Court Opinion

ID: 9669816
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:09:37.879244+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:00.422643
License: Public Domain

*648Cavanagh, J.
(dissenting). While the majority offers a plausible rationale for its decision, upon closer scrutiny, acceptance of that rationale requires (1) a willingness to offer a decision that is based, entirely, on dicta from cases which, in fact, did not even approach, much less decide, the question we are presented with today, (2) a willingness to make a substantial departure from the teachings of the United States Supreme Court on Fourth Amendment matters, and (3) a willingness to adopt the prosecutor’s artificially divided view of the factual scenario that typically underlies this type of case, a view the likes of which have never been favored by our nation’s Supreme Court. Finding myself unwilling to make even one, much less three, of these leaps of “logic,” I must respectfully dissent.
i
As an initial matter, I note that I must quarrel with the majority’s view that a violation of MCL 780.656; MSA 28.1259(6) would not lead to the application of the exclusionary rule.1 It is readily perceivable to me that, as found by the very experienced trial judge, the apparent police policy of ten to eleven seconds of waiting before forcing a door, regardless of the hour, was unreasonable at the time of night this warrant *649was executed,2 and thus I see no cause to upset the trial court’s finding. Thus, agreeing with the finding of a violation, I move to address the issue of a sanction for it.
The Legislature has provided, in the course of our knock-and-announce statute, a statutory penalty, MCL 780.657; MSA 28.1259(7), making it a misdemeanor for anyone to exceed his authority or exercise it with unnecessary severity in the course of executing a warrant. It is argued that the existence of this statute precludes us from also applying an exclusionary rule to sanction violation of the knock-and-announce statute.
Notwithstanding this argument, however, this Court has, on numerous occasions, been compelled to apply exclusionary sanctions to statutory violations. Initially, we did so while addressing a denial of a statutory right to immediate bail in People v Dixon, 392 Mich 691, 705-706; 222 NW2d 749 (1974), noting that
[a]ny evidence gained in derogation of this statutory right is to be suppressed; no other remedy is as likely to assure its full enforcement and the protection of the citizenry at large from unwarranted and unnecessary inconvenience, embarrassment and risk attendant incarceration for a minor traffic offense.
From there, we have seen several instances in which statutory violations have resulted in suppression of evidence (i.e., application of an exclusionary rule).3 Indeed, this practice is so apparent as to have *650drawn both discussion and criticism from certain judges and commentators.4 Likewise, our cases have been sufficiently clear to draw academic criticism toward those few decisions below that have purported to hold that an exclusionary rule can never be applied to a statutory violation.5
Moreover, as was correctly noted below, our Court of Appeals has for some time held that the knock- and-announce rule has its basis in the Fourth Amendment and that, where the reasonableness of that mandate is violated, an exclusionary sanction is appropriate. See, e.g., People v Polidori, 190 Mich App 673; 476 NW2d 482 (1991). Given that the decision in Polidori actually preceded the Supreme Court’s recognition of a Fourth Amendment basis for the knock- and-announce principle, and thus came to rest on the appropriate, Fourth Amendment based remedy, I see no reason to turn back the clock to encompass what has previously been a minority view below (and a nonexistent view above).6 Because the majority, how*651ever, decides the case on the basis of the constitutional issue, I proceed onward.
n
The majority offers us what is seemingly cast as a view offered by some of our federal circuits, albeit apparently a minority one.7 In reality, however, what the majority has done is to come very close to itself crafting a conflict among the circuits.8
Seeking to bring itself within the confines of Schueler v Weintrob, 360 Mich 621, 633-634; 105 NW2d 42 (1960), the majority aims to demonstrate the absence of a United States Supreme Court decision,9 and a disagreement among the federal circuits, in order for this Court to adopt the view which it deems most appropriate.10 In doing so, the majority visits on us, by *652way of the margin, the teachings of two cases, pronounces them fit vehicles to attach our state’s jurisprudence to, and moves on. I fear, however, the majority has chosen to burden two most unworthy beasts.
Initially, the majority quotes United States v Jones, 149 F3d 715, 716-717 (CA 7, 1998), for the admitted dicta that “[i]t is hard to understand how the discovery of evidence inside a house could be anything but ‘inevitable’ once the police arrive with a warrant . . . .” What might be hard to understand from that quotation is just how inapplicable that case is to our situation.
