I did an interview this afternoon with PressTV’s US Desk about my latest article, This Is What A Police State Looks Like.  It’s a little over 5 minutes long and if you’re interested, you can listen to it here.

I also want to point out something I didn’t mention in my article that is absolutely relevant to the assault on Fourth Amendment rights.  Last week, The Indiana Supreme Court ruled 3-2 in Barnes vs. State that people have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes, which defies common law dating back to the Magna Carta of 1215.

Writing for the court, Justice Steven David said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer’s entry.

Some background on the case:

The court’s decision stems from a Vanderburgh County case in which police were called to investigate a husband and wife arguing outside their apartment.

When the couple went back inside their apartment, the husband told police they were not needed and blocked the doorway so they could not enter. When an officer entered anyway, the husband shoved the officer against a wall. A second officer then used a stun gun on the husband and arrested him.

David justified the ruling by writing that “allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”  But the court gave no definition of what ‘resistance’ entails, meaning that it is open to broad interpretation by law enforcement.  Does this mean that verbally resisting illegal police entry by rightly arguing that your Fourth Amendment rights are being violated and demanding the police leave at once qualifies as unlawful resistance?

For an excellent analysis of both the Kentucky and Indiana rulings, I highly recommend The Changing Face of the Police and the Death of the Fourth Amendment, an article by John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute.