Cabellas, cont.

Radley Balko, a.k.a. The Agitator, follows up on the Cabellas decision with this column on Fox News. Good column pointing out how the War on Drugs is shredding our Bill of Rights. While I generally agree with his point, he claims that our criminal justice system is devolving into a two-tier system: one system for those charged with drug offense and everybody else.

With all due respect to Radley, who I really admire, I think that he is wrong. With a view from the trenches in the last ten+ years, I think that the drug war's erosion of our rights is creeping into other cases. When we see warrantless search exceptions being expanded, drug cases are frequently cited. They then become precedent for future courts to consider when dealing with search and seizure (and other criminal) issues.

Comments

[markm]

Remember that the whole Waco mess started with a "no knock" warrant - to search for machine gun parts that (unlike a personal drug stash) could hardly be destroyed in five minutes. And remember that the Texas Rangers had knocked on the door, presented a warrant, and got inside with no trouble at all on another matter.