As an initial matter, the question before the court in Jones was whether evidence that had been seized by other officers from a defendant as he exited a residence should somehow be suppressed on the basis of a purported subsequent knock-and-announce violation that occurred after the seizure of the evidence. While the court felt the need to briefly discuss the state of knock-and-announce law in the course of its four paragraph opinion, the most important sentence followed the one quoted above. “But because the entry at the front door played no role in the chain of events leading to Jones’s seizure on the lawn, we, too, can leave the inevitable-discovery question for another day.”* 11 Thus, the Seventh Circuit did not, in Jones, apply the inevitable discovery test to a knock- and-announce violation. Rather, it reached the conclusion, fairly obvious from the factual recitation above, *653that there was simply no causal link between the entry and the prior seizure of evidence.12
Next we are offered the recent decision of the Seventh Circuit, United States v Stefonek, 179 F3d 1030; (CA 7, 1999). Again, while this case might make interesting reading, the case itself pertains to challenges to a warrant for being overbroad. The court, after finding that the evidence would have been discovered in any event, since the search conformed exactly to the parameters discussed in the supporting affidavit (which had inadvertently not been referenced by the warrant itself), did at least apply the inevitable discovery exception, though in the context of an over-broad warrant that failed to address the items to be seized with sufficient specificity.
The court also addressed another purpose of the warrant, “that of informing the person whose premises are to be searched of the scope of the search, so that he (or, as in this case, she) can monitor the search while it is being conducted and make sure it stays within bounds.”13 It was here that the court said “[t]he purpose of handing the occupant (when present) the warrant, like that of the ‘knock and announce’ rule, is to head off breaches of the peace *654by dispelling any suspicion that the search is illegitimate.”14 The court found, however, that “[t]his purpose, whatever its precise relation to the Fourth Amendment (Wilson v Arkansas [514 US 927; 115 S Ct 1914; 131 L Ed 2d 976 (1995)]) suggests that there may be some, has no relevance to this case; Stefonek was not present when the search was conducted.”15
Thus, the majority saddles as its standard bearer a case that was decided on another point, and then, in the course of discussing a different point in dicta, mentioned, in passing, the purpose of the “knock and announce” rule only in the course of discussing how it would rule on a situation that factually had not occurred, before actually noting that the facts did not give rise to such a scenario, and therefore that its entire prior discussion “has no relevance.” It is from this foundation of sand that the majority builds its decision regarding the “most appropriate” course to follow here.
m
That said, I turn to the constitutional question. It can no longer be seriously disputed that the knock- and-announce principle has its roots in the Fourth Amendment requirement of reasonableness, and that it forms a part of any inquiry into such reasonableness:
At the time of the framing, the common law of search and seizure recognized a law enforcement officer’s authority to break open the doors of a dwelling, but generally indicated that he first ought to announce his presence and *655authority. In this case, we hold that this common-law “knock and announce” principle forms a part of the reasonableness inquiry under the Fourth Amendment. [Wilson, supra at 514 US 929.]
Wilson found our Supreme Court offering an extensive survey of the origins of knock-and-announce principles, retrospectively journeying through English cases and commentaries that predate the existence of our nation, all the way to the Magna Carta, and returning through the Court’s own past cases. The Court noted that it had dealt with knock-and-announce cases before:
[B]ut we have never squarely held that this principle is an element of the reasonableness inquiry under the Fourth Amendment. We now so hold. Given the longstanding common-law endorsement of the practice of announcement, we have little doubt that the Framers of the Fourth Amendment thought that the method of an officer’s entry into a dwelling was among the factors to be considered in assessing the reasonableness of a search or seizure. Contrary to the decision below, we hold that in some circumstances an officer’s unannounced entry into a home might be unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. [Wilson, supra at 514 US 934.]
