Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586 (2006)

(b) This Court has rejected “[i]ndiscriminate application” of the ex clusionary rule, United States v. Leon, 468 U. S. 897, 908, holding it applicable only “where its deterrence benefits outweigh its ‘substantial social costs,’ ” Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole v. Scott, 524 U. S. 357, 363. Exclusion may not be premised on the mere fact that a constitutional violation was a “but-for” cause of obtaining the evidence. The illegal entry here was not the but-for cause, but even if it were, but-for causation can be too attenuated to justify exclusion. Attenua tion can occur not only when the causal connection is remote, but also when suppression would not serve the interest protected by the consti tutional guarantee violated. The interests protected by the knock and-announce rule include human life and limb (because an unannounced entry may provoke violence from a surprised resident), property (be cause citizens presumably would open the door upon an announcement, whereas a forcible entry may destroy it), and privacy and dignity of the sort that can be offended by a sudden entrance. But the rule has never protected one’s interest in preventing the government from seeing or taking evidence described in a warrant. Since the interests violated [p. 587] here have nothing to do with the seizure of the evidence, the exclusion ary rule is inapplicable. Pp. 590–594.

The Michigan trial court granted his motion. On interloc utory review, the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed, re [p. 589] lying on Michigan Supreme Court cases holding that sup pression is inappropriate when entry is made pursuant to warrant but without proper “ ‘knock and announce.’ ” App. to Pet. for Cert. 4 (citing People v. Vasquez, 461 Mich. 235, 602 N. W. 2d 376 (1999) (per curiam); People v. Stevens, 460 Mich. 626, 597 N. W. 2d 53 (1999)). The Michigan Supreme Court denied leave to appeal. 465 Mich. 932, 639 N. W. 2d 255 (2001). Hudson was convicted of drug possession. He renewed his Fourth Amendment claim on appeal, but the Court of Appeals rejected it and affirmed the conviction. App. to Pet. for Cert. 1–2. The Michigan Supreme Court again declined review. 472 Mich. 862, 692 N. W. 2d 385 (2005). We granted certiorari. 545 U. S. 1138 (2005).

We recognized that the new constitutional rule we had an nounced is not easily applied. Wilson and cases following it have noted the many situations in which it is not necessary to knock and announce. It is not necessary when “circum stances presen[t] a threat of physical violence,” or if there is “reason to believe that evidence would likely be destroyed if advance notice were given,” id., at 936, or if knocking and [p. 590] announcing would be “futile,” Richards v. Wisconsin, 520 U. S. 385, 394 (1997). We require only that police “have a reasonable suspicion . . . under the particular circumstances” that one of these grounds for failing to knock and announce exists, and we have acknowledged that “[t]his showing is not high.” Ibid.

We did not always speak so guardedly. Expansive dicta in Mapp, for example, suggested wide scope for the exclu sionary rule. See, e. g., 367 U. S., at 655 (“[A]ll evidence ob tained by searches and seizures in violation of the Consti tution is, by that same authority, inadmissible in a state court”). Whiteley v. Warden, Wyo. State Penitentiary, 401 U. S. 560, 568–569 (1971), was to the same effect. But we have long since rejected that approach. As explained in Ar izona v. Evans, 514 U. S. 1, 13 (1995): “In Whiteley, the Court treated identification of a Fourth Amendment viola tion as synonymous with application of the exclusionary rule to evidence secured incident to that violation. Subsequent case law has rejected this reflexive application of the exclu sionary rule.” (Citation omitted.) We had said as much in Leon, a decade earlier, when we explained that “[w]hether the exclusionary sanction is appropriately imposed in a par ticular case . . . is ‘an issue separate from the question whether the Fourth Amendment rights of the party seeking [p. 592] to invoke the rule were violated by police conduct.’ ” 468 U. S., at 906 (quoting Illinois v. Gates, 462 U. S. 213, 223 (1983)).

