Posted by William Grigg on May 13, 2011 10:40 AM

The Indiana State Supreme Court has just nullified the Fourth Amendment and the equivalent provision of that state’s constitution, in addition to “a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215,” notes a wire service report. In a 3–2 decision, the court has ruled that Indiana residents have no right to obstruct unlawful police incursions into their homes.

“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” wrote Justice Steven David. “We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”

Actually, the “risks” to a government-licensed bully in such an encounter are vanishingly small. But we must remember that “officer safety” is the controlling priority in any conflict between a State-sanctified enforcer and a mere Mundane. This is why, as Professor Ivan Bodensteiner of Valparaiso University School of Law observes, “It’s not surprising that [the court] would say there’s no right to beat the hell out of the officer.” No, that “right” belongs to the costumed thug; the Mundane has no choice but to submit to whatever invasion or injury his tax-sustained assailant sees fit to inflict at the time.

A victim of criminal police aggression “still can be released on bail and has plenty of opportunities to protest the illegal entry through the court system” — that is, the same court system that has conferred its unconditional benediction on criminal violence by the police. This assumes, of course, that the Mundane survives the initial encounter.

Note how the court assumes — correctly, in my view — that an unlawful arrest is the all-but-inevitable product of an unlawful police incursion. This tacitly recognizes that the right to resist an unwarranted search is derivative of the common law right to resist unlawful arrest.
more
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/88027.html