Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-13-03097/USCOURTS-caDC-13-03097-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
United States of America
Appellee
Michael Anthony Weaver
Appellant

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued February 10, 2015 Decided September 4, 2015 

No. 13-3097 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

APPELLEE

v. 

MICHAEL ANTHONY WEAVER, 

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 1:10-cr-00096-1) 

Beverly G. Dyer, Assistant Federal Public Defender, 

argued the cause for appellant. With her on the briefs was 

A.J. Kramer, Federal Public Defender. Tony Axam, Jr., 

Assistant Federal Public Defender, entered an appearance. 

Patricia A. Heffernan, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued 

the cause for appellee. With her on the brief were Ronald C. 

Machen, Jr., U.S. Attorney, and Elizabeth Trosman, 

Elizabeth H. Danello, and John P. Dominguez, Assistant U.S. 

Attorneys. 

Before: HENDERSON, ROGERS and PILLARD, Circuit 

Judges. 

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 Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge PILLARD. 

 Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge HENDERSON. 

PILLARD, Circuit Judge: This appeal requires us to 

answer a question left unresolved by the Supreme Court in 

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

exclusionary rule is applicable when law enforcement officers 

violate the Fourth Amendment’s knock-and-announce rule 

while executing a warrant to arrest a suspect found at home. 

The knock-and-announce rule requires that, before 

officers executing a warrant enter a home, they knock on the 

door and announce their identity and purpose, and then wait a 

reasonable time before forcibly entering. In Hudson, the 

Supreme Court held that, when officers violate that rule in 

executing a search warrant, exclusion of the evidence they 

find is not an appropriate remedy. The Court reasoned that 

the officers would have discovered the evidence in any event 

when they went through the house under the authority of the 

valid search warrant. As the Court emphasized, the knockand-announce rule “has never protected” any “interest in 

preventing the government from seeing or taking evidence 

described in a warrant.” Id. at 594. Where officers armed 

with a search warrant have a judicially-sanctioned prerogative 

to invade the privacy of the home, the knock-and-announce 

violation does not cause the seizure of the disputed evidence. 

In that context, the exclusionary remedy’s significant costs 

outweigh its minimal privacy-shielding role, and its deterrent 

utility is “not worth a lot.” Id. at 596. 

Unlike the officers in Hudson, who had a warrant to 

search the home, the officers here acted pursuant to a warrant 

to arrest a person. An arrest warrant reflects no judicial 

determination of grounds to search the home; rather, it 

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evidences probable cause to believe that the arrestee has 

committed a crime, and authorizes his arrest wherever he 

might be found. If an arrestee is found away from home—at 

work, on the street, or at someone else’s home—the privacy 

of his home remains inviolate. So, too, if an arrestee is not at 

home when officers seek him there, or if he comes to the door 

and makes himself available for arrest, the arrest warrant does 

not authorize officers to enter the home. Any prerogative an 

arrest warrant may confer to enter a home is thus narrow and 

highly contingent on the particular circumstances of the 

arrest. 

An individual subject to an arrest warrant accordingly 

retains a robust privacy interest in the home’s interior. That 

privacy interest is protected by requiring law enforcement 

officers executing an arrest warrant to knock, announce their 

identity and purpose, and provide the arrestee with the 

opportunity to come to the door before they barge in. And, 

where evidence is obtained because officers violated the 

knock-and-announce rule in executing an arrest warrant at the 

arrestee’s home, the exclusionary rule retains its remedial 

force. Under Hudson’s own analytic approach, then, 

exclusion of the evidence may be an appropriate remedy. 

Justice Kennedy took care to underscore in his separate 

opinion in Hudson that “the continued operation of the 

exclusionary rule, as settled and defined by our precedents, is 

not in doubt.” Id. at 603. He provided the fifth vote for the 

majority opinion because the knock-and-announce violation 

before the court was “not sufficiently related to the later 

discovery of evidence to justify suppression.” Id. The critical 

inquiry was there, as it is here, whether the knock-andannounce violation could “properly be described as having 

caused the discovery of evidence,” id. at 604, and, if so, 

whether its costs outweigh its benefits. Where the 

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“requirement of causation” that animates the exclusionary 

rule has not been obviated as it was by the search warrant in 

Hudson, id., and where the exclusionary rule retains remedial 

force to protect the core Fourth Amendment privacy interest 

in the home, cf. id. at 603-04, we consider it our duty to apply 

it. 

We thus analyze the factors the Court considered in 

Hudson to determine whether the exclusionary rule applies 

when the knock-and-announce rule is violated in the arrest 

warrant context. We consider whether the violation causes 

the seizure of evidence such that evidentiary suppression 

furthers the interests underlying the knock-and-announce rule, 

and whether the benefits of applying the exclusionary rule 

outweigh its costs. Examining those factors, we conclude that 

exclusion was the appropriate remedy here, where officers 

executing a warrant for defendant Michael Weaver’s arrest 

sought him at home, violated the knock-and-announce rule, 

and discovered Weaver’s marijuana upon their forced entry 

into Weaver’s apartment. Accordingly, we reverse the district 

court’s decision to the contrary. 

I. 

 Federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, 

Firearms, and Explosives began investigating defendant 

Michael Weaver in 2008, when he came to their attention 

during the course of a drug-related investigation targeting a 

different suspect. As part of their investigation into Weaver, 

the agents searched through trash outside his home and found 

marijuana. They also learned from the target of the first 

investigation that Weaver had sold drugs for more than a year 

and trafficked in significant quantities of marijuana. The 

agents executed a warrant to search Weaver’s residence in 

late 2009 and discovered more than 500 grams of marijuana, 

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$38,000 in cash, and drug packaging materials. The agents 

also reviewed Weaver’s bank records and identified regular, 

unexplained cash deposits and a balance of more than 

$100,000 from unknown sources. In April 2010, the agents 

relied on that information to obtain a warrant for Weaver’s 

arrest. Prosecutors indicted Weaver on 52 separate counts, 

including possession with intent to distribute marijuana and 

money laundering. 

 The government was unable to apprehend Weaver until 

2012, when the agents learned the location of his new 

residence. After arriving at Weaver’s building, the agents 

knocked on his apartment door twice. There was no answer, 

but the agents heard movement inside. They were not 

concerned that Weaver would flee out a window because the 

apartment was on a high floor. Less than a minute later, the 

agents announced “police” and immediately used a key they 

had obtained from the building’s concierge to unlock the 

door. They did not inform Weaver that they had a warrant to 

arrest him. As the agents attempted to open the door, 

someone inside tried to hold the door closed. The officers 

were able to push the door open, and, after a brief struggle, 

they subdued Weaver, arrested him, and removed him from 

the apartment. 

In the course of arresting Weaver, the officers smelled 

marijuana. One of the officers testified that as soon as he 

“came in” and “looked to the left” or “turned left” toward the 

kitchen, he observed “bags of marijuana” on the counter. 

Based on those observations, the officers obtained a search 

warrant for the apartment and found several kilograms of 

marijuana, two tablets of oxycodone, a bag of the drug 

methylenexdioxymethcathinone (commonly referred to as 

MDMC, or bath salts), and nearly $10,000 in cash. The 

government then charged Weaver with three additional 

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counts: one count of possession with intent to distribute 

marijuana and two counts of possession of a controlled 

substance.

 At trial, Weaver moved to suppress the evidence seized 

during the 2012 search of his apartment. He contended that 

the warrant authorizing that search derived solely from the 

observations agents made while executing the arrest warrants, 

and that the agents were not legally authorized to be in his 

apartment when they made those observations because they 

had violated the knock-and-announce rule. Weaver further 

argued that Hudson did not preclude the application of the 

exclusionary rule to his case. 

The district court rejected Weaver’s contentions and 

denied his motion to suppress. The district court first 

concluded that there was no knock-and-announce violation 

because the officers knocked, announced “police,” and then 

waited a reasonable time before opening the door. Even if 

there had been a violation, the court held that Weaver would 

not prevail because it concluded that Hudson held the 

exclusionary rule inapplicable to knock-and-announce 

violations generally. 

In a separate order, the district court held that Weaver’s 

speedy trial rights were violated with respect to the first 52 

counts of the indictment, and so dismissed them. The 

government then entered into an agreement with Weaver 

concerning the more recent counts of the indictment. The 

government dismissed the counts for possession of oxycodone 

and MDMC, and Weaver agreed to a bench trial on stipulated 

facts on the remaining charge of possession with intent to 

distribute marijuana. After that trial, the district court found 

Weaver guilty. 

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Weaver appeals the district court’s denial of his 

suppression motion. On such an appeal, we review the 

court’s legal conclusions de novo and its findings of fact for 

clear error. United States v. Pindell, 336 F.3d 1049, 1052 

(D.C. Cir. 2003). 

II. 

A. 

The Fourth Amendment protects “[t]he right of the 

people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and 

effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” U.S. 

Const. Amend. IV. The constitutional reasonableness of a 

search or seizure in the home depends on, among other things, 

whether law enforcement officers have complied with the 

knock-and-announce rule. Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U.S. 927, 

931, 934 (1995); see also 18 U.S.C. § 3109 (setting forth a 

statutory knock-and-announcement requirement). The rule 

requires, subject to exceptions not relevant here, that law 

enforcement officers executing a warrant—whether for search 

or arrest—knock on an individual’s door, announce their 

identity and purpose, and then wait a reasonable amount of 

time before forcibly entering a home. Wilson, 514 U.S. at 

934-36; see also United States v. Banks, 540 U.S. 31, 38-39 

(2003); Sabbath v. United States, 391 U.S. 585, 588 & n.2 

(1968); Miller v. United States, 357 U.S. 301, 312-14 (1958). 

Notwithstanding the district court’s conclusion to the 

contrary, there is no dispute on this record that the 

constitutional safeguards imposed by the knock-and-announce 

rule were violated here. As the government correctly 

concedes on appeal, federal agents violated the rule by failing 

to announce their purpose before entering Weaver’s 

apartment. Appellee Br. 19-20; see also Miller, 357 U.S. at 

309-10; United States v. Wylie, 462 F.2d 1178, 1184-85 (D.C. 

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Cir. 1972). Both parties also agree that unless the agents were 

legally present in Weaver’s home when they viewed the 

marijuana, their observations could not serve as a lawful basis 

for the issuance of the search warrant. Appellee Br. 41 n.11; 

Appellant Br. 22-23; see Horton v. California, 496 U.S. 128, 

136 (1990). If the officers’ forcible entry into Weaver’s home 

was unlawful, their presence in his home was also unlawful, 

and their observations could not serve as the basis for a search 

warrant. Consequently, the sole question before us is whether 

the exclusionary rule applies to evidence obtained as a result 

of a knock-and-announce violation committed when law 

enforcement officers execute an arrest warrant, as opposed to 

a search warrant. 

Where it applies, the exclusionary rule prohibits the 

government from introducing in its case in chief evidence 

obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. See, e.g., 

Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 655 (1961); Weeks v. United 

States, 232 U.S. 383, 398 (1914). Evidentiary exclusion 

“compel[s] respect for the constitutional guaranty in the only 

effectively available way—by removing the incentive to 

disregard” the Fourth Amendment’s commands. Elkins v. 

United States, 364 U.S. 206, 217 (1960). The Supreme Court 

has acknowledged, however, that exclusion is not appropriate 

in every case. Application of the rule is warranted only when 

its objectives are “most efficaciously served.” United States 

v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 908 (1984) (internal quotation marks 

omitted); see also Davis v. United States, 131 S. Ct. 2419, 

2426-27 (2011); Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135, 140-

41 (2009). “Where suppression fails to yield ‘appreciable 

deterrence,’ exclusion is ‘clearly unwarranted.’” Davis, 131 

S. Ct. at 2426-27. 

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B. 

In Hudson, the Supreme Court considered whether 

exclusion was warranted when law enforcement officers 

violated the knock-and-announce rule while executing a 

search warrant. 547 U.S. at 588. Two factors governed its 

consideration: whether there was a causal link between the 

violation and the seizure of evidence and whether the rule’s 

deterrence benefits outweighed the costs of excluding 

probative evidence. 