Thus, far from being some disposable piece of mere judge-made limitation on police activity, or even a statutory requirement, the basic principle underlying the knock-and-announce requirement is indeed embodied in our constitution. It must follow that decisions which would curtail this requirement must be carefully scrutinized for intrusion upon the basic requirement embodied in the Fourth Amendment.16
*656The majority ventures forth to focus on footnote 4 of Wilson, which the majority would read to indicate that “the Supreme Court reserved the question whether the inevitable-discovery exceptions to the exclusionary rule apply to searches deemed unreasonable only because officers armed with a warrant failed to make a proper announcement at the door.” Ante at 638. Footnote 4 of Wilson itself reads:
Respondent and its amici also ask us to affirm the denial of petitioner’s suppression motion on an alternative ground: that exclusion is not a constitutionally compelled remedy where the unreasonableness of a search stems from the failure of announcement. Analogizing to the “independent source” doctrine applied in Segura v United States, 468 US 796, 805, 813-816; 104 S Ct 3380, 3385, 3389-3391; 82 L Ed 2d 599 (1984), and the “inevitable discovery” rule adopted in Nix v Williams, 467 US 431, 440-448; 104 S Ct 2501, 2507-2511; 81 L Ed 2d 377 (1984), respondent and its amici argue that any evidence seized after an unreasonable, unannounced entry is causally disconnected from the constitutional violation and that exclusion goes beyond the goal of precluding any benefit to the government flowing from the constitutional violation. Because this remedial issue was not addressed by the court below and is not within the narrow question on which we granted certiorari, we decline to address these arguments. [Wilson, supra at 514 US 937, n 4.][17]
*657While to the extent the Court declined to address a question not before it, one could read this note to “reserve the question,” I see no indication that the Court was actually contemplating that a worthy question existed. Moreover, I note that the Court itself suggested the argument relating to the “inevitable discovery” exception of Nix was one made by way of analogy, which would seem to suggest that the Court was not of the view that the Nix rule was directly applicable to the case before it. Rather than an invitation to sidestep (and, in fact, make ineffectual) the Court’s decision, I see in the note only indications of judicial restraint.
Fortifying the suggestion that the majority searches to create a question, where in reality none lies, is the fact that the Court, in two cases involving violations of knock-and-announce principles,18 ruled in favor of the application of the exclusionary rule. Miller v United States, 357 US 301; 78 S Ct 1190; 2 L Ed 2d 1332 (1958), and Sabbath v United States, 391 US 585; 88 S Ct 1755; 20 L Ed 2d 828 (1968). Of course, the majority could argue, both of these cases predated the Nix decision, and, thus, were one to accept the majority’s logic, that subsequent decision undermined the prior rule. I would suggest however, that, where Nix did not concern a knock-and-announce case (and could, the Court appears to believe, be arguable toward such a case only by way of analogy), it would seem more prudent for us to follow the law as it currently has been stated by the Court, and leave it to *658the advocates to argue for changes in recognition of subsequent decisions and “newer” logic.
iv
A
The prosecutor suggests that, where the police are in possession of a valid warrant, and yet are somehow deficient in the manner of announcing their entry as they execute the warrant, it is only their entry, not the search itself, that suffers from a taint of unreasonableness. In essence, the prosecutor, and now the majority, are saying that, where the entry is unlawful or unreasonable, the remainder of the search is nonetheless lawful because it occurs pursuant to a (presumably) lawfully obtained and valid warrant.
To accept this argument, one must accept the prosecutor’s view of the dichotomy of the situation. The essence of this argument is that the search itself is wholly detached from the execution of the warrant. Whatever happens during the entiy, it does not affect the basis for the warrant, and, therefore, the warrant itself remains lawful. Given the presence of this lawful warrant, whatever evidence is in dispute would have been “inevitably” discovered pursuant to the lawful warrant.19
*659It must be noted as an initial matter that this argument, quite simply, knows no bounds. Under a rationale such as this, the evidence will always have been “inevitably” discovered. In the majority’s view, there is simply no relationship between the knock- and-announce violation and the discovery of the evidence. That said, it must follow that there will never be any such relationship, no matter how severe and unwarranted the knock-and-announce violation is.20
