and which

is clearly absent here. That rationale concerns deterrence. The threat of inadmissibility deters unlawful police behavior; and the

existence of an exception applicable where evidence is found through an untainted independent route will rarely undercut that

deterrence. That

*626 is because the police can rarely rely upon such an exception —at least not often enough to change the

deterrence calculus. See Murray,

487 U. S. , at 540 ("We see the incentives differently. An officer with p robable cause sufficient to

obtain a search warrant would be foolish to enter the premises first in an unlawful manner. By doing so, he wo uld risk

suppression of all evidence on the premises . . ."); Nix,

467 U. S. , at 445 ("A police officer who is faced with the opportunity t o

obtain evidence illegally will rarely, if ever, be in a position to calculate whether the evidence sought woul d inevitably be

discovered"); id., at 444 ("If the prosecution can establish by a preponder ance of the evidence that the information ultimately or

inevitably would have been discovered by lawful means—here t he volunteers' search—then the deterrence rationale has so little

basis that the evidence should be received").

626

Segura 's police officers would have been foolish to have entere d the apartment unlawfully with the ex ante hope that an

independent causal chain of events would later occur and r ender admissible the evidence they found. By way of contrast , today's

holding will seriously undermine deterrence in knock-and-a nnounce cases. Officers will almost always know ex ante that they

can ignore the knock-and-announce requirement without ri sking the suppression of evidence discovered after their un lawful

entry. That fact is obvious, and this Court has never bef ore today—not in Segura or any other post- Weeks (or post- Mapp) case—

refused to apply the exclusionary rule where its absence wo uld so clearly and so significantly impair government officials'

incentive to comply with comparable Fourth Amendment req uirements.

Neither does New York

v. Harris, supra , support the Court's result. See ante, at 593, 601; but see ante, at 604 (opinion of

KENNEDY, J.) (declining to join section relying on Harris). In Harris, police officers arrested the defendant at his home with out a

warrant, in violation of Payton

v. New York, 445 U. S. 573 (1980) . Harris made several incriminating *627 statements: a

confession in his home, a written inculpatory statement a t the station house, and a videotaped interview conducted by the district

attorney at the station house. 495

U. S. , at 16 . The trial court suppressed the statements given by Harri s in the house and on the

videotape, and the State did not challenge either of those rulings. Ibid. The sole question in the case was whether the written

statement given later at the station house should also ha ve been suppressed. The Court held that this later, outside-the-home

statement "was admissible because Harris was in legal custody . . . and because the statement, while the product of an arrest and

being in custody, was not the fruit of the fact that th e arrest was made in the house rather than someplace else ." Id., at 20.

Immediately after the Court stated its holding, it exp lained:

627

"To put the matter another way, suppressing the stateme nt taken outside the house would not serve the purpose of

the rule that made Harris' in-house arrest illegal. Th e warrant requirement for an arrest in the home is imposed to

protect the home, and anything incriminating the polic e gathered from arresting Harris in his home, rather than

elsewhere, has been excluded, as it should have been; the purpose of the rule has thereby been vindicated." Ibid.

(emphasis added).

How can Justice Scalia maintain that the evidence here—a g un and drugs seized in the home—is "`not the fruit'" of the illegal

entry? Ante, at 601. The officers' failure to knock and announce ren dered the entire search unlawful, Wilson,

514 U. S. , at 936,

and that unlawful search led to the discovery of evidence i n petitioner's home. Thus, Harris compels the opposite result than that

reached by the Court today. Like the Payton rule at issue in Harris, the knock-and-announce rule reflects the "reverence of th e

law for the individual's right of privacy in his house." Miller,

357 U. S. , at 313 ; cf. Harris, 495 U. S. , at 17 ("Payton itself *628

emphasized that our holding in that case stemmed from th e `overriding respect for the sanctity of the home that has been

embedded in our traditions since the origins of the Rep ublic'"). Like the confession that was "excluded, as it shoul d have been,"

in Harris, id.,

at 20 , the evidence in this case was seized in the home, immedi ately following the illegal entry. And like Harris,

nothing in petitioner's argument would require the su ppression of evidence obtained outside the home following a knock-and-

announce violation, precisely because officers have a remain ing incentive to follow the rule to avoid the suppression of any

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evidence obtained from the very place they are searching. Cf. ibid. ("Even though we decline to suppress statements made

outside the home following a Payton violation, the principal incentive to obey Payton still obtains: the police know that a

warrantless entry will lead to the suppression of any evid ence found, or statements taken, inside the home").