As to causation, the Hudson Court reasoned that the 

exclusionary rule is only triggered when the constitutional 

violation is “a ‘but-for’ cause of obtaining evidence,” 

provided that causal connection is not “too attenuated.” Id. at 

592. In Hudson, “the constitutional violation of an illegal 

manner of entry was not a but-for cause of obtaining the 

evidence.” Id. That is because the knock-and-announce 

violation did not expand the breadth of the search authority 

conferred on the officers by the search warrant they had in 

hand, pursuant to which they already were privileged to 

obtain the incriminating evidence. Id. 

Even if the knock-and-announce violation had been a 

but-for cause of obtaining the evidence, causation in Hudson

was too attenuated. Id. at 592-93. Attenuation occurs “when 

the causal connection is remote.” Id. at 593. Attenuation also 

occurs, the Court explained, when “the interest protected by 

the constitutional guarantee that has been violated would not 

be served by suppression of the evidence obtained.” Id. 

Having held there was no but-for causation, the Court did not 

analyze whether causation was too remote. It did hold, 

however, that even if there were but-for causation, the 

interests protected by the knock-and-announce rule 

nonetheless would not, in the search warrant context, be 

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served by suppression of the evidence obtained. Id. at 593-

94. In that context, the Hudson Court observed, the knockand-announce rule protects personal safety, property, and a 

residuum of privacy not obviated by the search warrant. It 

protects personal safety by preventing violence by a surprised 

resident. Id. at 594. It avoids destruction of the doorway of a 

house when officers forcibly open it instead of using the 

requisite knock and announcement of identity and purpose to 

summon the homeowner to the door. Id. And it “protects 

those elements of privacy and dignity that can be destroyed by 

a sudden entrance” by giving residents an opportunity “to pull 

on clothes[,] get out of bed,” and otherwise “collect 

[themselves] before answering the door.” Id. (internal 

quotation marks omitted). The Court emphasized that “the 

knock-and-announce rule has never protected . . . one’s 

interest in preventing the government from seeing or taking 

evidence described in a warrant.” Id. As Justice Kennedy 

vividly pointed out, “[w]hen . . . a violation results from want 

of a 20–second pause but an ensuing, lawful search lasting 

five hours discloses evidence of criminality, the failure to wait 

at the door cannot properly be described as having caused the 

discovery of evidence.” Id. at 603-04 (Kennedy, J., 

concurring). “[T]he interests that were violated . . . ha[d] 

nothing to do with the seizure of the evidence,” leading the 

Court in Hudson to hold the exclusionary rule inapplicable. 

Id. at 594 (majority opinion). 

The Court in Hudson separately examined whether the 

“deterrence benefits” of applying the exclusionary rule to 

violations of the knock-and-announce rule during search 

warrant executions “outweigh its substantial social costs.” Id.

(internal quotation marks omitted). The most significant of 

the “considerable” costs of applying the exclusionary rule is 

the “grave adverse consequence that exclusion of relevant 

incriminating evidence always entails,” namely “the risk of 

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releasing dangerous criminals into society.” Id. at 595. The 

Court cautioned that allowing an exclusionary remedy also 

could lead to a “flood” of defendants claiming knock-andannounce violations, which would require judicial resolution 

of complicated, fact-intensive issues. Id. It could also lead 

officers to wait longer than constitutionally required before 

entering a dwelling, and thus “produc[e] preventable violence 

against officers in some cases, and the destruction of evidence 

in many others.” Id. 

The Court weighed those costs against the deterrence 

value of applying the exclusionary rule in the search warrant 

context, which it concluded is minimal. Id. at 596. Violating 

the warrant requirement altogether often produces 

incriminating evidence not otherwise obtainable, see id., and 

the exclusionary rule is needed to blunt that incentive, see 

Mapp, 367 U.S. at 656; Elkins, 364 U.S. at 217. Violating the 

knock-and-announce requirement when executing a search 

warrant, by contrast, does not provide officers with an 

opportunity to obtain evidence that the warrant, already in 

hand, would not otherwise authorize them to get. Hudson, 

547 U.S. at 596; see also id. at 592. (Where an unannounced 

entry is needed to serve important law enforcement interests, 

such as where officers have a reasonable suspicion that 

evidentiary destruction or life-threatening resistance would 

accompany a duly announced entry, the knock-and-announce 

requirement is suspended. Id. at 596.) The Court concluded 

that law enforcement officers armed with search warrants 

have scant incentive to violate the knock-and-announce rule; 

moreover, it noted, other deterrents—civil suits and the 

increasing professionalism of police forces—are sufficient to 

deter such violations. See id. at 596-99. 

As a result of those considerations, the Court held that 

evidentiary exclusion was not required when officers violated 

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the knock-and-announce rule in the course of executing a 

search warrant. 

III. 

A. 

Hudson has not answered the question before us. The 

government argues, and the dissent agrees, that because the 

exclusionary rule was held inapplicable in Hudson, it is 

equally inapplicable here. We of course employ Hudson’s 

legal framework in considering whether the exclusionary 

remedy is appropriate here. But we cannot accept the 

government’s contention that our analysis begins and ends 

with the outcome of Hudson. We must independently 

examine whether the logic of Hudson applies here to the same 

effect, or whether the arrest warrant context at issue here is so 

materially distinct that it requires a different result.

The government and dissent propose we follow an 

interpretation of Hudson that is divorced from its context. 

They contend that Hudson held that the exclusionary rule has 

no application to any violation of the knock-and-announce 

rule, regardless of whether the violation occurred during the 

execution of a warrant to search the home or to arrest a 

suspect. Dissent at 1. In their view, Hudson already held that 

the exclusionary rule is inapplicable whenever the knock-andannounce rule is violated—even where officers have only an 

arrest warrant and not a search warrant. 

Hudson does not support that approach. The dissent 

plucks general statements from Hudson to argue that the 

Court intended its holding to extend beyond the search 

warrant context. See Dissent at 1 & n.1; see also id. at 9-11. 

But the Court, contrary to the dissent’s characterization, 

articulated the question before it in search-warrant-specific 

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terms: The opening sentence of the opinion stated that the 

question presented was “whether violation of the ‘knock-andannounce’ rule requires the suppression of all evidence found 

in the search.” 547 U.S. at 588 (emphasis added). The 

Court’s reasoning was grounded in the context before it. 

When describing the interests the knock-and-announce rule 

protected, for example, it emphasized that “[w]hat the knockand-announce rule has never protected . . . is one’s interest in 

preventing the government from seeing or taking evidence 

described in a warrant.” Id. at 594 (emphasis added). Search 

warrants—and not arrest warrants—“describe” “evidence” 

and authorize officers to “take” that evidence. The precedents 

discussed and relied on by both the majority opinion and 

Justice Kennedy’s concurrence are the Court’s precedents 

concerning search warrants, see id. at 593 (discussing cases 

“excluding the fruits of unlawful warrantless searches”), 

further suggesting that the Court did not conceive of its 

decision as sweepingly as the government contends.1

 

We reject the government’s and the dissent’s insistence 

that the issue here has already been decided by Hudson. It 

should go without saying that a holding can be understood 

only by reference to the context of the case in which it was 

rendered. See Phelps v. United States, 421 U.S. 330, 333-34 

(1975) (cautioning that the Court’s statements must be “read 

in the context of the facts of th[e] case” before it); Armour & 

 

1

 The precedents the Court cited and discussed involved home

warrants and searches, not arrest warrants executed at home. 547 

U.S. at 590-91, 593, 602 (citing United States v. Ramirez, 523 U.S. 

65 (1998); Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961); Weeks v. United 

States, 232 U.S. 383 (1914)); see also 547 U.S. at 603 (Kennedy, J., 

concurring in part and concurring in the judgment) (citing 

Ramirez). 

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Co. v. Wantock, 323 U.S. 126, 132-33 (1944) (emphasizing 

that the Court’s “opinions are to be read in the light of the 

facts of the case under discussion,” as the Court cannot 

practically “writ[e] into them every limitation or variation 

which might be suggested by the circumstances of cases not 

before the Court.”). 

The Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment cases vividly 

illustrate that the precise scope and limits of a constitutional 

principle articulated in one case often are not apparent until 

the Court has had opportunities to apply it in new situations 

that help to elucidate it. Compare Florida v. Jardines, 133 S. 

Ct. 1409, 1415-16 (2013) (holding that the use of a drugsniffing dog on a homeowner’s porch was a search under the 

Fourth Amendment), with United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 

696, 707 (1983) (holding that a sniff by a narcotics-detection 

dog of an individual’s luggage did not constitute a search 

under the Fourth Amendment); see also Dissent at 6-7 

(collecting cases charting the Court’s incremental approach to 

creating exceptions to the exclusionary rule). 

The Court in United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 278-

79, 281-82 (1983), for example, held that no search occurred 

and thus no warrant was required when officers tracked 

defendants’ whereabouts by placing a radio transmitter in a 

drum of illicit drug ingredients, so that when defendants 

picked up the drum they unwittingly carried the transmitter 

with them. Defendants had no reasonable expectation of 

privacy and thus no Fourth Amendment rights against the 

government using that means to obtain information they 

already were exposing to the public. Id. at 281-82. The next 

year, in United States v. Karo, 468 U.S. 705 (1984), however, 

the Court applied Knotts’s reasoning to support the opposite 

result on analogous but materially different facts: A similar 

use of a radio transmitter placed in a can of drug ingredients 

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violated the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights because 

the transmitter was used to track the defendant as he carried 

the chemicals inside a private home. Id. at 707. United 

States v. Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945 (2012), revealed yet another 

important consideration. In Jones, the Court considered 

whether the government’s installation of a GPS device on a 

defendant’s car to monitor its movements on public roads 

constituted a search. Id. at 948. The Court in Jones

distinguished Knotts and Karo, pointing out that in neither of 

the prior cases had the Court been faced with a situation in 

which the defendant possessed the property when the 

government committed the trespass to insert the informationgathering device. Id. at 952. 

 We cannot presume that Hudson mandates the same 

result for violations of the knock-and-announce rule in both 

the search and arrest warrant contexts. Instead, we must 

assess whether, as Weaver argues, the arrest warrant context 

is materially distinguishable from the search warrant context. 

The government’s and the dissent’s efforts to find in Hudson

a categorical rule deciding this case cannot be squared with 

the pervasive and necessary incrementalism of judicial 

decision making. Hudson addressed the propriety of the 

exclusionary remedy for a knock-and-announce violation in 

the search warrant context. The Court never mentioned the 

parallel question as it arises in the context of executing arrest 

warrants. For the reasons discussed in the next sections, we 

conclude that the differences between search and arrest 

warrants distinguish this case from Hudson. 

B. 

The requirements for search warrants and arrest warrants 

protect distinct privacy interests, and the two types of 

warrants authorize law enforcement officers to take different 

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actions. The interests the knock-and-announce rule protects 

correspondingly differ, depending on the type of warrant law 

enforcement officers are executing. Because of those 

differences, the Court’s analysis in Hudson cannot apply the 

same way or yield the same result here. 

An individual’s interest in protecting the privacy of his 

home is of the highest order. See, e.g., Jardines, 133 S. Ct. at 

1414; Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 31 (2001). As 

Justice Kennedy underscored in Hudson, 

privacy and security in the home are central to the 

Fourth Amendment’s guarantees as explained in our 

decisions and as understood since the beginnings of 

the Republic. This common understanding ensures 

respect for the law and allegiance to our institutions, 

and it is an instrument for transmitting our 

Constitution to later generations undiminished in 

meaning and force. It bears repeating that it is a 

serious matter if law enforcement officers violate the 

sanctity of the home by ignoring the requisites of 

lawful entry. 

547 U.S. at 603. “At the very core of the Fourth Amendment 

stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and 

there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.” 

Kyllo, 533 U.S. at 31 (internal quotation marks omitted); see 

also Jardines, 133 S. Ct. at 1414 (“[W]hen it comes to the 

Fourth Amendment, the home is first among equals.”); 

Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U.S. 83, 99 (1998) (Kennedy, J., 

concurring) (“[I]t is beyond dispute that the home is entitled 

to special protection as the center of the private lives of our 

people.”); Payton, 445 U.S. at 585 (“[T]he physical entry of 

the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the 

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Fourth Amendment is directed.” (internal quotation marks 

omitted)). 