We are left, by the majority, with a rule which says that, whatever constitutional intrusion there might be under Wilson, we simply ignore it and concern ourselves not in the least with either sanctioning it or avoiding encouragement that it might continue.21 The true effect of the majority’s decision is simply to do what it cannot do otherwise, ignore Wilson. The result of the majority’s effort, however, stands on no firmer ground than would a simple refusal to accept *660the constitutional nature of the knock-and-announce principle.
Recall again the Court’s words in Wilson, this time with emphasis added to the applicable section:
[B]ut we have never squarely held that this principle is an element of the reasonableness inquiry under the Fourth Amendment. We now so hold. Given the longstanding common-law endorsement of the practice of announcement, we have little doubt that the Framers of the Fourth Amendment thought that the method of an officer’s entry into a dwelling was among the factors to be considered in assessing the reasonableness of a search or seizure. Contrary to the decision below, we hold, that in some circumstances an officer’s unannounced entry into a home might be unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. [Id. at 514 US 934 (emphasis added).]
The Court, quite obviously, considered the entry to be an integral part of the search and seizure. Wholly absent from its discussion is any notion that the entry and the search exist as unrelated entities. Rather, the entry itself is an element of the reasonableness of the search. How that view can be squared with one that would place the two events in separate universes is a question left unanswered by the majority.
B
What is not left unanswered, however, is the question of the use the Supreme Court might have for a rule, such as that offered by the majority, that creates a blanket preclusion to the applicability of the exclusionary rule. In Richards v Wisconsin, 520 US 385; 117 S Ct 1416; 137 L Ed 2d 615 (1997), the Court addressed the appropriateness of a Wisconsin rule that provided a blanket exception to knock-and-*661announce requirements in felony drug investigations. While that rule dealt with a blanket prospective preclusion of certain situations from a knock-and-announce requirement, and our case deals with a blanket preclusion from the application of the exclusionary rule, the actual effects of such rules are identical: the courts would be prevented from ever applying the exclusionary rule when faced with an unreasonable violation of the knock-and-announce principle.22
The Court had little use for such a notion. “We disagree with the court’s conclusion that the Fourth Amendment permits a blanket exception to the knock-and-announce requirement for this entire category of criminal activity.”23 After noting that “[t]he question we must resolve is whether this fact justifies dispensing with case-by-case evaluation of the manner in which a search was executed,”24 the Court answered with a resounding negative. “If a per se exception were allowed for each category of criminal investigation that included a considerable — albeit hypothetical — risk of danger to officers or destruction of evidence, the knock-and-announce element of the Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness requirement would be meaningless.”25
*662That per se exception, totally discarding any case-by-case evaluation is, of course, the system the majority leaves us with today. While the majority may well complain that this dissent “equates” the exclusionary rule with the Fourth Amendment (not the case, in fact), one must consider whether the Fourth Amendment will offer any protection beyond the parchment it rests on under the majority’s decision.
c
As an initial matter, who will determine the reasonableness of the police entry into a residence? Answer: The police, without the slightest bit of review by any court. Will a court ever review a failure to knock and announce for reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment? Answer: Not unless it has the time and resources to seek enjoyment in meaningless academic exercises. Consider what the result would be if the court found the entry reasonable. Of course, no exclusionary rule would apply. Now consider what the result would be if the court found the entry unreasonable (even drastically so) under even the most conservative reading of the Fourth Amendment. Again, no exclusionary rule would apply, because the evidence would have been “inevitably” discovered, regardless of how unreasonable the police were in forcibly entering the residence unannounced. Regardless of what decision a court might make regarding the reasonableness of the entry, the result would not change, nor would the court be called on to take any action. Such a question would be, quite simply, moot.
