While living in Chicago, my grandmother resided in a neighborhood largely comprised of immigrants from Eastern Europe. Her next-door neighbor, whom we will call Adam, had fled the Iron Curtain to have a shot at the American dream.
One day, the police were in the neighborhood knocking on doors as part of a community-building exercise, and my grandmother invited them in for a snack. When Adam came over and saw the police in the house, his face went ashen and he was clearly scared to death. Instead of coming in, he went home, locked the doors and for the rest of the day pretended nobody was home.
In a discussion with Adam later that week, he explained his reaction to the police.
Back in his homeland, when the police showed up in a neighborhood, his friends, neighbors and relatives were taken away, never to be seen again. Despite knowing he was now free from that sort of persecution, when he saw the police in my grandmother’s home, Adam was reminded of the terror that rippled through his old neighborhoods when the authorities arrived.
Then Adam remembered he lived in a country where the Constitution forbade the government from entering a citizen’s home without a warrant. Despite that fact, his fear still kept him from answering the door when the police knocked. When the police left without kicking in the door, Adam admitted that it finally sunk in that he was free.
According to Adam, in his homeland when the police came to his door, he had to let them inside, and after seeing the police that day, he had a flash-back to his terror-filled past.
Based on a ruling by the Indiana Supreme Court that forces citizens to submit when law enforcement unlawfully enters their home, however, Adam might have to reconsider his status as a free man.
In a 3-2 ruling in the case of Barnes v. State of Indiana, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that it is illegal for a citizen to stop a law enforcement agent from unlawfully entering their home. Based on the ruling, written by Justice Steven David, citizens have to submit when their home is unlawfully invaded by law enforcement, and if arrested can use the legal system as a way to seek redress.
In response to the ruling, Newton County Sheriff Don Hartman Sr. stated he will now institute house-to-house searches without a warrant as he sees fit. Sheriff Hartman also said he believes his constituents will welcome such searches if they lead to the capture of a wanted criminal.
Clearly, Hartman’s sentiment fits nicely with the motivation of the government authorities so feared by Adam and his family in Eastern Europe. After all, the police in Eastern Europe also thought they were doing the right thing by invading people’s homes.
Not only would Adam’s tormentors agree that law enforcement can conduct searches without a warrant, the Taliban and people of Osama bin Laden’s ilk would applaud such a ruling as well.
If you think such a thought stretches the importance of this ruling too far – think again.
There is nothing more sacred than the right to be secure in one’s own home. It is a place where citizens share intimacy with their family and can seek refuge from the stresses of life. The home is also the image of the American dream and the only material possession deemed valuable enough that legal tradition allows it to be defended with deadly force – until now.
Now, a home is no longer an unassailable refuge from the everyday world and is instead yet another place under government control. Sadly, in modern America, the list of places no longer off-limits to government intrusion gets bigger and bigger while our protected rights get smaller.
We can only hope the people of Indiana find a way to overturn the ruling and restore the fundamental right to be free from having their homes searched without a warrant. Just as important is to make sure the ruling never becomes accepted in other states or at the federal level.
To that end, all Americans should be outraged by the ruling in Indiana.
Instead, most Americans will see coverage of the story on the evening news and flip to another channel without concern for the erosion of a fundamental right. After all, if law enforcement shows up at someone’s door, they probably did something wrong to bring them there.
Such an apathetic reaction is why judges think they can play games with our rights.
There is a cliché that states the sound of liberty dying is applause, but that is no longer the case.
In America today, the sound of liberty dying is the sound of a remote flipping to another channel.
Gerard Valentino is the author of “The Valentino Chronicles – Observations of a Middle Class Conservative,” a co-founder of the Buckeye Firearms Association and a former military intelligence analyst.