Law enforcement officers’ authority under an arrest 

warrant to enter and search a home is both more conditional 

and more circumscribed than their authority under a search 

warrant. Officers armed with a search warrant may enter a 

home and search for the items described in the warrant 

anywhere in the home where those items might be located. 

See Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U.S. 79, 84-85 (1987). An 

arrest warrant, by contrast, authorizes a much more limited 

intrusion into the home. See, e.g., Steagald v. United States, 

451 U.S. 204, 213-14 & n.7 (1981); Payton v. New York, 445 

U.S. 573, 603 (1980). In executing an arrest warrant, officers 

may enter an individual’s home only when they have reason 

to believe the arrestee is there, Payton, 445 U.S. at 603, may 

look only where a person might reasonably be found, and 

must stop searching once they locate him, Maryland v. Buie, 

494 U.S. 325, 330, 332-33 (1990); United States v. Thomas, 

429 F.3d 282, 287 (D.C. Cir. 2005). 

When officers have lawfully accessed an area of the 

home in search of an arrestee, they may seize items in plain 

view that they have probable cause to believe are evidence of 

a crime. See, e.g., Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 326 

(1987); Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 465 

(1971). Arresting officers must not routinely search every 

room in a home; when arresting an individual at home, the 

arrest warrant’s authority is confined to locating the person, 

securing the area within his reach, and making a quick and 

limited sweep of the immediately adjoining areas from which 

an attack could be launched. See, e.g., Buie, 494 U.S. at 327, 

334; Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 763, 766 (1969). 

Officers may also perform a sweep of other areas of the home 

if they have “articulable facts which . . . would warrant a 

USCA Case #13-3097 Document #1571524 Filed: 09/04/2015 Page 17 of 57
18 

reasonably prudent officer in believing that the area to be 

swept harbors an individual posing a danger to those on the 

arrest scene.” Buie, 494 U.S. at 334.2

 Once officers find the 

arrestee, however, they are no longer authorized by the arrest 

warrant to enter other rooms in the home; the arrestee retains 

an expectation of privacy in those areas. Id. at 333. In sum, 

the timing and scope of lawful searches of a home pursuant to 

an arrest warrant are limited by whether and where the 

arrestee is in the home when he submits to arrest. 

An arrestee’s location at the time of arrest is likely to 

depend on whether officers comply with the knock-andannounce rule. The knock-and-announce rule requires 

officers to announce their presence and purpose and give an 

arrestee an opportunity to open the door of his home. See 

Miller, 357 U.S. at 308 (citing Semayne’s Case (1604) 77 

Eng. Rep. 194, 195; 5 Co. Rep. 91a); Banks, 540 U.S. 31, 38-

39. Any governmental agent must “signify the cause of his 

coming, and ... make request to open doors.” Miller, 357 U.S. 

at 308 (quoting Semayne’s Case 77 Eng. Rep. at 195). 

Officers armed with an arrest warrant may only “break open 

doors to take the person suspected, if upon demand he will not 

 

2

 The dissent argues that we have mischaracterized Buie. Dissent at 

22. That is not so. In Buie, the Supreme Court specifically 

described the kind of sweep officers can make without reasonable 

suspicion as “quick and limited.” 494 U.S. at 327. Such a sweep 

“may extend only to a cursory inspection of those spaces where a 

person may be found,” and may last “no longer than is necessary to 

dispel the reasonable suspicion of danger and in any event no 

longer than it takes to complete the arrest and depart the premises.” 

Id. at 335-36. We agree that a sweep supported by a reasonable 

suspicion may be more extensive. But, such a sweep must be 

“justified by the circumstances,” id. at 335, and the government has 

not argued such circumstances are present here. 

USCA Case #13-3097 Document #1571524 Filed: 09/04/2015 Page 18 of 57
19 

surrender himself.” Accarino v. United States, 179 F.2d 456, 

461 (D.C. Cir. 1949) (emphasis added) (internal quotation 

marks omitted). 

As the Supreme Court recognizes, when officers break 

the door of a home to arrest someone, they “invade[] the 

precious interest of privacy summed up in the ancient adage 

that a man’s house is his castle.” Miller, 357 U.S. at 307. In 

the arrest warrant context, the knock-and-announce rule 

protects the arrestee’s privacy as well as his property and the 

officers’ safety. That privacy interest is not limited—as it is 

in the face of a warrant to search the home—to providing the 

arrestee with an opportunity to compose himself or get 

dressed, but also enables the arrestee to preserve the privacy 

of his “castle” by surrendering himself at the door. If an 

arrestee so surrenders himself, officers cannot make the more 

extensive intrusion into the home that they are authorized to 

make when an arrestee does not come to the door. The 

knock-and-announce rule consequently protects an arrestee’s 

interest in shielding intimate details of his home from the 

view of government agents. 

A person’s right to the privacy of his home does not 

require him to have any special reason for claiming that 

privacy; the Constitution recognizes a person’s privacy in the 

home as valuable in and of itself. It is, however, easy to 

understand the additional value of the knock-and-announce 

rule to a person facing arrest at home, who may have any 

number of reasons for wanting to surrender himself at the 

door and shield the remainder of his home from view. 

Someone living with his family might, for example, prefer to 

surrender himself on his doorstep to avoid being arrested in 

front of his family members, especially children. A person 

may also desire to keep private and personal papers and 

effects in the home, or the fact or identity of a guest, from 

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20 

government agents’ view. The Fourth Amendment’s 

protection of the privacy of personal spaces, documents, and 

things at home applies whether or not they are evidence of 

wrongdoing or a potential source of embarrassment. “Every 

householder, the good and the bad, the guilty and the 

innocent, is entitled to the protection designed to secure the 

common interest against unlawful invasion of the house.” 

Miller, 357 U.S. at 313; see also Hicks, 480 U.S. at 329; 

Carter, 525 U.S. at 110 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting). 

C. 

 Contrary to the argument advanced by the dissent, our 

decision in United States v. Southerland, 466 F.3d 1083 (D.C. 

Cir. 2006), does not “directly refute the search/arrest 

distinction” just described. Dissent at 13. Southerland

involved a knock-and-announce violation during execution of 

a search warrant. It was pending on appeal in this court when 

the Supreme Court decided Hudson. On reargument, 

Southerland abandoned his constitutional claim and argued 

that Hudson did not apply to the violation of his statutory

knock-and-announce right. 466 F.3d at 1083. We concluded 

that the constitutional and statutory knock-and-announce rules 

were one and the same, id. at 1085-86, making the 

exclusionary remedy equally inapplicable to the violations 

during Southerland’s and Hudson’s home searches, see id. at 

1084-85. 

The dissent draws an unwarranted implication from 

Southerland’s discussion of two older cases—Miller and 

Sabbath—that had reversed denials of evidentiary 

suppression. See Sabbath, 391 U.S. at 585-87; Miller, 357 

U.S. at 303-04. Each of those cases involved violations of 

statutory knock-and-announce provisions in an arrest context. 

Southerland invoked those cases in his effort to distinguish 

USCA Case #13-3097 Document #1571524 Filed: 09/04/2015 Page 20 of 57
21 

Hudson and salvage his exclusionary remedy on the ground 

that Miller and Sabbath addressed statutory claims and held 

suppression to be appropriate. 466 F.3d at 1084-85. We

rejected the proposed distinction between the constitutional 

and statutory versions of the knock-and-announce rule. Id. at 

1086. The fact that both Miller and Sabbath were arrest cases 

was not relevant to Southerland, which was a search case; we 

simply had no occasion to address whether the exclusionary 

rule continues to apply to a knock-and-announce violation 

committed when officers seek to arrest a suspect at home. 

The Supreme Court’s discussion in Hudson itself was 

similarly limited. That Court referred to Miller and Sabbath

in confirming the common historical roots of the statutory and 

constitutional knock-and-announce rules, but did not say 

anything about overruling the suppression remedy where 

officers fail to knock and announce before entering homes to 

effectuate arrests. 547 U.S. at 589. Indeed, Miller and 

Sabbath’s validation of the exclusionary remedy for knock 

and announce violations in the arrest context—undisturbed by 

Hudson—is more of an obstacle to the dissent’s position than 

Southerland is to ours. Even the government here, which was 

clearly aware of the Southerland case, see Appellee Br. at 19, 

does not accord it the force that the dissent urges. 

In sum, we agree with Southerland that Hudson provides 

the relevant legal framework for determining whether 

exclusion is the appropriate remedy when officers violate the 

knock-and-announce rule. But, for the reasons already 

discussed, neither Hudson nor Southerland considered or 

answered the question before us. 

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22 

D. 

Finally, the out-of-circuit cases the dissent cites, Dissent 

at 1 n.3, 11-12, provide at most weak support for the 

proposition that Hudson applies in the arrest-warrant context. 

The First Circuit has held, as the dissent points out, that 

“Hudson applies with equal force in the context of an arrest 

warrant.” United States v. Pelletier, 469 F.3d 194, 199, 201 

(1st Cir. 2006); see also United States v. Jones, 523 F.3d 31, 

36-37 (1st Cir. 2008). The First Circuit’s decisions, however, 

do not address the distinctions between arrest and search 

warrants.3

 Because we believe those distinctions are material 

to Hudson’s analysis, the First Circuit’s failure to 

acknowledge them undercuts those decisions’ persuasive 

force. 

The other cases the dissent identifies are not even 

arguably in conflict with our decision. See Dissent at 12 

(citing United States v. Smith, 526 F.3d 306, 311 (6th Cir. 

2008), and United States v. Ankeny, 502 F.3d 829, 835-36 

(9th Cir. 2007)). Those cases concern application of Hudson 

to the search warrant context, not the arrest warrant context. 

The dissent quotes language from those opinions out of 

context to support points not made by the opinions 

themselves.4

 In Smith, for example, the defendant argued that 

 

3

 Moreover, it does not appear that in either Pelletier or Jones the 

defendants brought those distinctions to the attention of the court, 

nor, indeed, did the government in its briefing in Jones rely on 

either Hudson or Pelletier. 4

 Several of the other cases and articles the dissent cites, see Dissent 

at 1 nn. 2-3, 5, merely describe the holding of Hudson. Those cases 

do not specify, let alone hold, that Hudson prevents application of 

the exclusionary rule to a knock-and-announce violation in the 

USCA Case #13-3097 Document #1571524 Filed: 09/04/2015 Page 22 of 57
23 

officers failed to abide by the knock-and-announce rule when 

conducting a search, not when making an arrest. 526 F.3d at 

308. The officers lacked a search warrant, but the court 

concluded that their search of the defendant’s home was 

nevertheless reasonable because he was under house arrest 

and thus had a diminished expectation of privacy. Id. at 308-

09. The court concluded that Hudson “was not confined to 

situations in which the officers violate the knock-andannounce rule after obtaining a [search] warrant as opposed to 

situations, like this one, where they allegedly violate the rule 

when they need not obtain a warrant” in order to perform a 

constitutionally valid home search. Id. at 311. Smith had no 

occasion to consider whether Hudson was confined to search 

as opposed to arrest cases. 

Similarly, Ankeny’s holding in no way conflicts with 

ours. In that case, the defendant moved to suppress evidence 

seized by officers because, he argued, the officers failed to 

knock and announce their presence when executing a search 

warrant. 502 F.3d at 833-34.5

 The defendant contended that 

 

arrest warrant context. We have not found imprecise descriptions 

of Hudson in secondary sources or courts’ dicta to provide helpful 

guidance in applying Hudson’s analysis to the current case. 

Additionally, in two of the state-court cases the dissent invokes, 

Dissent at 1 n.3, the courts held that evidentiary exclusion is the 

appropriate remedy for violations of state knock-and-announce 

rules. See State v. Cable, 51 So. 3d 434, 444 (Fla. 2010); Berumen 

v. State, 182 P.3d 635, 642 (Alaska Ct. App. 2008). 

5

 In Ankeny, the defendant had outstanding arrest warrants, but it 

appears that officers entered his home pursuant to a search warrant. 