Would a court ever consider whether the manner of entry amounted to a statutory violation of our knock- and-announce law? Once again, under the majority’s *663view, certainly not. The decision to charge a statutory violation rests solely with the elected prosecutor. The court has no call to enter into such a debate, or any place to offer its view.
Will there, then, be a blanket exclusion of a court even considering whether a forcible and unannounced entry into a residence was a violation of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures? Yes, there will, under the majority’s decision today, no such (nonmoot) question will exist for the court to answer. Thus, we are left with exactly the situation the Court rejected in Richards, only worse. Not only do we now have a blanket exception to the Fourth Amendment for a certain class of investigations, we have a blanket exception to the Fourth Amendment for all cases of forced entries by police that do not comply with knock-and-announce principles. The Court today establishes a rule that such entries will never face judicial review, and, thus, our citizens are subject only to the whims of any governmental agent regarding when and how he may forcibly enter their home.26
*664D
The majority today has embarked on a path chosen most unwisely. We are not the first Court to be offered such a path, but, unfortunately, appear to be the more gullible. Interestingly, the very prosecutor appearing before us offered the Court in Wilson the same opportunity the majority accepts today. Indeed, pages 46-50 of the amicus curiae brief offered in that case are but a concise summary of the arguments presented here. In commenting on the amicus curiae offering in Wilson, Justice Stevens, writing for the unanimous Court in Richards, noted:
Although our decision in Wilson did not address this issue directly, it is instructive that in that case — which involved a felony drug investigation — we remanded to the state court for farther factual development to determine whether the no-knock entry was reasonable under the circumstances of the case. Two amicus briefs in Wilson suggested that we adopt just the sort of per se rule the Wisconsin court propounded here. Brief for Americans for Effective Law Enforcement, Inc., et al. as Amici Curiae 10-11, Brief for Wayne County, Michigan, as Amicus Curiae 39-46, in Wilson v Arkansas, O.T. 1994, No 5707. Although the respondent did not argue for a categorical rule, the petitioner, in her reply brief, did address the arguments put forward by the amicus briefs, Reply Brief for Petitioner in Wilson v Arkansas, O.T. 1994, No. 5707, p 11, and amici supporting the petitioner also presented arguments against a *665categorical rule. Brief for American Civil Liberties Union et al. as Amici Curiae in Wilson v Arkansas, O.T. 1994, No. 5707, p 29, n 44. Thus, while the prospect of a categorical rule was one to which we were alerted in Wilson, we did not choose to adopt such a rule at that time. [Richards, supra at 520 US 392, n 3.]
E
There are many things not included in my writing today. Absent is the eloquent recitation of the history and durability of the knock-and-announce principle, and its importance to the sanctity of our citizens’ homes. Those things have been well said elsewhere,27 and repetition here will add nothing to a decision poised to disregard what has been known to courts, commentators, and our framers for hundreds of years. Likewise, the purposes beyond that sanctity with which we view one’s residence have also been aptly noted elsewhere,28 just as they have been ignored here. Rather, I will conclude with a notion from the unanimous Court in Richards, yet another that I fear the majority has passed in the night, intent as it is in reaching its destination:
It is always somewhat dangerous to ground exceptions to constitutional protections in the social norms of a given historical moment. The purpose of the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of reasonableness “is to preserve that degree of respect for the privacy of persons and the inviolability of their property that existed when the provision was adopted — even if a later, less virtuous age should become accustomed to considering all sorts of intrusion ‘reasonable.’ ” Richards, 520 US 392, n 4, quoting Minnesota v Dick*666erson, 508 US 366, 380; 113 S Ct 2130; 124 L Ed 2d 334 (1993) (Scalia, J., concurring).
“[W]e hold that this common-law ‘knock and announce’ principle forms a part of the reasonableness inquiry under the Fourth Amendment,”29 except, says the majority, in Michigan. Here we need not concern ourselves with such things, the results being “inevitable” in any event. Today, after but a slight polishing, the majority has swallowed whole the tainted apple the Supreme Court declined in Wilson and again turned away in Richards. The bitterness of its taste may once again force that Court to survey the garden and make for us a better choice. I dissent from the one made today.
Kelly, J., concurred with Cavanagh, J.

