No-Knock Redux
The Supreme Court ordered reargument in Hudson v Michigan, a case about whether evidence should be excluded if the police fail to knock and announce themselves before executing a search warrant. This case was originally argued in early January, when Justice O'Connor was still on the Court. Since she left the Court before any decision came down, her vote does not count. That left the judgment to the eight remaining Justices who heard the argument. Apparently, they couldn't come to a suitable outcome (meaning that it's 4-4 right now). SCOTUS has the following information...
No date has been set for the re-argument, but the preliminary indication is that it would come during the current Term, rather than be carried over to the new Term opening in October. A tentative date is Thursday, May 11 - two weeks after the Court's currently planned conclusion of oral argument on April 26.If that's true, that's a very interesting development. First, this probably means that Justice Alito's vote gets to decide the case. Second, I can't help but wonder why they would extend oral argument for 2 weeks to hear this case. Why not just hold it over until next October? It's not like that hasn't happened before in the past. Maybe a certain retiring Justice wants to have his say in this case, even if it is in a dissent. It's idle speculation, but it's a possibility.