502 F.3d at 833 (recounting that officer announced “police, search 

warrant” before breaking down the defendant’s door). In any event, 

if officers violated the knock-and-announce rule armed with both

arrest and search warrants, presumably the officers would, as in 

USCA Case #13-3097 Document #1571524 Filed: 09/04/2015 Page 23 of 57
24 

his case was not governed by Hudson “because the police 

could have obtained a no-knock warrant but failed to do so,” 

but the court “decline[d] to limit Hudson so narrowly to its 

facts.” Id. at 835-36. The court did not consider the propriety 

of an exclusionary remedy for knock-and-announce violations 

committed during the execution of arrest warrants. Despite 

the dissent’s assertions to the contrary, neither Smith nor 

Ankeny speak to whether or how Hudson applies when 

officers violate the knock-and-announce rule when they lack a 

search warrant and arrive at the house solely to execute a 

warrant for the inhabitant’s arrest. 

IV. 

Given the differences between search warrants and arrest 

warrants, the conclusions drawn in Hudson do not resolve this 

case. Instead, we must independently examine the factors 

identified in Hudson—causation and the costs and benefits of 

exclusion—to determine whether application of the 

exclusionary rule is appropriate. Examining those factors, we 

conclude that the exclusionary rule is the appropriate remedy 

for a violation of the knock-and-announce rule committed 

during execution of an arrest warrant. 

A. 

We first consider causation. See Hudson, 547 U.S. at 

592-93. In the arrest warrant context, the place where an 

individual is arrested determines what officers might see and 

where they are permitted to search. A knock-and-announce 

violation, leading to an arrest inside the home rather than at 

the front door, is thus the immediate cause of officers 

 

Hudson, have a valid basis for seizure of the evidence independent 

of the knock-and-announce violation, which is not the case here. 

USCA Case #13-3097 Document #1571524 Filed: 09/04/2015 Page 24 of 57
25 

intruding further within a home than they otherwise would 

and obtaining evidence that they are not authorized to see. 

That clear and strong causal connection distinguishes this case 

from Hudson. 

Law enforcement officers’ failure to knock and announce 

deprives the arrestee of any opportunity to answer the door 

and surrender himself at the threshold of his home. When not 

properly summoned by officers knocking and announcing 

their identity and purpose, an arrestee might be located 

anywhere in the home, perhaps in a bedroom or on an upper 

floor of a multi-level dwelling. As a result of entering 

unannounced, the officers gain access to more—perhaps a 

great deal more—of a home’s interior than they would have 

had they fulfilled their constitutional obligation to knock, 

announce, and allow the arrestee time to come to the door. As 

officers move through a house to locate an arrestee, they are 

able to view more portions of its interior. If they find the 

arrestee in a study or bedroom, searching places within his 

immediate reach and protectively sweeping adjacent areas is 

likely to be more intrusive and revealing than it would have 

been had those searches occurred on a front stoop or in a 

foyer. Officers’ failure to knock and announce, therefore, can 

cause them to view areas of the home and discover evidence 

that they would not have otherwise have constitutional 

authority to see. In such cases, the constitutional violation is 

the direct cause of law enforcement officers obtaining 

evidence beyond that which the warrant lawfully authorizes.

Requiring officers to knock and announce when 

executing an arrest warrant guards the privacy interest in the 

home in a way that the same requirement cannot do when 

officers have a warrant to search the home. Unlike officers 

armed with a search warrant, officers armed solely with an 

arrest warrant do not have the authority to examine any 

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26 

papers, gather any effects, or search the various nooks and 

crannies of an arrestee’s home. They are authorized to make 

only the limited intrusion into the home necessary to locate 

and seize the arrestee. See Payton, 445 U.S. at 603. Once 

they locate the arrestee, officers may intrude no further. The 

knock-and-announce rule, by providing an arrestee with the 

opportunity to surrender himself at the door, thereby enables 

the arrestee to minimize the scope of that intrusion and protect 

the intimacies of his home from the officers’ view. 

Suppressing evidence obtained in violation of the knock-andannounce rule thus directly serves the interests protected by 

the rule. 

The dissent presumes that, because the same substantive 

knock-and-announce requirements apply in both the search 

and arrest context, the rule protects the same interests. See 

Dissent at 17-19. In Hudson, however, the Supreme Court 

had no occasion to consider or specify the interests protected 

by the requirement that officers knock and announce when 

executing an arrest warrant. See 547 U.S. at 594 (“What the 

knock-and-announce rule has never protected . . . is one’s 

interest in preventing the government from seeing or taking 

evidence described in a warrant.”). Hudson concluded that 

the interest in privacy in the home that is obviated when a 

judge issues a search warrant based on probable cause of 

crime or evidence of crime in the home is an interest that the 

knock-and-announce rule no longer serves. Our analysis 

recognizes that the privacy interest in the home remains intact 

when a judge has made only the different determination of 

probable cause that a suspect has committed a crime 

warranting arrest. Application of the knock-and-announce 

rule in the arrest warrant context enables the arrestee to 

protect his privacy at home by surrendering himself at the 

door. 

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27 

B. 

We next weigh, in the arrest warrant context, the costs of 

excluding evidence obtained by violation of the knock-andannounce rule against its benefits in protecting the Fourth 

Amendment right to privacy in the home and deterring 

violations of that right. See Hudson, 547 U.S. at 594-98. 

Because application of the exclusionary rule here would result 

in appreciable deterrence, the benefits of applying the rule 

outweigh its acknowledged social costs. 

The costs of applying the exclusionary rule to this kind of 

constitutional violation in the arrest warrant context are 

similar to those described in Hudson: The courts will need to 

expend resources to resolve close claims of knock-andannounce rule violations, officers’ entry might be delayed by 

knocking, announcing, and waiting for response, and, most 

importantly, relevant, incriminating evidence will be rendered 

unavailable at a defendant’s trial. Id. at 595.6

 

Those costs are real, but they are outweighed by a 

privacy interest and opportunity to deter its violation that is 

substantially stronger here than the negligible privacy interest 

and deterrence value in Hudson. As the Court observed in 

Hudson, “the value of deterrence depends on the strength of 

the incentive to commit the forbidden act.” Id. at 596. 

Officers armed with only an arrest warrant—who, for 

whatever reason, did not seek or were unable to obtain a 

search warrant—have a strong incentive to violate the knock-

 

6

 The mere existence of that last cost, always present when the 

exclusionary rule is applied, is insufficient in and of itself to 

overcome an appropriate application of the rule. Cf. Leon, 468 U.S. 

at 906-09. If it were otherwise, the exclusionary rule would not 

exist. 

USCA Case #13-3097 Document #1571524 Filed: 09/04/2015 Page 27 of 57
28 

and-announce rule. Entering a home unannounced to execute 

an arrest warrant increases the chances that officers will gain 

entry to parts of a home they would not otherwise have 

entered to carry out the arrest, and will thereby give 

themselves an opportunity to find incriminating evidence they 

otherwise would never see. 

The facts of this case aptly highlight when and why 

officers might want to violate the knock-and-announce rule. 

The officers were executing an arrest warrant that was over 

two years old, based on offenses committed even earlier. The 

officers lacked recent incriminating evidence against Weaver. 

By failing to knock and announce, they were able to obtain 

new, valuable evidence from Weaver’s kitchen without a 

search warrant and secure a superseding indictment that was 

not susceptible to a speedy trial challenge. The government’s 

ability to parlay an old arrest warrant into new evidence 

supporting new charges demonstrates precisely why officers 

armed with only an arrest warrant would be tempted to seek 

the suspect at home and violate the knock-and-announce rule. 

Officers can conduct limited searches incident to a lawful 

arrest in the home, as the dissent acknowledges. Dissent at 

23. But the dissent fails to recognize that the scope and 

intrusiveness of those searches varies depending on where in 

the home the arrestee is located. By violating the knock-andannounce rule, officers give themselves a better chance of 

arresting an individual inside his home, where a search or 

protective sweep will be more revealing than one conducted 

on the home’s threshold. 

Given the strong incentives officers may have to violate 

the rule, the deterrence calculus is starkly different here than 

it was in Hudson. In Hudson, the Court’s balancing analysis 

was driven, in large part, by its conclusion that the incentives 

USCA Case #13-3097 Document #1571524 Filed: 09/04/2015 Page 28 of 57
29 

to violate the rule were weak and therefore that deterrence 

was virtually worthless. 547 U.S. at 596. The opportunities 

to gain evidence not otherwise accessible increase incentives 

to violate the rule here, which correspondingly raises the 

exclusionary rule’s deterrence value. That appreciable 

deterrence outweighs the costs of the rule. 

It would make little sense to jettison the exclusionary rule 

simply because, as the dissent presumes, officers rarely 

violate the knock-and-announce rule when executing an arrest 

warrant. If violations are rare, then the actual cost of 

applying the exclusionary rule will be minimal. The courts 

will not be flooded with cases claiming failures to observe the 

rule and very few dangerous criminals will go free because of 

officers’ missteps. Cf. Dissent at 20. The paucity of cases 

challenging violations of the knock and announce rule when 

officers execute an arrest warrant may very well be due to the 

deterrent effect of past applications of the exclusionary rule. 

See generally Sabbath, 391 U.S. 585; Miller, 357 U.S. 301. 

Here in the arrest-warrant context, unlike in Hudson, 

there are grounds to conclude that application of the 

exclusionary rule to knock-and-announce violations would 

result in appreciable deterrence of constitutional violations. 

When application of the exclusionary rule provides beneficial 

deterrence, and that benefit outweighs the costs of the rule, it 

applies. 

C. 

 The government contends that its agents should not have 

to wait for an arrestee to take any particular series of steps 

that might shield his home from the agents’ view. The 

government is correct insofar as agents need not, for example, 

make every effort to enable an arrestee to open the door in a 

manner that does not expose the interior of his home to view, 

USCA Case #13-3097 Document #1571524 Filed: 09/04/2015 Page 29 of 57
30 

exit the dwelling, and close the door. But they must give him 

an opportunity to come to the door. See Banks, 540 U.S. at 

38-39. Here, by knocking but failing to announce their 

purpose, the agents gave Weaver no opportunity to protect the 

privacy of his home. 

The government also argues that even if Weaver had 

surrendered himself, in this particular case the agents would 

nonetheless have been able to make the observations that 

justified the search warrant. The record does not support that 

conclusion. Because the federal agents violated the knockand-announce rule, Weaver was not given a chance to 

surrender himself peacefully at the doorway of his unit or in 

the hallway of his building. Instead, he struggled with 

officers who pushed their way inside and eventually 

overpowered him in order to effectuate the arrest. The record 

does not reveal how much access to the apartment that 

struggle gave the agents beyond what they otherwise would 

have had. It is also unclear whether, given the layout of 

Weaver’s apartment and the location of the drugs, the officers 

would have been able to see and smell the marijuana plants 

from the threshold of his unit if Weaver had opened the door 

and surrendered himself there. 

The only evidence in the record is that agents were not 

able to observe the drugs until they had entered Weaver’s 

apartment: An agent executing the warrant testified that “[a]s 

soon as [he] went in the door, [he] smelled the fresh 

marijuana,” and that after he entered the apartment and looked 

to his left he saw the marijuana. The record does not specify 

how far into the apartment the agent went before he saw the 

marijuana, how much farther into the apartment he was able 

to enter as a result of the struggle to subdue Weaver, or 

whether the marijuana was visible from the doorway. The 

government has thus failed to create a record that would 

USCA Case #13-3097 Document #1571524 Filed: 09/04/2015 Page 30 of 57
31 

enable us to conclude that the agents would have made the 

same observations had they knocked, announced, and arrested 

Weaver on his threshold. Nor has the government argued 

that, even if Weaver had surrendered himself at the threshold 

of his apartment, the drugs would have been observed during 

a protective sweep of the areas adjacent to where Weaver was 

arrested. 

* * * 

For all of the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the 

exclusionary rule is the appropriate remedy for knock-andannounce violations in the execution of arrest warrants at a 

person’s home. The parties agree that the officers did not 

satisfy the rule’s dictates here. The district court should have 

excluded the fruits of that constitutional violation. 