 I note that, contrary to the majority’s effort today, I continue to hold to our past practice (which I fear is rapidly becoming arcane) of insisting that statutory questions that might resolve the case be addressed before constitutional matters are reached. See Federated Publications, Inc v Michigan State Univ Bd of Trustees, 460 Mich 75; 594 NW2d 491 (1999) (Cavanagh, J., concurring).

 The prosecutor has conceded the absence of exigent circumstances that might excuse a violation of the normal knock-and-announce requirement.

 See, e.g., People v Sherbine, 421 Mich 502, 512; 364 NW2d 658 (1984), dealing with the requirements for an affidavit in support of a search war*650rant. “The statutory violation here is clear. The statute requires proof that the informant who supplied the information be credible. The affidavit here failed to satisfy this requirement. The evidence must therefore be suppressed.” We also noted that although “the statute is constitutionally based, evidence may be excluded even if the constitutional standards are satisfied if there is noncompliance with the statute.” Id. at 511-512, n 18, citing People v Chartrand, 73 Mich App 645, 652; 252 NW2d 569 (1977).

 See People v Powell, 201 Mich App 516, 527-530; 506 NW2d 894 (1993).

 See Lehman, A clarification of Michigan law concerning the suppression of evidence seized in violation of a state statute: Exposing the court of appeals blatant disregard for controlling supreme court precedent, Det C L Mich St U L R 225 (1998).

 I would note, as well, that I fear that, realistically, the penalty provision of our knock-and-announee statute providing that violation of the statute is a misdemeanor is likely to be a most ineffectual and underutilized tool for insuring adherence to the statute. Indeed, the corporal testifying to the police practice here showed not the slightest bit of concern that his department has apparently adopted a de facto policy of violating *651the statute that would, theoretically, subject him and his fellow officers, to numerous misdemeanor citations. I imagine his lack of concern was well grounded in an assurance that prosecutors will rarely contemplate issuing charges against police officers that might undermine the viability of underlying cases. At oral argument, the Wayne County Prosecutor indicated he was not aware of any occasion when that office ever prosecuted a misdemeanor charge under the statute.

 Witness the majority’s effort to struggle with the countervailing views of the greater number of the federal circuits in note 6 of their offering.

 While this entire area is not without debate, the majority has failed to offer us even a single case that actually holds in favor of the sort of rule it suggests, confining itself to two cases that have offered rather controversial assessments solely within the confines of (quite far removed) dicta.

 See parts ni and iv for a discussion of the Supreme Court case law regarding the issues here.

 It would seem to me that such a choice would, in the context of a federal constitutional question, involve an effort to analyze and apply our Supreme Court’s teachings in the area at issue. Thus, I am rather puzzled by the majority’s parsing of the various cases regarding the inevitable discovery exception to the exclusion of any careful examination of the Court’s Fourth Amendment knock-and-announce cases, which would seem to be necessary to determine whether the exception (when both the existence of it and the general rationale behind it are not at issue) is at all *652consistent with what the Court has told us regarding the place of the knock-and-announce principle in our constitutional jurisprudence.

 Id. at 149 F3d 717.

 The actual statement quoted by the majority addressed the argument, made here by the prosecutor and discussed below in the margin that the defendant could hardly be heard to claim he would have used the time taken by the announcement to destroy the evidence. The obvious correctness of that statement, however, seems to have a tendency to lead both some courts and advocates (both the majority and the appellate prosecutor here apparently falling within that group) to ignore the fact that the exigent circumstances exception exists precisely to preclude the favoring of this sort of wrongdoing, and to fail to grasp the application of the prosecutor’s concession of an absence of exigent circumstances to remove this entire case from any inquiry of this sort.