Quite apart from the requirement of unattenuated causa tion, the exclusionary rule has never been applied except “where its deterrence benefits outweigh its ‘substantial so cial costs,’ ” Scott, 524 U. S., at 363 (quoting Leon, 468 U. S., [p. 595] at 907). The costs here are considerable. In addition to the grave adverse consequence that exclusion of relevant incrim inating evidence always entails (viz., the risk of releasing dangerous criminals into society), imposing that massive remedy for a knock-and-announce violation would gener ate a constant flood of alleged failures to observe the rule, and claims that any asserted Richards justification for a no knock entry, see 520 U. S., at 394, had inadequate support. Cf. United States v. Singleton, 441 F. 3d 290, 293–294 (CA4 2006). The cost of entering this lottery would be small, but the jackpot enormous: suppression of all evidence, amounting in many cases to a get-out-of-jail-free card. Courts would experience as never before the reality that “[t]he exclusion ary rule frequently requires extensive litigation to deter mine whether particular evidence must be excluded.” Scott, supra, at 366. Unlike the warrant or Miranda require ments, compliance with which is readily determined (either there was or was not a warrant; either the Miranda warning was given, or it was not), what constituted a “reasonable wait time” in a particular case, Banks, supra, at 41 (or, for that matter, how many seconds the police in fact waited), or whether there was “reasonable suspicion” of the sort that would invoke the Richards exceptions, is difficult for the trial court to determine and even more difficult for an appel late court to review.

Another consequence of the incongruent remedy Hudson proposes would be police officers’ refraining from timely entry after knocking and announcing. As we have ob served, see supra, at 590, the amount of time they must wait is necessarily uncertain. If the consequences of running afoul of the rule were so massive, officers would be inclined to wait longer than the law requires—producing preventable violence against officers in some cases, and the destruction of evidence in many others. See Gates, 462 U. S., at 258 (White, J., concurring in judgment). We deemed these con sequences severe enough to produce our unanimous agree [p. 596] ment that a mere “reasonable suspicion” that knocking and announcing “under the particular circumstances, would be dangerous or futile, or that it would inhibit the effective in vestigation of the crime,” will cause the requirement to yield. Richards, supra, at 394.

It seems to us not even true, as Hudson contends, that without suppression there will be no deterrence of knock and-announce violations at all. Of course even if this asser tion were accurate, it would not necessarily justify suppres sion. Assuming (as the assertion must) that civil suit is not an effective deterrent, one can think of many forms of police misconduct that are similarly “undeterred.” When, for ex ample, a confessed suspect in the killing of a police officer, arrested (along with incriminating evidence) in a lawful war ranted search, is subjected to physical abuse at the station house, would it seriously be suggested that the evidence must be excluded, since that is the only “effective deter [p. 597] rent”? And what, other than civil suit, is the “effective de terrent” of police violation of an already-confessed suspect’s Sixth Amendment rights by denying him prompt access to counsel? Many would regard these violated rights as more significant than the right not to be intruded upon in one’s nightclothes—and yet nothing but “ineffective” civil suit is available as a deterrent. And the police incentive for those violations is arguably greater than the incentive for disre garding the knock-and-announce rule.

Hudson complains that “it would be very hard to find a lawyer to take a case such as this,” Tr. of Oral Arg. 7, but 42 U. S. C. § 1988(b) answers this objection. Since some civil rights violations would yield damages too small to justify the expense of litigation, Congress has authorized attorney’s fees for civil-rights plaintiffs. This remedy was unavailable in the heydays of our exclusionary-rule jurisprudence, because it is tied to the availability of a cause of action. For years after Mapp, “very few lawyers would even consider repre sentation of persons who had civil rights claims against the police,” but now “much has changed. Citizens and lawyers [p. 598] are much more willing to seek relief in the courts for police misconduct.” M. Avery, D. Rudovsky, & K. Blum, Police Misconduct: Law and Litigation, p. v (3d ed. 2005); see gener ally N. Aron, Liberty and Justice for All: Public Interest Law in the 1980s and Beyond (1989) (describing the growth of public-interest law). The number of public-interest law firms and lawyers who specialize in civil-rights grievances has greatly expanded.