I concede that United States

v. Ramirez, 523 U. S. 65, offers the plurality its last best hope. Ante, at 602. But not even that case

can offer the plurality significant support. The plurali ty focuses on the Court's isolated statement that "destruct ion of property in the

course of a search may violate the Fourth Amendment, even though the entry itself is lawful and the fruits of the search are not

subject to suppression." Ramirez, supra,

at 71 (emphasis added). But even if I accept this dictum, the e ntry here is unlawful, not

lawful. Wilson, supra,

at 931, 934 . It is one thing to say (in an appropriate case) that destruction of property after proper entry has

nothing to do with discovery of the evidence, and to refu se to suppress. It would be quite another thing to say that improper entry

had nothing to do with discovery of the evidence in this ca se. Moreover, the deterrence analysis for the property dest ruction

cases (where, by definition, there will almost always be q uantifiable damages) might well differ.

*629 IV 629

There is perhaps one additional argument implicit in the majority's approach. The majority says, for example, th at the "cost" to a

defendant of "entering this lottery," i. e., of claiming a "knock-and-announce" violation, "would be small, but the jackpot

enormous"—namely, a potential "get-out-ofjail-free car d." Ante, at 595. It adds that the "social costs" of applying the exclusionary

rule here are not worth the deterrence benefits. Ante, at 599. Leaving aside what I believe are invalid argum ents based on

precedent or the majority's own estimate that suppression is not necessary to deter constitutional violations, one is left with a

simple unvarnished conclusion, namely, that in this kind o f case, a knock-and-announce case, "[r]esort to the massive r emedy of

suppressing evidence of guilt is unjustified." Ibid. Why is that judicial judgment, taken on its own, inappr opriate? Could it not be

argued that the knock-and-announce rule, a subsidiary Fou rth Amendment rule, is simply not important enough to warrant a

suppression remedy? Could the majority not simply claim tha t the suppression game is not worth the candle?

The answer, I believe, is "no." That "no" reflects histor y, a history that shows the knock-and-announce rule is impo rtant. See

Wilson, supra,

at 931-936 . That "no" reflects precedent, precedent that shows ther e is no pre-existing legal category of

exceptions to the exclusionary rule into which the knock-and -announce cases might fit. See supra, at 612-613. That "no" reflects

empirical fact, experience that provides confirmation of what common sense suggests: without suppression there is lit tle to deter

knock-andannounce violations. See supra, at 608-610.

There may be instances in the law where text or history o r tradition leaves room for a judicial decision that rests upon little more

than an unvarnished judicial instinct. But this is not on e of them. Rather, our Fourth Amendment traditions place high value upon

protecting privacy in the

*630 home. They emphasize the need to assure that its constitut ional protections are effective, lest the

Amendment "sound the word of promise to the ear but b reak it to the hope." They include an exclusionary princip le, which since

Weeks has formed the centerpiece of the criminal law's effort to ensure the practical reality of those promises. That i s why the

Court should assure itself that any departure from that principle is firmly grounded in logic, in history, in precedent, and in

empirical fact. It has not done so. That is why, with re spect, I dissent. 630

APPENDIX TO OPINION OF BREYER, J.

Fourth Amendment decisions from 1914 to present requiri ng suppression of evidence seized (or remanding for lower court to

make suppression determination) in a private home follow ing an illegal arrest or search:

1. Weeks

v. United States, 232 U. S. 383 (1914) (warrantless search)

2. Amos

v. United States, 255 U. S. 313 (1921) (warrantless arrest and search)

3. Agnello

v. United States, 269 U. S. 20 (1925) (warrantless search)

4. Byars

v. United States, 273 U. S. 28 (1927) (invalid warrant)

5. United States

v. Berkeness, 275 U. S. 149 (1927) (invalid warrant; insufficient affidavit)

6. Taylor

v. United States, 286 U. S. 1 (1932) (warrantless search) 2/6/2017Hudson v. Michigan, 547 US 586 - Supreme Court 2006 - Google Scholar

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7. Grau v. United States, 287 U. S. 124 (1932) (invalid warrant; insufficient affidavit)

8. Nathanson

v. United States, 290 U. S. 41 (1933) (invalid warrant; insufficient affidavit)

9. McDonald

v. United States, 335 U. S. 451 (1948) (warrantless arrest and search)

10. Kremen

v. United States, 353 U. S. 346 (1957) (per curiam) (warrantless search)

*631 11. Elkins v. United States, 364 U. S. 206 (1960) (search beyond scope of warrant) 631

12. Silverman v. United States, 365 U. S. 505 (1961) (warrantless use of electronic device)

13. Chapman

v. United States, 365 U. S. 610 (1961) (warrantless search)

14. Mapp

v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643 (1961) (warrantless search)

15. Wong Sun

v. United States, 371 U. S. 471 (1963) (warrantless search and arrest)

16. Fahy

v. Connecticut, 375 U. S. 85 (1963) (warrantless search)

