Unacceptable. Hopefully, victims (yes..they are victims even if they are under investigation for criminal activity) of this injustice will soon come forward and together force an appeal to overturn this state ruling in SCOTUS.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court just dealt a death blow to the Fourth Amendment, which is supposed to protect a citizen against unreasonable search and seizure. What’s more, the decision was made by a single, newly-appointed judge who was not even present when arguments were made in court.
In a 4-3 decision, the state’s highest court ruled that evidence seized in a person’s private home during a warrantless search can be used against the person under an expanded view of the “community caretaker” clause.
Police went to Charles Matalonis’ house after his brother was found bloodied at a nearby residence. Matalonis, admitting he fought with his brother, let the cops in, where they saw blood in the apartment and some cannabis. They wanted to look inside a locked room, and when Matalonis refused to unlock it, the cops broke in. There they found a cannabis growing setup, whereupon Matalonis was arrested and charged with manufacture of cannabis.
The Court of Appeals had previously ruled this to be an unreasonable search. However, in the majority opinion of the Supreme Court, “Justice Annette Ziegler found that police were not investigating a crime but exercising their “community caretaker” function by checking to make sure no other injured people were in the house.”
This was challenged by three other Justices, who argued that “by the time officers entered the locked room, some 20 minutes or more after they had been in the house, there was little reason to suspect someone else was in the bedroom, but plenty of reason to suspect it might house marijuana.”
If the case had remained deadlocked at 3-3, then
the Court of Appeals ruling that the evidence should be suppressed would
have stood. But in a move that is without precedent in the U.S. or the
Wisconsin Supreme Courts, newly-appointed Justice Rebecca Bradley cast
the deciding vote without participating in oral arguments.