Another development over the past half-century that de ters civil-rights violations is the increasing professionalism of police forces, including a new emphasis on internal police discipline. Even as long ago as 1980 we felt it proper to [p. 599] “assume” that unlawful police behavior would “be dealt with appropriately” by the authorities, United States v. Payner, 447 U. S. 727, 733–734, n. 5 (1980), but we now have increas ing evidence that police forces across the United States take the constitutional rights of citizens seriously. There have been “wide-ranging reforms in the education, training, and supervision of police officers.” S. Walker, Taming the Sys tem: The Control of Discretion in Criminal Justice 1950–1990, p. 51 (1993). Numerous sources are now available to teach officers and their supervisors what is required of them under this Court’s cases, how to respect constitutional guar antees in various situations, and how to craft an effective regime for internal discipline. See, e. g., D. Waksman & D. Goodman, The Search and Seizure Handbook (2d ed. 2006); A. Stone & S. DeLuca, Police Administration: An Introduc tion (2d ed. 1994); E. Thibault, L. Lynch, & R. McBride, Pro active Police Management (4th ed. 1998). Failure to teach and enforce constitutional requirements exposes municipali ties to financial liability. See Canton v. Harris, 489 U. S. 378, 388 (1989). Moreover, modern police forces are staffed with professionals; it is not credible to assert that internal discipline, which can limit successful careers, will not have a deterrent effect. There is also evidence that the increasing use of various forms of citizen review can enhance police accountability.

A trio of cases—Segura v. United States, 468 U. S. 796 (1984); New York v. Harris, 495 U. S. 14 (1990); and United [p. 600] States v. Ramirez, 523 U. S. 65 (1998)—confirms our conclu sion that suppression is unwarranted in this case.

If the search in Segura could be “wholly unrelated to the prior entry,” ibid., when the only entry was warrantless, it would be bizarre to treat more harshly the actions in this case, where the only entry was with a warrant. If the prob able cause backing a warrant that was issued later in time could be an “independent source” for a search that proceeded after the officers illegally entered and waited, a search war [p. 601] rant obtained before going in must have at least this much effect.1

Suppression is another matter. Under our precedents the causal link between a violation of the knock-and-announce requirement and a later search is too attenuated to allow suppression. Cf. United States v. Ramirez, 523 U. S. 65, 72, n. 3 (1998) (application of the exclusionary rule depends on the existence of a “sufficient causal relationship” between the unlawful conduct and the discovery of evidence). When, for example, a violation results from want of a 20-second pause but an ensuing, lawful search lasting five hours discloses evi [p. 604] dence of criminality, the failure to wait at the door cannot properly be described as having caused the discovery of evidence.

We noted that this “basic principle” was agreed upon by “[s]everal prominent founding-era commentators,” id., at 932, [p. 606] and “was woven quickly into the fabric of early American law” via state constitutions and statutes, id., at 933. We further concluded that there was

Weeks, supra. This case, decided 28 years after Boyd, originated the exclusionary rule. The Court held that the Federal Government could not retain evidence seized uncon [p. 607] stitutionally and use that evidence in a federal criminal trial. The Court pointed out that “[i]f letters and private docu ments” could be unlawfully seized from a home “and used in evidence against a citizen accused of an offense, the pro tection of the Fourth Amendment declaring his right to be secure against such searches and seizures is of no value, and . . . might as well be stricken from the Constitution.” 232 U. S., at 393.

Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U. S. 25 (1949), and Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643 (1961). Both of these cases considered whether Weeks’ exclusionary rule applies to the States. In Wolf, the Court held that it did not. It said that “[t]he secu rity of one’s privacy against arbitrary intrusion by the police . . . is . . . implicit in ‘the concept of ordered liberty’ and as such enforceable against the States through the Due Process Clause.” 338 U. S., at 27–28. But the Court held that the exclusionary rule is not enforceable against the States as “an essential ingredient of the right.” Id., at 29. In Mapp, the Court overruled Wolf. Experience, it said, showed that al ternative methods of enforcing the Fourth Amendment’s re [p. 608] quirements had failed. See 367 U. S., at 651–653; see, e. g., People v. Cahan, 44 Cal. 2d 434, 447, 282 P. 2d 905, 913 (1955) (majority opinion of Traynor, J.) (“Experience [in California] has demonstrated, however, that neither administrative, criminal nor civil remedies are effective in suppressing law less searches and seizures”). The Court consequently held that “all evidence obtained by searches and seizures in viola tion of the Constitution is, by that same authority, inadmissi ble in a state court.” Mapp, 367 U. S., at 655. “To hold otherwise,” the Court added, would be “to grant the right but in reality to withhold its privilege and enjoyment.” Id., at 656.

