OCTOBER TERM, 1996
Syllabus
certiorari to the supreme court of wisconsin
No. 96-5955. Argued March 24, 1997—Decided April 28, 1997
In Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U. S. 927, this Court held that the Fourth
Amendment incorporates the common-law requirement that police knock on a dwelling's door and announce their identity and purpose before attempting forcible entry, recognized that the flexible reasonableness requirement should not be read to mandate a rigid announcement rule that ignores countervailing law enforcement interests, id., at 934, and left it to the lower courts to determine the circumstances under which an unannounced entry is reasonable. Id., at 936. Officers in Madison, Wisconsin, obtained a warrant to search petitioner Richards' motel room for drugs and related paraphernalia, but the Magistrate refused to give advance authorization for a "no-knock" entry. The officer who knocked on Richards' door was dressed, and identified himself, as a maintenance man. Upon opening the door, Richards also saw a uniformed officer and quickly closed the door. The officers kicked down the door, caught Richards trying to escape, and found cash and cocaine in the bathroom. In denying Richards' motion to suppress the evidence on the ground that the officers did not knock and announce their presence before forcing entry, the trial court found that they could gather from Richards' strange behavior that he might try to destroy evidence or escape and that the drugs' disposable nature further justified their decision not to knock and announce. The State Supreme Court affirmed, concluding that Wilson did not preclude the court's pre-Wilson per se rule that police officers are never required to knock and announce when executing a search warrant in a felony drug investigation because of the special circumstances of today's drug culture.
Held: 1. The Fourth Amendment does not permit a blanket exception to the knock-and-announce requirement for felony drug investigations. While the requirement can give way under circumstances presenting a threat of physical violence or where officers believe that evidence would be destroyed if advance notice were given, 514 U. S., at 936, the fact that felony drug investigations may frequently present such circumstances cannot remove from the neutral scrutiny of a reviewing court the reasonableness of the police decision not to knock and announce in a particular case. Creating exceptions to the requirement based on the culture surrounding a general category of criminal behavior presents at
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