Consequently, we reverse the district court’s denial of 

Weaver’s suppression motion and remand for further 

proceedings. 

So ordered. 

USCA Case #13-3097 Document #1571524 Filed: 09/04/2015 Page 31 of 57
KAREN LECRAFT HENDERSON, Circuit Judge, dissenting: 

I am convinced the exclusionary rule does not apply to a 

violation of the Fourth Amendment knock-and-announce 

requirement, period. I had thought that was plain from the 

U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Hudson v. Michigan, 547 

U.S. 586 (2006). My colleagues conclude, however, that 

because Hudson involved a knock-and-announce violation 

during the execution of a search warrant, it is limited to that 

context and does not apply to a knock-and-announce violation

during the execution of an arrest warrant. Yet, nothing in 

Hudson supports their view. Hudson held that all violations 

of the knock-and-announce requirement are exempt from the 

exclusionary rule and my colleagues’ attempt to limit its 

reasoning to search warrants is unpersuasive. Indeed, the 

majority, concurrence and dissent in Hudson would all be 

surprised by my colleagues’ narrow reading.1

 As would 

every member of this Court in 2006,

2 our sister circuits,3

 1

 See Hudson, 547 U.S. at 590 (defining question presented broadly as 

“whether the exclusionary rule is appropriate for violation of the knockand-announce requirement”); id. at 588 (same); id. at 603–04 (Kennedy, 

J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment); id. at 604 (Breyer, J., 

dissenting) (“[T]he Fourth Amendment normally requires law 

enforcement officers to knock and announce their presence before entering 

a dwelling. Today’s opinion holds that evidence seized from a home 

following a violation of this requirement need not be suppressed.”).

2

 See United States v. Southerland, 466 F.3d 1083, 1083 (D.C. Cir. 2006) 

(“Hudson’s holding [is] that the exclusionary rule did not apply to Fourth 

Amendment knock-and-announce violations”), opinion unanimously 

endorsed by Irons footnote, 466 F.3d at 1084 n.1.

3

 See, e.g., United States v. Pelletier, 469 F.3d 194, 201 (1st Cir. 2006) 

(“Hudson applies with equal force in the context of an arrest warrant.”); 

United States v. Smith, 526 F.3d 306, 311 (6th Cir. 2008) (“Nor, contrary 

to [defendant’s] suggestion, does Hudson apply only when the officers 

have a search warrant.”); United States v. Ankeny, 502 F.3d 829, 835–36 

(9th Cir. 2007) (“[W]e decline to limit Hudson so narrowly to its facts.”); 

United States v. Cos, 498 F.3d 1115, 1132 n.3 (10th Cir. 2007) (Hudson

“held that, when a particular kind of mistake is made by police officers 

themselves—a violation of the Fourth Amendment’s knock-and-announce 

USCA Case #13-3097 Document #1571524 Filed: 09/04/2015 Page 32 of 57
2

scholars on both sides of the exclusionary-rule debate4 and 

even Hudson’s lawyer.5 The majority opinion in this case 

 

requirement—the exclusionary rule is not applicable” (emphasis added)); 

United States v. Collins, 714 F.3d 540, 543 (7th Cir. 2013) (“Hudson . . . 

holds that exclusion is not an appropriate remedy for violations of the 

knock-and-announce rule.”); see also State v. Cable, 51 So. 3d 434, 441 

(Fla. 2010) (stating, in arrest-warrant case, that “[u]nder Hudson, it is clear 

that the exclusionary rule does not apply to Fourth Amendment knockand-announce violations”); Berumen v. State, 182 P.3d 635, 637 (Alaska 

Ct. App. 2008) (same); State v. Marcum, No. 04-CO-66, ¶ 15, 2006 WL 

3849861, at *3 (Ohio Ct. App. Dec. 28, 2006) (“Based on Hudson, no 

evidence should have been suppressed due to a violation of the knock-andannounce rule” during execution of arrest warrant); In re Frank S., 47 

Cal. Rptr. 3d 320, 324 (Ct. App. 2006) (“Defendant’s contention that 

Hudson applies only where the police have a search warrant is not 

persuasive. Hudson held that a violation of the knock-and-announce rule 

does not justify application of the exclusionary rule. The rule turns on the 

nature of the constitutional violation at issue, not the nature of the police’s 

authority for entering the home.” (citations omitted)).

4

 See, e.g., James J. Tomkovicz, Hudson v. Michigan and the Future of 

Fourth Amendment Exclusion, 93 IOWA L. REV. 1819, 1839–41 & n.111 

(2008) (explaining why Hudson cannot be limited to search warrants); 

1 WAYNE R. LAFAVE, SEARCH & SEIZURE: A TREATISE ON THE FOURTH 

AMENDMENT § 1.6(h) & n.165 (5th ed. 2014) (“Whatever one might think 

of Hudson’s fruit-of-the-poisonous-tree holding, the majority’s . . . 

alternate deterrence/costs holding . . . is open to broader application . . . .

Applying only a fruits analysis, it would seem that notwithstanding 

Hudson there would be instances in which items not named in the warrant 

would be deemed the fruit of a premature entry or an entry without notice 

because absent that violation the evidence would not have been 

discovered. But . . . it is to be doubted that it could likewise be said that 

there is a greater need for deterrence of those knock-and-announce 

violations that serendipitously produce such evidence.” (citation and some 

footnotes omitted)); 2 DRUG ABUSE & THE LAW SOURCEBOOK § 9:14 

(2014) (“The [Hudson] Court’s . . . balancing [of] the deterrence benefit 

against the social cost of exclusion[] is likely to lead to the same result 

regardless of whether the entry is to serve a search warrant or an arrest 

warrant.”); Mark A. Summers, The Constable Blunders but Isn’t 

Punished: Does Hudson v. Michigan’s Abolition of the Exclusionary Rule 

Extend Beyond Knock-and-Announce Violations?, 10 BARRY L. REV. 25, 

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3

will not only create a direct circuit split, see United States v. 

Jones, 523 F.3d 31, 36 (1st Cir. 2008), but it will “produc[e] 

preventable violence against officers,” “releas[e] dangerous

criminals into society” and generate a “flood” of burdensome 

litigation. Hudson, 547 U.S. at 595; see also infra pp.19–21. 

Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.

I. BACKGROUND

The knock-and-announce requirement arises whenever a 

police officer seeks to enter someone’s residence without 

permission. See Sabbath v. United States, 391 U.S. 585, 589–

90 (1968). Before making such entry, an officer must knock, 

announce his authority and purpose (“Police! I have a 

warrant!”) and wait a reasonable time for an answer. See

Miller v. United States, 357 U.S. 301, 308–09 (1958); United 

States v. Banks, 540 U.S. 31, 41 (2003). The requirements, 

not surprisingly, are subject to exceptions. See, e.g., Miller, 

357 U.S. at 310 (police need not announce purpose if 

defendant already knows they are there to arrest him). 

Moreover, an officer can bypass the knock-and-announce 

requirement entirely if he has a “reasonable suspicion of 

exigency or futility.” Banks, 540 U.S. at 37 n.3. Exigent 

 

37 (2008) (“Because the[] interests [identified in Hudson] are the same in 

every knock-and-announce rule case, there are no knock-and-announce 

violations where applying the exclusionary remedy would be justified.”); 

John B. Rayburn, Note, What Is “Blowing in the Wind”? Reopening the 

Exclusionary Rule Debate, 110 W. VA. L. REV. 793, 823–24 (2008) 

(“extend[ing] Hudson to the execution of arrest warrants . . . seem[s] to be 

elementary and non-problematic”).

5

 David A. Moran, The End of the Exclusionary Rule, Among Other 

Things: The Roberts Court Takes on the Fourth Amendment, 2006 CATO 

SUP. CT. REV. 283, 283 (“[In] my 5-4 loss in Hudson v. Michigan . . . , the 

Court held that when the police violate the Fourth Amendment ‘knock and 

announce requirement’ the normal Fourth Amendment remedy, exclusion 

of the evidence found after the violation, does not apply.”).

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4

circumstances include anticipated physical violence, 

apprehending an escaped prisoner and preventing the 

destruction of evidence. See Brigham City, Utah v. Stuart, 

547 U.S. 398, 406 (2006); Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U.S. 927, 

936 (1995); Richards v. Wisconsin, 520 U.S. 385, 394 (1997).

The United States inherited the knock-and-announce rule 

from the English common law. See Hudson, 547 U.S. at 589; 

see also Miller, 357 U.S. at 313 (knock-and-announce 

requirement is “a tradition embedded in Anglo-American 

law”). It is usually traced to Semayne’s Case—a 17th century 

decision from the King’s Bench—although its origins may be 

more ancient still. See Wilson, 514 U.S. at 931–32 & n.2; see 

also Semayne’s Case, (1604) 77 Eng. Rep. 194 (K.B.) 196; 5 

Co. Rep. 91 a, 91 b (citing 1275 statute and noting it was then 

“but an affirmance of the common law”). For federal lawenforcement officers, the knock-and-announce requirement

has been mandated by statute since 1917. See Act of June 15, 

1917, tit. XI, § 8, 40 Stat. 229. The current version provides:

The officer may break open any outer or inner door 

or window of a house, or any part of a house, or 

anything therein, to execute a search warrant, if, 

after notice of his authority and purpose, he is 

refused admittance or when necessary to liberate 

himself or a person aiding him in the execution of 

the warrant.

18 U.S.C. § 3109 (emphasis added).6

 By its terms, section 

3109 governs the execution of “search warrant[s]” only. See

 6

 Section 3109 also applies, by reference, to local law-enforcement 

officers operating in the District of Columbia. See D.C. CODE § 23-524(a) 

(“An officer executing a warrant directing a search of a dwelling house or 

other building or a vehicle shall execute such warrant in accordance with 

section 3109 of Title 18, United States Code.”).

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Southerland, 466 F.3d at 1085. And, under the common law, 

the knock-and-announce requirement “had not been extended 

conclusively” to the arrest context at the Founding or even

through the Civil War. See Wilson, 514 U.S. at 935. 

Nevertheless, courts “gradually” extended the common-law 

requirement to arrests as well. Id. This Court, for example, 

did so in Accarino v. United States, 179 F.2d 456 (D.C. Cir. 

1949).

In 1995, the Supreme Court clarified in Wilson v. 

Arkansas that the knock-and-announce requirement is not 

only a creature of statute and common law, but also a 

requirement of the U.S. Constitution. See 514 U.S. at 934. 

Specifically, the Fourth Amendment protects “[t]he right of 

the people to be secure in their . . . houses . . . against 

unreasonable searches and seizures,” U.S. CONST., amend. IV, 

and the knock-and-announce requirement “forms a part of the 

Fourth Amendment reasonableness inquiry,” Wilson, 514 U.S. 

at 930. The Wilson Court declined, however, to decide the 

remedy for a knock-and-announce violation, leaving that

question for another day. See id. at 937 n.4.

Nevertheless, this Court had already answered the 

question. Long before Wilson, we determined that the knockand-announce requirement was grounded in the Fourth 

Amendment. See, e.g., McKnight v. United States, 183 F.2d 

977, 978 (D.C. Cir. 1950). And we applied the exclusionary 

rule to evidence obtained in violation of both the 

constitutional and statutory knock-and-announce 

requirements. See, e.g., Gatewood v. United States, 209 F.2d 

789, 791–92 (D.C. Cir. 1953); Woods v. United States, 240 

F.2d 37, 39–40 (D.C. Cir. 1956). Yet, our cases were largely 

a product of the times. The Supreme Court’s decisions during 

that era suggested that, once a violation of the Fourth 

Amendment occurred, the fruits of that violation must 

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necessarily be suppressed. See, e.g., Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 

643, 654 (1961) (“all evidence obtained by an 

unconstitutional search and seizure [is] inadmissible in a 

federal court” (emphasis added) (citing Elkins v. United 

States, 364 U.S. 206, 213 (1960))); Whiteley v. Warden, Wyo. 

State Penitentiary, 401 U.S. 560, 568–69 (1971) (because 

“petitioner’s arrest violated his constitutional rights under the 

Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments[,] the evidence secured 

as an incident thereto should have been excluded”).