 Id. at 1034.

 Id. at 1035.

 Id.

 This is not to say, of course, that every entry must be preceded by an announcement. The Fourth Amendment’s flexible require*656ment of reasonableness should not be read to mandate a rigid rule of announcement that ignores countervailing law enforcement interests. As even petitioner concedes, the common-law principle of announcement was never stated as an inflexible rule requiring announcement under all circumstances. [Wilson, supra at 514 US 934 (citations omitted).]

 As will be discussed further below, among the amici curiae referred to by the Court in Wilson was the very same appellate prosecutor who now appears before us in this action.

 As evidenced in a federal statute, 18 USC 3109, a statute comparable to our own knock-and-announce statute.

 While the appellant prosecutor takes great effort to note that the only time this will not be the case is where someone utilizes the time between the announcement and entry to destroy the evidence, I find this argument misplaced. Our exigent circumstances exception operates to excuse compliance with knock-and-announce principles where such a danger of destruction is shown to exist, and, thus, in cases such as the one here, where the absence of such circumstances is conceded; while the concern *659is real enough in general, it is wholly inapplicable and misapplied when offered as an argument here.

 Consider that we now see doors being forced open in the course of some search warrant executions by battering rams, and, on occasion, even by armored vehicles. One could easily envision such an extreme form of entry, with an utter absence of announcement, and apply both to a completely innocuous and nonviolent situation where a warrant is to be executed. In the majority’s view, such a ridiculous amount of overzealousness would simply have no relationship to the lawfulness of the search, and, thus, the court would have no call to intervene when faced with an obvious violation of the Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness requirement, as analyzed by Wilson. The shorthand for the majority’s rule today is, quite simply, “whatever [constitutional] harm, no foul.”

 It is worth recalling as well that, even in the face of the various decisions of our Court of Appeals applying the exclusionary rule, the Dear-born police apparently needed no encouragement to adopt a routine of violating both our knock-and-announce statute and undertaking actions that would, at least at some times and in some circumstances, appear to just as routinely violate the Fourth Amendment.

 This would be so in Wisconsin by application of a court rule exempting felony drug investigations from knock-and-announce requirements, while in Michigan it would (and will) be true because the majority finds that the exclusionary rule must simply never apply, because the evidence would always have been “inevitably” discovered, regardless of the unreasonableness of the entry.

 Richards, supra at 520 US 388.

 Id. at 391-392.

 Id. at 394.

 But wait, the majority will cry, we are only discussing situations in which the police have a valid warrant. True enough. And yet, does possession of a valid warrant entitle the police to forcibly crash through the door to one’s residence at three in the morning, where there is not the slightest indication that, had he been asked, the homeowner would have done anything but comply in the face of lawful authority? Yes, as of today, it does. The police are left entirely on their own with respect to when and how they choose to execute a search warrant. No longer, says the majority, are there any constitutional questions regarding such an activity. There are, in the majority, those who have forcefully argued that we should be able to presume that our citizens, in the face of lawful authority, will comply with the demands made unto them. Rogers v Detroit, 457 Mich 125, 166-167; 579 NW2d 840 (1998) (Taylor, J., dissenting). And yet they do not today give our citizens the benefit of the same presumption within the sanctity of their own homes.
*664Likewise, the majority’s reference to a potential action under 42 USC 1983 is both inapplicable and unpersuasive. Whatever the potential viability of such an action as a form of redress for a knock-and-announce violation, and it is telling that the majority fails to cite a single case where such an action succeeded, civil rights actions are just that, means of civil redress. They offer nothing to a Fourth Amendment analysis of this question, nor do they return to the Fourth Amendment analysis of this state, the Wilson element of reasonableness of the entry that the majority has stripped away.

 See Wilson, supra at 514 US 931-936.

 See Richards, supra at 520 US 393, n 5.

 Wilson, supra at 514 US 929.