For another thing, the driving legal purpose underlying the exclusionary rule, namely, the deterrence of unlawful government behavior, argues strongly for suppression. See Elkins v. United States, 364 U. S. 206, 217 (1960) (purpose of the exclusionary rule is “to deter—to compel respect for the constitutional guaranty . . . by removing the incentive to dis regard it”). In Weeks, Silverthorne, and Mapp, the Court based its holdings requiring suppression of unlawfully ob [p. 609] tained evidence upon the recognition that admission of that evidence would seriously undermine the Fourth Amend ment’s promise. All three cases recognized that failure to apply the exclusionary rule would make that promise a hol low one, see Mapp, supra, at 657, reducing it to “a form of words,” Silverthorne, supra, at 392, “of no value” to those whom it seeks to protect, Weeks, supra, at 393. Indeed, this Court in Mapp held that the exclusionary rule applies to the States in large part due to its belief that alternative state mechanisms for enforcing the Fourth Amendment’s guaran tees had proved “worthless and futile.” 367 U. S., at 652.

Of course, the State or the Federal Government may pro vide alternative remedies for knock-and-announce violations. But that circumstance was true of Mapp as well. What rea son is there to believe that those remedies (such as private damages actions under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983), which the Court found inadequate in Mapp, can adequately deter unconstitutional police behavior here? See Kamisar, In Defense of the Search and Seizure Exclusionary Rule, 26 Harv. J. L. & Pub. Pol’y 119, 126–129 (2003) (arguing that “five decades of post-Weeks ‘freedom’ from the inhibiting ef [p. 610] fect of the federal exclusionary rule failed to produce any meaningful alternative to the exclusionary rule in any juris diction” and that there is no evidence that “times have changed” post-Mapp).

(1) where there is a specific reason to believe that appli cation of the rule would “not result in appreciable deter rence,” United States v. Janis, 428 U. S. 433, 454 (1976); see, e. g., United States v. Leon, 468 U. S. 897, 919–920 [p. 612] (1984) (exception where searching officer executes defec

Neither of these two exceptions applies here. The second does not apply because this case is an ordinary criminal trial. The first does not apply because (1) officers who violate the rule are not acting “as a reasonable officer would and should act in similar circumstances,” Leon, supra, at 920, (2) this case does not involve government employees other than po lice, Evans, supra, and (3), most importantly, the key ration ale for any exception, “lack of deterrence,” is missing, see Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation, supra, at 364 (noting that the rationale for not applying the rule in noncriminal cases has been that the deterrence achieved by having the rule apply in those contexts is “minimal” because “application of the rule in the criminal trial context already provides sig nificant deterrence of unconstitutional searches”); Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U. S. 433, 447 (1974) (noting that deterrence rationale would not be served if rule applied to police officers acting in good faith, as the “deterrent purpose of the exclu sionary rule necessarily assumes that the police have en gaged in willful, or at the very least negligent, conduct”). That critical latter rationale, which underlies every excep [p. 613] tion, does not apply here, as there is no reason to think that, in the case of knock-and-announce violations by the police, “the exclusion of evidence at trial would not sufficiently deter future errors,” Evans, supra, at 14, or “ ‘further the ends of the exclusionary rule in any appreciable way,’ ” Leon, supra, at 919–920.

I can find nothing persuasive in the majority’s opinion that could justify its refusal to apply the rule. It certainly is not a justification for an exception here (as the majority finds) to find odd instances in other areas of law that do not auto matically demand suppression. Ante, at 596–597 (suspect confesses, police beat him up afterwards; suspect confesses, then police apparently arrest him, take him to station, and refuse to tell him of his right to counsel). Nor can it justify an exception to say that some police may knock at the door [p. 614] anyway (to avoid being mistaken for a burglar), for other police (believing quick entry is the most secure, effective entry) will not voluntarily do so. Cf. Mericli 130 (describ ing Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team practices); R. Balko, No SWAT (Apr. 6, 2006), available at http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6344 (all Internet materials as visited June 7, 2006, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file).

The Court nonetheless accepts Michigan’s argument that the requisite but-for causation is not satisfied in this case because, whether or not the constitutional violation occurred (what the Court refers to as a “preliminary misstep”), “the police would have executed the warrant they had obtained, and would have discovered the gun and drugs inside the [p. 616] house.” Ante, at 592. As support for this proposition, Michigan rests on this Court’s inevitable discovery cases.