Those days, however, are long gone. “Subsequent case 

law” from the Supreme Court “rejected [a] reflexive 

application of the exclusionary rule.” Arizona v. Evans, 514 

U.S. 1, 13 (1995); see also Hudson, 547 U.S. at 591 

(“Expansive dicta in Mapp . . . suggested wide scope for the 

exclusionary rule. . . . But we have long since rejected that 

approach.” (citations omitted)). Instead, suppression is a “last 

resort, not [a] first impulse.” Hudson, 547 U.S. at 591. Given 

its “costly toll upon truth-seeking and law enforcement 

objectives,” the party “urging application” of the exclusionary 

rule shoulders a “high” burden. Pa. Bd. of Probation and 

Parole v. Scott, 524 U.S. 357, 364–65 (1998) (quotation 

marks omitted); see also Davis v. United States, 131 S. Ct.

2419, 2427 (2011) (“[Exclusion’s] bottom-line effect, in 

many cases, is to suppress the truth and set the criminal loose 

in the community without punishment. Our cases hold that 

society must swallow this bitter pill when necessary, but only 

as a last resort.” (citation and quotation marks omitted)).

The Supreme Court has recognized several exceptions to 

the exclusionary rule. The rule does not apply if the 

constitutional violation is not the but-for cause of the 

discovery of the evidence, see Murray v. United States, 487 

U.S. 533, 537 (1988); Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431, 444 

(1984), or if the causal link is too “attenuated,” Wong Sun v. 

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United States, 371 U.S. 471, 487 (1963). Additionally, over 

the last forty years, the Supreme Court has repeatedly

exempted whole categories of cases from the exclusionary 

rule’s reach. See, e.g., Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2423–24 (search

compliant with subsequently overruled precedent); Illinois v. 

Krull, 480 U.S. 340, 349 (1987) (search compliant with 

statute later deemed unconstitutional); Herring v. United 

States, 555 U.S. 135, 137 (2009) (violation caused by police 

employee’s clerical error); Evans, 514 U.S. at 16 (violation

caused by court employee’s clerical error); Massachusetts v.

Sheppard, 468 U.S. 981, 990–91 (1984) (violation caused by 

magistrate judge’s clerical error); United States v. Leon, 468 

U.S. 897, 922 (1984) (evidence obtained in reasonable 

reliance on defective search warrant); Scott, 524 U.S. at 359 

(parole revocation hearings); INS v. Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U.S. 

1032, 1050 (1984) (civil deportation hearings); Stone v. 

Powell, 428 U.S. 465, 494–95 (1976) (federal habeas review); 

United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 354 (1974) (grand 

jury proceedings); United States v. Havens, 446 U.S. 620, 627 

(1980) (evidence used to impeach defendant); United States v. 

Janis, 428 U.S. 433, 460 (1976) (evidence seized by state 

police and used in federal civil proceedings). In doing so, the 

Supreme Court applies a balancing test: the Court will not 

extend the exclusionary rule to a particular context unless the 

deterrence benefits outweigh the societal costs. See, e.g.,

Leon, 468 U.S. at 909–10.

Hudson v. Michigan falls neatly within this line of cases. 

In Hudson, the Supreme Court finally answered the question 

it had left unanswered in Wilson: namely, “whether the 

exclusionary rule is appropriate for violation of the knockand-announce requirement.” Hudson, 547 U.S. at 590. The 

Court said “no” for two independent reasons. First, a knockand-announce violation is too “attenuated” from the seizure of 

evidence to warrant exclusion. See id. at 591–94. Second, 

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and “[q]uite apart from the requirement of unattenuated 

causation,” id. at 594, under the exclusionary-rule balancing 

test, the deterrence benefit of suppression does not outweigh 

the social costs. See id. at 594–99.

Shortly after Hudson was decided, we had the 

opportunity to determine its reach. In United States v. 

Southerland, we assessed whether “Hudson’s holding that the 

exclusionary rule did not apply to Fourth Amendment knockand-announce violations” also applies to statutory knock-andannounce violations under section 3109. 466 F.3d at 1083. 

We concluded that it does. See id. at 1086. We noted that the 

standards governing section 3109, the Fourth Amendment and 

the common law have “merged” so that “[t]here is now one 

uniform knock-and-announce rule.” Id. at 1085–86; see also 

Ramirez, 523 U.S. at 73 (“§ 3109 codifies the common law in 

this area, and the common law in turn informs the Fourth 

Amendment”). Unsurprisingly then, “each of the reasons[7]

Hudson gave for not applying the exclusionary rule to knock-

 7

 The Southerland Court identified the Hudson “reasons” as follows:

that the knock-and-announce requirement does not protect an 

individual’s interest in shielding “potential evidence from the 

government’s eyes,” Hudson, 126 S. Ct. at 2165; that 

“imposing th[e] massive remedy” of suppression “for a knockand-announce violation would generate a constant flood of 

alleged failures to observe the rule,” id. at 2165–66; that 

questions about whether the police waited long enough before 

entering would be “difficult for the trial court to determine and 

even more difficult for an appellate court to review,” id. at 

2166; that any deterrent value from suppressing evidence in 

these cases would not be “worth a lot,” id.; that civil damage 

actions would still provide some deterrence, id. at 2166–68; and 

that “[a]nother development over the past half-century that 

deters civil-rights violations is the increasing professionalism of 

police forces, including a new emphasis on internal police 

discipline,” id. at 2168.

466 F.3d at 1084 (alterations in original).

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and-announce violations of the Fourth Amendment applies 

equally to violations of § 3109.” Southerland, 466 F.3d at 

1084. Southerland acknowledged that earlier Supreme Court 

precedent appeared to apply the exclusionary rule to 

violations of section 3109. See id. at 1084–85 (discussing 

Miller, 357 U.S. 301, and Sabbath, 391 U.S. 585). But those 

cases did not technically apply section 3109 because they 

dealt with knock-and-announce violations in connection with 

arrests, not search warrants. Id. at 1085. More importantly, 

to the extent the arrest cases may have required exclusion, we 

concluded they were overruled by Hudson. See id. at 1085–

86; see also id. at 1086 (“[W]e think it plain that Hudson, not 

Miller and Sabbath, now must control. Not only is Hudson

the Court’s most recent pronouncement about whether 

evidence should be excluded as a remedy for knock-andannounce violations, but it is also the Supreme Court’s only 

thorough analysis of the issue.”) Accordingly, in

Southerland, we held that the exclusionary rule does not apply 

to violations of section 3109 and expressly overruled contrary

circuit precedent. See id. at 1086, 1084 n.1.

II. ANALYSIS

Weaver contends—and my colleagues agree—that 

Hudson v. Michigan is limited to search warrants and, 

because the knock-and-announce violation here occurred 

during the execution of an arrest warrant, the exclusionary 

rule is back in play. Yet I find the attempt to distinguish 

Hudson completely unpersuasive. Hudson’s holding contains 

no search-warrant limitation and its reasoning applies equally 

to searches and arrests.

A. HUDSON’S HOLDING

Hudson involved a knock-and-announce violation that

occurred during the execution of a search warrant. See 547 

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U.S. at 588. That fact does not mean, however, that Hudson’s 

holding is limited to the search-warrant context:

Every case is “limited to its facts,” if by that phrase 

one means that the court based its judgment on the 

facts presented to it. But most cases are also decided 

with reference to some more general normative 

principle which extends beyond the specific 

circumstances of the case before the court. Indeed, it 

is the existence of such broader norms which 

distinguishes a decision which is principled and 

rational from one which is ad hoc and arbitrary.

Robinson v. Diamond Hous. Corp., 463 F.2d 853, 862 (D.C. 

Cir. 1972). Here, for instance, the Hudson Court framed the 

issue broadly. See 547 U.S. at 590 (“The issue here is . . . 

whether the exclusionary rule is appropriate for violation of 

the knock-and-announce requirement.”); id. at 588 (“We 

decide whether violation of the ‘knock-and-announce’ rule 

requires the suppression of all evidence found in the search.”). 

These statements are not “pluck[ed]” out of context, Maj. Op. 

12; they are the two instances in which the Hudson Court 

framed the question presented.8

 And nowhere in the opinion 

 8

 My colleagues emphasize the word “search” in the Hudson Court’s 

statement that “[w]e decide whether violation of the ‘knock-andannounce’ rule requires the suppression of all evidence found in the 

search.” Hudson, 547 U.S. at 588 (emphasis added). Their italicization is 

unhelpful. The Court said “search,” not “search warrant.” Whenever the 

police enter a residence to execute an arrest warrant and seize evidence 

incident to arrest or in plain view, a “search” occurs.

My colleagues also note that the Hudson Court “relied on . . . 

precedents concerning search warrants.” Maj. Op. 13. That is 

unsurprising, as the “[c]ases acknowledging a need to knock and announce 

typically involve the execution of search warrants.” Tomkovicz, supra, at 

1837 n.92 (collecting cases). In any event, the Hudson Court did not rely 

exclusively on such precedents. Its attenuation analysis, for example, was 

primarily grounded in New York v. Harris, 495 U.S. 14 (1990)—a case 

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did the Hudson Court leave open the possibility of a different 

outcome in the arrest context or draw any distinction between 

searches and arrests.

Such a distinction would make little sense conceptually. 

There is but “one uniform knock-and-announce rule.” 

Southerland, 466 F.3d at 1086. The rule governs all 

unauthorized entries into a residence, whether the police have 

a search warrant, an arrest warrant or no warrant at all. See

Miller, 357 U.S. at 306, 309. There is not one knock-andannounce requirement for search warrants and another knockand-announce requirement for arrest warrants. Indeed, far 

from sharply distinguishing between arrests and searches, the 

case law expressly conflates them. See id. (knock-andannounce violation of federal officer “to execute [an] arrest 

without [a] warrant must be tested by criteria identical with 

those” governing “entry to execute a search warrant” and 

“arrest . . . by virtue of a warrant”); Sabbath, 391 U.S. at 588 

(same). See also generally Michigan v. Summers, 452 U.S. 

692, 704 (1981) (downplaying “the distinction between a 

search warrant and an arrest warrant”); Malley v. Briggs, 475 

U.S. 335, 344 n.6 (1986) (same). Indeed, the First Circuit has 

expressly rejected the distinction my colleagues draw here. 

See Pelletier, 469 F.3d at 201 (“Hudson applies with equal 

force in the context of an arrest warrant.”); Jones, 523 F.3d at

36 (“In the wake of Hudson, we have recognized the absence 

of an exclusionary rule for knock-and-announce violations, 

provided the police have a valid arrest warrant . . . and reason 

to believe the target is inside.”).

9

 And other circuits have 

 

involving a warrantless residential arrest. See Hudson, 547 U.S. at 593. It

relied on Miller and Sabbath as well. See id. at 594.

9

 Before Hudson, the Seventh Circuit had likewise concluded that the 

exclusionary rule does not apply to knock-and-announce violations, see

United States v. Langford, 314 F.3d 892, 894–95 (7th Cir. 2002), and had 

extended that holding to the arrest-warrant context, see United States v. 

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12

declined invitations to limit Hudson to its facts. See, e.g., 

Smith, 526 F.3d at 311 (“Nor, contrary to [the defendant’s] 

suggestion, does Hudson apply only when the officers have a 

search warrant. . . . [T]he interests served by the knock-andannounce rule . . . ‘have nothing to do with the seizure of the 

evidence,’ and nothing to do with whether the Fourth 

Amendment required the officers to obtain a warrant. There 

is nothing about the presence of a warrant that increases the 

value of deterring knock-and-announce violations, which the 

Court tells us ‘is not worth a lot,’ or that mitigates the 

‘substantial social costs’ of suppressing the evidence.” 

(citations omitted)); Ankeny, 502 F.3d at 835–36 (“[W]e 

decline to limit Hudson so narrowly to its facts. The Supreme 

Court made it clear that, because the knock-and-announce 

rule protects interests that ‘have nothing to do with the seizure 

of . . . evidence, the exclusionary rule is inapplicable’ to 

knock-and-announce violations.”).

Moreover, we do not interpret Hudson on a blank slate. 

