SUPREME COURT HEARS ARGUMENT ON IMPORTANT FOURTH AMENDMENT CASE

The Supreme Court heard argument this week in Kentucky v. King. The State of Kentucky ¹wants to reverse a Kentucky Supreme Court decision suppressing evidence.

The issue here is whether police can enter a residence without a search warrant if they smell marijuana in the residence. The police smelled marijuana coming from an apartment. They knocked on the door. Then athey heard a noise inside that might have been someone attempting to destroy the contraband. When no one opened the door they knocked it down, finding marijuana and cocaine in the apartment. It is not whether the smell of marijuana gives them probable cause to get a warrant but rather whether they need a warrant to enter the residence.

The Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that exigent circumstances did not exist and therefore the evidence must be suppressed. The existence of exigent circumstances is an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. But the Kentucky court held that the police were not in hot pursuit and any attempt to destroy the marijuana was police initiated. The Court held that any attempt to destroy the marijuana was the result of the officers knocking on the door and that the police should not benefit from the officers forcing an attempt to destroy the evidence. Instead of knocking on the door the police could have gotten a search warrant. By doing so they would not have alarmed the residents and the marijuana would not have been destroyed.

The State of Kentucky argues that since the police did nothing illegal, the search should be upheld. It argues that in any case where the police have both probable cause and exigent circumstances the officers can enter the house without a search warrant as long as they have done nothing illegal.

This would continue the trend of the last forty years of eviscerating the warrant requirement. It will be easy for an officer, upon smelling marijuana or obtaining probable cause to say I heard a noise and the noise may have been an effort to destroy the evidence. In fact by knocking on the door and yelling police they can then expect some effort to destroy the evidence. At that point if the appeal is granted, the officers may enter the residence to prevent destruction of evidence.