In Murray, supra, the Court upheld the admissibility of seized evidence where agents entered a warehouse without a warrant, and then later returned with a valid warrant that was not obtained on the basis of evidence observed during the first (illegal) entry. The Court reasoned that while the agents’ “[k]nowledge that the marijuana was in the ware house was assuredly acquired at the time of the unlawful entry . . . it was also acquired at the time of entry pursuant to the warrant, and if that later acquisition was not the re sult of the earlier entry there is no reason why the independ [p. 618] ent source doctrine should not apply.” Id., at 541 (empha sis added).

The majority, Michigan, and the United States point out that the officers here possessed a warrant authorizing a search. Ante, at 592. That fact, they argue, means that the evidence would have been discovered independently or somehow diminishes the need to suppress the evidence. But I do not see why that is so. The warrant in question was not a “no-knock” warrant, which many States (but not Michi gan) issue to assure police that a prior knock is not necessary. Richards, 520 U. S., at 396, n. 7 (collecting state statutes). It did not authorize a search that fails to comply with knock [p. 619] and-announce requirements. Rather, it was an ordinary search warrant. It authorized a search that complied with, not a search that disregarded, the Constitution’s knock-and announce rule.

The majority makes a similar argument. It says that evi dence should not be suppressed once the causal connection between unlawful behavior and discovery of the evidence be comes too “attenuated.” Ante, at 592. But the majority then makes clear that it is not using the word “attenuated” to mean what this Court’s precedents have typically used that word to mean, namely, that the discovery of the evi dence has come about long after the unlawful behavior took [p. 620] place or in an independent way, i. e., through “ ‘means suffi ciently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint.’ ” Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U. S. 471, 487–488 (1963); see Brown v. Illinois, 422 U. S. 590, 603–604 (1975).

There are three serious problems with this argument. First, it does not fully describe the constitutional values, purposes, and objectives underlying the knock-and-announce requirement. That rule does help to protect homeowners from damaged doors; it does help to protect occupants from surprise. But it does more than that. It protects the occu pants’ privacy by assuring them that government agents will not enter their home without complying with those require ments (among others) that diminish the offensive nature of any such intrusion. Many years ago, Justice Frankfurter wrote for the Court that the “knock at the door, . . . as a prelude to a search, without authority of law . . . [is] in consistent with the conception of human rights enshrined in [our] history” and Constitution. Wolf, 338 U. S., at 28. How much the more offensive when the search takes place without any knock at all. Cf. Wilson, 514 U. S., at 931 (knock-and-announce rule recognizes that “the common law [p. 621] generally protected a man’s house as ‘his castle of defence and asylum’ ” (quoting 3 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *288)); Miller, 357 U. S., at 313 (federal knock-and-announce statute “codif[ied] a tradition embedded in Anglo-American law” that reflected “the reverence of the law for the individu al’s right of privacy in his house”).

Second, whether the interests underlying the knock-and announce rule are implicated in any given case is, in a sense, beside the point. As we have explained, failure to comply with the knock-and-announce rule renders the related search unlawful. Wilson, supra, at 936. And where a search is unlawful, the law insists upon suppression of the evidence consequently discovered, even if that evidence or its posses sion has little or nothing to do with the reasons underlying the unconstitutionality of a search. The Fourth Amendment does not seek to protect contraband, yet we have required suppression of contraband seized in an unlawful search. See, e. g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 40 (2001); Coo [p. 622] lidge, 403 U. S., at 473. That is because the exclusionary rule protects more general “privacy values through deter rence of future police misconduct.” James v. Illinois, 493 U. S. 307, 319 (1990). The same is true here.

To argue that police efforts to assure compliance with the rule may prove dangerous, however, is not to argue against [p. 623] evidence suppression. It is to argue against the validity of the rule itself. Similarly, to argue that enforcement means uncertainty, which in turn means the potential for dangerous and longer-than-necessary delay, is (if true) to argue against meaningful compliance with the rule.

Consider this very case. The police obtained a search warrant that authorized a search, not only for drugs, but also [p. 624] for guns. App. 5. If probable cause justified a search for guns, why would it not also have justified a no-knock war rant, thereby diminishing any danger to the officers? Why (in a State such as Michigan that lacks no-knock warrants) would it not have justified the very no-knock entry at issue here? Indeed, why did the prosecutor not argue in this very case that, given the likelihood of guns, the no-knock entry was lawful? From what I have seen in the record, he would have won. And had he won, there would have been no sup pression here.