17. Aguilar

v. Texas, 378 U. S. 108 (1964) (invalid warrant; insufficient affidavit)

18. Stanford

v. Texas, 379 U. S. 476 (1965) (invalid warrant; particularity defect)

19. James

v. Louisiana, 382 U. S. 36 (1965) (per curiam) (warrantless search)

20. Riggan

v. Virginia, 384 U. S. 152 (1966) (per curiam) (invalid warrant; insufficient affidavit)

21. Bumper

v. North Carolina, 391 U. S. 543 (1968) (lack of valid consent to search)

22. Recznik

v. City of Lorain, 393 U. S. 166 (1968) (per curiam) (warrantless search)

23. Chimel

v. California, 395 U. S. 752 (1969) (invalid search incident to arrest)

24. Von Cleef

v. New Jersey, 395 U. S. 814 (1969) (per curiam) (invalid search incident to arrest)

25. Shipley

v. California, 395 U. S. 818 (1969) (per curiam) (invalid search incident to arrest)

26. Vale

v. Louisiana, 399 U. S. 30 (1970) (invalid search incident to arrest)

27. Connally

v. Georgia, 429 U. S. 245 (1977) (per curiam) (invalid warrant; magistrate judge not neutral)

*632 28. Michigan v. Tyler, 436 U. S. 499 (1978) (warrantless search) 632

29. Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U. S. 385 (1978) (warrantless search)

30. Franks

v. Delaware, 438 U. S. 154 (1978) (invalid warrant; obtained through perjury)

31. Payton

v. New York, 445 U. S. 573 (1980) (warrantless arrest)

32. Steagald

v. United States, 451 U. S. 204 (1981) (warrantless search)

33.

Michigan v. Clifford, 464 U. S. 287 (1984) (warrantless search)

34. Welsh

v. Wisconsin, 466 U. S. 740 (1984) (warrantless entry into home without exigent circumstance s)

35. Thompson

v. Louisiana, 469 U. S. 17 (1984) (per curiam) (warrantless search)

36. Arizona

v. Hicks, 480 U. S. 321 (1987) (unreasonable search)

37. Minnesota

v. Olson, 495 U. S. 91 (1990) (warrantless entry into home)

38. Flippo

v. West Virginia, 528 U. S. 11 (1999) (per curiam) (warrantless search)

39. Kyllo

v. United States, 533 U. S. 27 (2001) (warrantless use of heat-imaging technology) 2/6/2017Hudson v. Michigan, 547 US 586 - Supreme Court 2006 - Google Scholar

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40. Kirk v. Louisiana, 536 U. S. 635 (2002) (per curiam) (warrantless arrest and search)

41. Kaupp

v. Texas, 538 U. S. 626 (2003) (per curiam) (warrantless search)

[*]

Tracey Maclin, Timothy Lynch, and Joshua L. Dratel filed a brief for the Cato Institute et al. as amici curiae urging reversal.

Kent S. Scheidegger and Charles L. Hobson filed a brief for the Criminal Justice Legal Found ation as amicus curiae urging affirmance.

[1]

JUSTICE BREYER'S insistence that the warrant in Segura was "obtained independently without use of any inf ormation found during the illegal

entry," post, at 617 (dissenting opinion), entirely fails to dis tinguish it from the warrant in the present case. S imilarly inapposite is his appeal to

Justice Frankfurter's statement in Wolf

v. Colorado, 338 U. S. 25, 28 (1949), that the "`knock at the door, . . . as a prelude t o a search, without

authority of law . . . [is] inconsistent with the c onception of human rights enshrined in [our] histor y,'" see post, at 620. "How much the more

offensive," Justice Breyer asserts, "when the searc h takes place without any knock at all," ibid. But a no-knock entry "without authority of law" ( i. e.,

without a search warrant) describes not this case, but Segura —where the evidence was admitted anyway.

JUSTICE BREYER'S assertion that Segura, unlike our decision in the present case, had no ef fect on deterrence, see post, at 625-626, does not

comport with the views of the Segura dissent. See, e. g., 468

U. S. , at 817 (Stevens, J., dissenting) ("The Court's disposition, I fear, will provide

government agents with an affirmative incentive to engage in unconstitutional violations of the privacy of the home").

[2]

Harris undermines two key points of the dissent. First, t he claim that "whether the interests underlying the knock-and-announce rule are

implicated in any given case is, in a sense, beside the point," post, at 621. This is flatly refuted by Harris's plain statement that the reason for a rule

must govern the sanctions for the rule's violation. 495

U. S. , at 17, 20 ; see also supra, at 593. Second, the dissent's attempt to turn Harris into a

vindication of the sanctity of the home, see post, at 626-628. The whole point of the case was that a confession that police obtained by illegally

removing a man from the sanctity of his home was ad missible against him.

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