As discussed, in Southerland, we considered whether Hudson 

overruled two Supreme Court cases—Miller and Sabbath—

both of which involved knock-and-announce violations in the 

arrest context. In Miller and Sabbath, the police officers 

arrested the defendants in their respective residences without 

an arrest warrant and without complying with the knock-andannounce requirement. See Sabbath, 391 U.S. at 586–87; 

Miller, 357 U.S. at 303–04. The Supreme Court held in both 

cases that the knock-and-announce violations required 

 Smith, 171 F. App’x 516, 519 (7th Cir. 2006). It has apparently not 

departed from this position post–Hudson. See Evans v. Poskon, 603 F.3d 

362, 364 (7th Cir. 2010) (“The exclusionary rule is used in only a subset 

of all constitutional violations—and excessive force in making an arrest or 

seizure is not a basis for the exclusion of evidence. . . . Cf. Hudson v. 

Michigan, 547 U.S. 586 (2006) (violation of constitutional knock-andannounce rule does not justify exclusion).” (one citation omitted)).

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suppression of the evidence found inside. See Sabbath, 391 

U.S. at 586; Miller, 357 U.S. at 314. In Southerland, 

however, we concluded that Hudson not only governed these 

arrest cases—it overruled them. See Southerland, 466 F.3d at 

1085–86. Southerland therefore held, directly contrary to my 

colleagues’ position here, that Hudson cannot be read as 

governing search warrants only. And Miller and Sabbath are 

no “obstacle” to my position, Maj. Op. 21, because, according 

to the Court, they were overruled by Hudson. See 

Southerland, 466 F.3d at 1085–86. Although a distinction 

could be drawn between a warrantless arrest (Miller and 

Sabbath) and the execution of an arrest warrant (this case), 

the distinction undercuts my colleagues’ position. If, as we 

said in Southerland, the exclusionary rule does not apply to a 

knock-and-announce violation when the police have no arrest 

warrant, then it plainly is inapplicable when the police have

one. See Keiningham v. United States, 287 F.2d 126, 129 

(D.C. Cir. 1960) (“[I]t is inconceivable that less should be 

required of an officer acting without a warrant than is required 

of him under a valid warrant.”). In sum, I believe 

Southerland’s interpretation of Hudson’s scope directly 

refutes the search/arrest distinction my colleagues draw. 

Southerland’s analysis was not dicta and it was unanimously 

endorsed by the full Court via Irons footnote; accordingly, we 

should follow it here. See United States v. Emor, 785 F.3d 

671, 682 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (“[W]e cannot overrule a prior 

panel’s decision, except via an Irons footnote or en banc 

review.”).

B. HUDSON’S REASONING

Even if Hudson did not directly control this case (on its 

own terms and as interpreted in Southerland), its reasoning 

applies with equal force to the arrest-warrant context. The 

Hudson Court deemed the exclusionary rule inapplicable to 

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knock-and-announce violations on two alternative grounds: 

attenuation and cost-benefit balancing. Both grounds are

holdings and so Weaver and my colleagues must successfully 

distinguish them both. See Woods v. Interstate Realty Co., 

337 U.S. 535, 537 (1949) (“[W]here a decision rests on two or 

more grounds, none can be relegated to the category of obiter 

dictum.”). In my view, they successfully distinguish neither.

i. Attenuation

Weaver spends most of his brief explaining why here, 

unlike in Hudson, the knock-and-announce violation was the 

but-for cause of the discovery of the evidence. His argument 

goes as follows:

• Because the ATF officers violated the knockand-announce requirement, Weaver did not have 

an opportunity to surrender himself at the door.

• Because Weaver did not surrender himself at the 

door, the officers forced their way inside.

• Because they were inside Weaver’s apartment, 

the officers were able to see the marijuana in 

plain view.

• Based on their plain-view observations, the

officers obtained a search warrant.

• In executing the search warrant, the officers 

obtained the evidence ultimately used to convict 

Weaver.

Stated in reverse, Weaver believes the search warrant was 

invalid because the plain-view observations were invalid 

because the entry was invalid because the police did not 

knock and announce.

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Even assuming Weaver’s causation theory is correct, he 

is wrong to suggest that the absence of but-for causation is the 

“core” of Hudson. Appellant’s Br. 21. On the contrary, the 

absence of but-for causation comprised all of two sentences of 

the Court’s opinion. See Hudson, 547 U.S. at 592. Indeed, 

the Hudson Court expressly downplayed the significance of 

but-for causation. See id. (“Our cases show that but-for 

causality is only a necessary, not a sufficient, condition for 

suppression.”); id. (“[E]xclusion may not be premised on the 

mere fact that a constitutional violation was a ‘but-for’ cause 

of obtaining evidence.” (emphasis added)); id. (“[E]ven if the 

illegal entry here could be characterized as a but-for cause of 

discovering what was inside, we have never held that 

evidence is fruit of the poisonous tree simply because it would 

not have come to light but for the illegal actions of the 

police.” (emphasis added) (quotation marks omitted)); id.

(“[B]ut-for cause, or causation in the logical sense alone, can 

be too attenuated to justify exclusion.” (quotation marks and 

citation omitted)); id. at 593 (“Attenuation . . . occurs when, 

even given a direct causal connection, the interest protected by 

the constitutional guarantee that has been violated would not 

be served by suppression of the evidence obtained.” 

(emphasis added)).

10 The real core of Hudson’s attenuation 

 10 At times, my colleagues appear to agree with Weaver that Hudson was 

primarily about the absence of but-for causation. See Maj. Op. 3–4, 10. 

They emphasize Justice Kennedy’s concurrence, in which he said “the 

failure to wait at the door cannot properly be described as having caused 

the discovery of evidence.” Hudson, 547 U.S. at 604 (Kennedy, J., 

concurring in part and concurring in judgment). His concurrence 

ultimately does not support their view, however, as he also stated more 

broadly that suppression is unwarranted in the “context of the knock-andannounce requirement” writ large. Id. at 603; see also id. at 604 

(“[E]xtension [of the exclusionary rule to knock-and-announce violations] 

also would have significant practical implications, adding to the list of 

issues requiring resolution at the criminal trial questions such as whether 

police officers entered a home after waiting 10 seconds or 20.” (emphasis 

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analysis is the conclusion that “[t]he interests protected by the 

knock-and-announce requirement . . . do not include the 

shielding of potential evidence from the government’s eyes.” 

Id. The interests that the knock-and-announce requirement

does protect—safety, property and dignity—“have nothing to 

do with the seizure of the evidence.” Id. at 594.11

 

added)). More importantly, he fully joined “Parts I through III” of the

majority opinion in Hudson (the attenuation and cost-benefit balancing 

holdings). See id. at 604. As a lower court, we are bound to follow the 

Supreme Court’s majority opinion, not the concurrence of a single Justice. 

See Hansford v. United States, 303 F.2d 219, 225 (D.C. Cir. 1962) (en 

banc); see also United States v. Duvall, 740 F.3d 604, 610 (D.C. Cir. 

2013) (Kavanaugh, J., concurring in denial of rehearing en banc) 

(“Justices who join the majority may of course express additional thoughts 

in a concurrence, but concurrences do not bind lower courts in cases 

where there is a majority opinion.”). Ultimately, my colleagues agree that 

we must “employ Hudson’s legal framework in considering whether the 

exclusionary remedy is appropriate here,” including its attenuation and 

cost-benefit balancing holdings. Maj. Op. 12.

11 My colleagues suggest that the Hudson Court limited its attenuation 

analysis to the search-warrant context in noting that “the knock-andannounce rule has never protected . . . one’s interest in preventing the 

government from seeing or taking evidence described in a warrant.” 547 

U.S. at 594 (emphasis added). Elsewhere, however, the Court made the 

same point without any “search warrant” limitation. See id. at 593 (“The 

interests protected by the knock-and-announce requirement . . . do not 

include the shielding of potential evidence from the government’s eyes.”);

accord Smith, 526 F.3d at 311 (“Nor, contrary to [defendant’s] suggestion, 

does Hudson apply only when the officers have a search warrant. The 

explanations given by Hudson are not confined to situations in which the 

officers violate the knock-and-announce rule after obtaining a 

warrant . . . .”). As one commentator puts it:

Hudson’s holding [cannot be confined] to “evidence described 

in a warrant” . . . . The purposes of the knock-and-announce 

rule identified by the Court . . . did not include shielding 

undescribed items from the authorities. Surely, this was no 

oversight and is more telling than the limiting language used to 

describe what the rule does not safeguard. The explanation for 

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Weaver contends, and my colleagues agree, that the 

knock-and-announce requirement protects another interest: 

the privacy interest in keeping the police out of one’s home.

See Maj. Op. 15–20. The dissent in Hudson made precisely 

the same argument. See 547 U.S. at 620–21 (Breyer, J., 

dissenting) (“[The majority] does not fully describe the 

constitutional values, purposes, and objectives underlying the 

knock-and-announce requirement. That rule . . . [also] 

protects the occupants’ privacy by assuring them that

government agents will not enter their home without 

complying with those requirements . . . .”). Yet, according to 

the Hudson majority, the only “privacy” interests protected by 

the knock-and-announce requirement are “those elements . . . 

that can be destroyed by a sudden entrance,” i.e., the ability to 

“get out of bed,” “pull on clothes” and “prepare . . . for the 

entry of the police.” Id. at 594 (majority op.); see also id. at 

593 (“[C]ases excluding the fruits of unlawful warrantless 

searches say nothing about the appropriateness of exclusion to 

vindicate the interests protected by the knock-and-announce 

requirement. . . . The interests protected by the knock-andannounce requirement are quite different.” (citing, inter alia, 

Weeks, 232 U.S. 383; Mapp, 367 U.S. 643) (emphasis 

added)). As a lower court, we are not free to contradict the 

Supreme Court’s exhaustive description of the interests 

protected by the knock-and-announce requirement. See

Winslow v. FERC, 587 F.3d 1133, 1135 (D.C. Cir. 2009) 

 

the Court’s reference to “evidence described in a warrant” may 

well be that the evidence in Hudson was of that variety. In any 

event, it is inconceivable that the majority would have ordered 

suppression of the gun if the officers had possessed a warrant 

only for contraband narcotics and had seized the firearm in 

‘plain view’ during a lawful search. And the cost-benefit 

balance struck in Hudson would be no different for evidence 

that had not been specified in a search warrant.

Tomkovicz, supra, at 1840 & n.105 (citation and some footnotes omitted).

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(“Vertical stare decisis—both in letter and in spirit—is a 

critical aspect of our hierarchical Judiciary headed by ‘one 

supreme Court.’ ” (quoting U.S. CONST., art. III, § 1)).

Of course, the arrest-warrant requirements—that a 

warrant be issued by a neutral magistrate based on probable 

cause and that the police have reason to believe the suspect is 

present at the described locale, Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 

573, 602–03 (1980)—protect the privacy interest that Weaver 

identifies. See id. at 589–90. But he concedes that those 

requirements were complied with here. See Appellant’s 

Reply Br. 5 n.2. The ATF officers had a valid arrest warrant 

and therefore had the right to enter Weaver’s apartment to 

effectuate his arrest. See Payton, 445 U.S. at 602–03. The

knock-and-announce violation he identifies, standing alone, 

does not implicate his privacy interest in keeping the police at 

bay from his residence and, thus, suppression would not 

vindicate it. See Hudson, 547 U.S. at 593; see also United 

States v. Ceccolini, 435 U.S. 268, 279 (1978) (for 

exclusionary rule to apply, “[t]he penalties visited upon the 

Government, and in turn upon the public, because its officers 

have violated the law must bear some relation to the purposes 

which the law is to serve”). And arrest-warrant requirements, 

like search-warrant requirements, are sufficient to protect the 

privacy interest my colleagues identify. See Payton, 445 U.S. 

at 602–03 (“[A]n arrest warrant requirement may afford less 

protection than a search warrant requirement, but it will 

suffice to interpose the magistrate’s determination of probable 

cause between the zealous officer and the citizen. If there is 

sufficient evidence of a citizen’s participation in a felony to 

persuade a judicial officer that his arrest is justified, it is 

constitutionally reasonable to require him to open his doors to 

the officers of the law.”); Summers, 452 U.S. at 704 (same). 