As importantly, the Court in Segura said nothing to sug gest it intended to create a major exclusionary rule excep tion, notwithstanding the impact of such an exception on de terrence. Indeed, such an exception would be inconsistent with a critical rationale underlying the independent source and inevitable discovery rules, which was arguably available in Segura, and which is clearly absent here. That rationale concerns deterrence. The threat of inadmissibility deters unlawful police behavior; and the existence of an exception applicable where evidence is found through an untainted in dependent route will rarely undercut that deterrence. That [p. 626] is because the police can rarely rely upon such an excep tion—at least not often enough to change the deterrence cal culus. See Murray, 487 U. S., at 540 (“We see the incentives differently. An officer with probable cause sufficient to ob tain a search warrant would be foolish to enter the premises first in an unlawful manner. By doing so, he would risk sup pression of all evidence on the premises . . . ”); Nix, 467 U. S., at 445 (“A police officer who is faced with the opportunity to obtain evidence illegally will rarely, if ever, be in a position to calculate whether the evidence sought would inevitably be discovered”); id., at 444 (“If the prosecution can establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the information ulti mately or inevitably would have been discovered by lawful means—here the volunteers’ search—then the deterrence rationale has so little basis that the evidence should be received”).

Neither does New York v. Harris, supra, support the Court’s result. See ante, at 593, 601; but see ante, at 604 (opinion of Kennedy, J.) (declining to join section relying on Harris). In Harris, police officers arrested the defendant at his home without a warrant, in violation of Payton v. New York, 445 U. S. 573 (1980). Harris made several incriminat [p. 627] ing statements: a confession in his home, a written inculpa tory statement at the station house, and a videotaped inter view conducted by the district attorney at the station house. 495 U. S., at 16. The trial court suppressed the statements given by Harris in the house and on the videotape, and the State did not challenge either of those rulings. Ibid. The sole question in the case was whether the written statement given later at the station house should also have been sup pressed. The Court held that this later, outside-the-home statement “was admissible because Harris was in legal cus tody . . . and because the statement, while the product of an arrest and being in custody, was not the fruit of the fact that the arrest was made in the house rather than someplace else.” Id., at 20. Immediately after the Court stated its holding, it explained:

How can Justice Scalia maintain that the evidence here—a gun and drugs seized in the home—is “ ‘not the fruit’ ” of the illegal entry? Ante, at 601. The officers’ fail ure to knock and announce rendered the entire search unlaw ful, Wilson, 514 U. S., at 936, and that unlawful search led to the discovery of evidence in petitioner’s home. Thus, Har ris compels the opposite result than that reached by the Court today. Like the Payton rule at issue in Harris, the knock-and-announce rule reflects the “reverence of the law for the individual’s right of privacy in his house.” Miller, 357 U. S., at 313; cf. Harris, 495 U. S., at 17 (“Payton itself [p. 628] emphasized that our holding in that case stemmed from the ‘overriding respect for the sanctity of the home that has been embedded in our traditions since the origins of the Repub lic’ ”). Like the confession that was “excluded, as it should have been,” in Harris, id., at 20, the evidence in this case was seized in the home, immediately following the illegal entry. And like Harris, nothing in petitioner’s argument would require the suppression of evidence obtained outside the home following a knock-and-announce violation, precisely because officers have a remaining incentive to follow the rule to avoid the suppression of any evidence obtained from the very place they are searching. Cf. ibid. (“Even though we decline to suppress statements made outside the home fol lowing a Payton violation, the principal incentive to obey Payton still obtains: the police know that a warrantless entry will lead to the suppression of any evidence found, or statements taken, inside the home”).

There may be instances in the law where text or history or tradition leaves room for a judicial decision that rests upon little more than an unvarnished judicial instinct. But this is not one of them. Rather, our Fourth Amendment traditions place high value upon protecting privacy in the [p. 630] home. They emphasize the need to assure that its constitu tional protections are effective, lest the Amendment ‘‘sound the word of promise to the ear but break it to the hope.’’ They include an exclusionary principle, which since Weeks has formed the centerpiece of the criminal law’s effort to ensure the practical reality of those promises. That is why the Court should assure itself that any departure from that principle is firmly grounded in logic, in history, in precedent, and in empirical fact. It has not done so. That is why, with respect, I dissent.