Steiney Richards v. Wisconsin (520 U.S. 385)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided April 28, 1997 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 520 U.S. 385 · 117 S. Ct. 1416
- Decided
- April 28, 1997
- Term
- October Term 1996
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Stevens
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Stevens delivered the opinion of the Court. In Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U. S. 927 (1995), we held that the Fourth Amendment incorporates the common-law requirement that police officers entering a dwelling must knock on the door and announce their identity and purpose before attempting forcible entry. At the same time, we recognized that the “flexible requirement of reasonableness should not be read to mandate a rigid rule of announcement that ignores countervailing law enforcement interests,” id., at 934, and left “to the lower courts the task of determining the circumstances under which an unannounced entry is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment,” id., at 936. In this case, the Wisconsin Supreme Court concluded that police officers are never required to knock and announce their presence when executing a search warrant in a felony drug investigation. In so doing, it reaffirmed a pre-Wilson holding and concluded that Wilson did not preclude this per se rule. We disagree with the court’s conclusion that the Fourth Amendment permits a blanket exception to the knock-and-announce requirement for this entire category of criminal activity. But because the evidence presented to support the officers’ actions in this case establishes that the decision not to knock and announce was a reasonable one under the circumstances, we affirm the judgment of the Wisconsin court. I On…
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