In sum, Hudson’s attenuation analysis exempts from the 

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exclusionary rule a knock-and-announce violation committed

during the execution of an arrest warrant.

ii. Balancing Test

Even if Hudson’s attenuation analysis were limited to 

search warrants, the Court’s balancing-test analysis is

assuredly not. The Hudson Court concluded that the social 

costs of applying the exclusionary rule to knock-andannounce violations far exceed the deterrence benefits. See 

547 U.S. at 599. This Court is not free to recalibrate the 

scales. See Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44, 67 

(1996) (“When an opinion issues for the Court, it is not only 

the result but also those portions of the opinion necessary to 

that result by which we are bound.”). Faithfully adhering to 

Hudson’s cost-benefit analysis, I think the exclusionary rule 

plainly does not apply to arrest warrants as well. Indeed, the 

Hudson Court’s balancing analysis in no way relied on the 

existence vel non of a search warrant.

The costs identified in Hudson are exactly the same here. 

In both the search-warrant and arrest-warrant contexts, 

suppression will “releas[e] dangerous criminals into society” 

by excluding “relevant incriminating evidence.” Hudson, 547 

U.S. at 595. It will also drain judicial resources by 

“generat[ing] a constant flood of alleged failures to observe 

the [knock-and-announce] rule,” which claims require 

“extensive litigation” over “difficult,” fact-specific inquiries 

like “what constituted a ‘reasonable wait time’ ” and whether 

an exception to the knock-and-announce requirement applied. 

Id.; see also id. at 589–90 (explaining that knock-andannounce requirement “is not easily applied” and that “it is 

not easy to determine precisely what officers must do”). And, 

in both contexts, the “massive” consequences of suppression 

will encourage police officers to “wait longer than the law 

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requires,” causing “preventable violence against officers” and 

“the destruction of evidence.” Id. at 595. Indeed, Weaver 

never contends otherwise.

My colleagues claim that applying the exclusionary rule

in the arrest-warrant context will not trigger a flood of 

burdensome litigation because “officers rarely violate the 

knock-and-announce rule.” Maj. Op. 29. But they miss the 

point made in Hudson. Whether or not a knock-and-announce 

violation in fact occurs, every criminal defendant will claim it 

did because “[t]he 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.” 

Hudson, 547 U.S. at 595. Thus, in every case in which the 

police find evidence during execution of an arrest warrant, the 

defendant can and will claim that they violated the knockand-announce requirement by, for example, not waiting long 

enough before entering. See id. It is the mere allegation of a 

knock-and-announce violation, regardless whether it 

ultimately has merit, that will require “extensive litigation” 

via suppression hearings. Id. And the burdens on the 

judiciary in adjudicating these claims will be even greater 

than usual:

Unlike the warrant or Miranda requirements, 

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 (or, for 

that matter, how many seconds the police in fact 

waited), or whether there was “reasonable suspicion”

of the sort that would invoke [an] exception[ to the 

knock-and-announce requirement], is difficult for the 

trial court to determine and even more difficult for 

an appellate court to review.

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Id. At bottom, my colleagues argue with, rather than 

distinguish, the High Court’s analysis in Hudson.

My colleagues’ decision will also endanger lawenforcement officers in the same way that Hudson predicted. 

The point made in Hudson is not that the exclusionary rule 

will deter police officers from violating the knock-andannounce requirement but that it will lead to over-deterrence:

Another consequence of the incongruent remedy [of 

applying the exclusionary rule to knock-andannounce violations] would be police officers’ 

refraining from timely entry after knocking and 

announcing. As we have observed, 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 . . . .

Id. (citation omitted). After today, this risk and uncertainty

will confront every police officer who executes an arrest 

warrant in the District of Columbia.

No matter the costs identified in Hudson, my colleagues

ultimately believe they are outweighed by an alleged increase

in deterrence benefits in the arrest-warrant context. See Maj. 

Op. 27–29. Weaver contends, and my colleagues agree, that 

police officers have a greater incentive to violate the knockand-announce requirement when executing arrest warrants

than search warrants: if officers can enter straightaway, they 

can search the suspect’s residence more broadly than they 

otherwise could. But “the value of deterrence depends upon 

the strength of the incentive to commit the forbidden act” and, 

as the Hudson Court reminds us, “deterrence of knock-andannounce violations is not worth a lot.” 547 U.S. at 596. 

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Officers can already bypass the knock-and-announce 

requirement if they have a “reasonable suspicion” that the 

occupant will destroy evidence or violently resist arrest. Id. 

Moreover, once they arrest the occupant, the police can search 

his person and the areas within his reach, see In re Sealed 

Case 96-3167, 153 F.3d 759, 767 (D.C. Cir. 1998), and 

conduct a protective sweep of the home and seize any 

incriminating evidence in plain view, see Maryland v. Buie, 

494 U.S. 325, 334 (1990). These searches, in turn, will often

produce the probable cause necessary to obtain a full-blown 

search warrant.

My colleagues believe the protective sweep authorized by 

the Fourth Amendment is more “limited” than it in fact is. 

Maj. Op. 17. In the course of a residential arrest, officers can 

“look[] in closets and other spaces immediately adjoining the 

place of arrest from which an attack could be immediately 

launched” without any probable cause or reasonable 

suspicion. United States v. Ford, 56 F.3d 265, 269 (D.C. Cir. 

1995) (quoting Buie, 494 U.S. at 334); see also United States 

v. Thomas, 429 F.3d 282, 287 (D.C. Cir. 2005) (Buie 

authorizes suspicionless sweep of “the entirety of a small 

apartment”). The officers can also sweep more broadly 

through the residence if they have a reasonable suspicion that 

dangerous confederates may be present, see Buie, 494 U.S. at 

334—a common suspicion when arresting a suspected drug 

dealer like Weaver, see United States v. Cash, 378 F.3d 745, 

749 (8th Cir. 2004) (“[A]n officer arresting a suspected drug 

trafficker . . . is justified in conducting a Buie sweep out of 

concern that there could be individuals lurking in the other 

rooms who may resort to violence to thwart the arrest.”). 

Most importantly, this latter type of sweep allows officers to 

go inside the residence even if the arrestee surrenders outside 

the door. See United States v. Henry, 48 F.3d 1282, 1284 

(D.C. Cir. 1995) (Buie authorizes protective sweep of 

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residence even though “the police arrested the defendant 

outside rather than inside his dwelling”).

According to Weaver, however, the police cannot

conduct a protective sweep if the suspect surrenders himself 

at the door—something he has no opportunity to do when the 

police violate the knock-and-announce requirement. But see 

Thomas, 429 F.3d at 287; Henry, 48 F.3d at 1284. Yet, the 

notion that the police will forego knocking and announcing

just to broaden their search authority defies common sense. 

Officers no doubt prefer the subject of an arrest warrant—a 

suspected felon, mind you—to voluntarily surrender at the 

door: breaking in and surprising him risks a life-threatening 

struggle inside. See Miller, 357 U.S. at 313 n.12 

(“Compliance [with the knock-and-announce requirement] is 

. . . a safeguard for the police themselves who might be 

mistaken for prowlers and be shot down by a fearful 

householder.”); Sabbath, 391 U.S. at 589 (“[T]he rule of 

announcement . . . safeguard[s] officers, who might be 

mistaken, upon an unannounced intrusion into a home, for 

someone with no right to be there.”). Tellingly, Weaver cites

no evidence that police officers routinely violate the knockand-announce requirement during the execution of arrest 

warrants. Cf. Hudson, 547 U.S. at 599 (“[P]olice 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. . . . 

[M]odern police forces are staffed with professionals.” 

(quotation marks omitted)). Indeed, my colleagues appear to 

agree that knock-and-announce violations during the 

execution of arrest warrants will be “rare[],” with or without 

the exclusionary rule. Maj. Op. 29. What is it, then, that 

needs to be deterred? Cf. Herring, 555 U.S. at 147–48 

(emphasizing absence of “systemic error” because “the 

deterrent effect of suppression must be substantial,” not 

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“marginal”); Hudson, 547 U.S. at 604 (Kennedy, J., 

concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (suppression 

is inappropriate due to absence of “any demonstrated pattern

of knock-and-announce violations” (emphasis added)).12

Even if there were a greater need for deterrence in the 

arrest-warrant context, my colleagues make no attempt to

explain why the “massive deterrence” of the exclusionary rule 

is required, given the availability of potential civil liability 

and internal police discipline. Hudson, 547 U.S. at 596. If a 

federal law-enforcement officer violates the knock-andannounce requirement while executing an arrest warrant, the 

arrestee may file a Bivens action against him. See id. at 597. 

Public-interest lawyers would be willing to handle the suit, id.

at 598; the suit would be worthwhile given the availability of

attorney’s fees, id. at 597; and the officer-defendants would 

not be entitled to qualified immunity, id. at 598. According to 

Hudson, we must “assume[]” that “civil liability is an 

effective deterrent.” Id. Likewise, we must “assume” that 

“internal police discipline” is an adequate deterrent as well. 

Id. at 598–99. Police departments have an incentive to train 

their officers to follow the knock-and-announce rule in order 

to avoid municipal liability, id. at 599, and police officers 

have an incentive to comply for the sake of their careers, id.

In sum, the deterrence benefit of applying the 

exclusionary rule to knock-and-announce violations is not 

 12 Elsewhere, my colleagues claim “[t]he facts of this case” demonstrate 

that officers will strategically violate the knock-and-announce requirement 

to broaden their search authority. Maj. Op. 28. Even assuming a single 

anecdote can ever be evidence of a larger trend, Weaver has not alleged at 

any stage of this litigation that the ATF officers failed to announce their 

purpose (“We have a warrant”) in order to gain entry to his apartment. In 

fact, the officers knocked, announced their authority (“Police”) and waited 

before attempting to enter—actions that make little sense if their purpose 

was to catch Weaver by surprise.

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meaningfully greater in the arrest context than in the search 

context. At most, my colleagues have demonstrated that the 

deterrence benefit of suppression could be somewhat higher in 

the arrest-warrant context. This does not go far enough. The 

1960s are over and we are no longer in the “heydays” of the 

exclusionary rule. Id. at 597. The rule is a “last resort” and 

there is a strong presumption against its application. Id. at 

591; Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2427. The mere “existence” of 

deterrence benefits is “not . . . a sufficient condition” for 

suppression. Hudson, 547 U.S. at 596; see also Calandra, 

414 U.S. at 350 (“[I]t does not follow that the Fourth 

Amendment requires adoption of every proposal that might 

deter police misconduct.”); Leon, 468 U.S. at 910 (same).

Instead, “the deterrence benefits of suppression must 

outweigh its heavy costs,” Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2427 

(emphasis added)—a condition the Supreme Court almost 

never finds satisfied. See supra p.7 (collecting cases). In

Hudson, the Court did not say that the balance was close: it 

said the social costs are “considerable,” the incentive to 

violate the knock-and-announce requirement “minimal” and 

the preexisting deterrences “substantial.” 547 U.S. at 599. 

My colleagues may have added a pebble to one side of the 

scale but they have ignored the boulder on the other side. 

Applying the exclusionary rule to knock-and-announce 

violations in the arrest-warrant context will drain judicial 

resources, let guilty criminals go free and risk the lives of 

police officers. See id. at 595. Compared to these 

“substantial social costs,” id. at 596, the possibility that police 

officers will enter homes without knocking to prevent 

occupants from surrendering at the door—a risk that is neither 

proven nor plausible—is trivial. Even if this worst-case 

scenario is theoretically possible, the “incremental” benefit 

gained from deterring it does not justify the blunderbuss 

remedy of suppression. Harris, 495 U.S. at 20. Instead, the 

cost-benefit analysis performed in Hudson renders the 

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exclusionary rule inapplicable to knock-and-announce 

violations that occur during the execution of search warrants 

and arrest warrants alike.

For the foregoing reasons, Hudson v. Michigan governs 

this case. I would affirm the district court’s denial of 

Weaver’s motion to suppress and, accordingly, I respectfully 

dissent.

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