As the lower house of the Indiana State Legislature approved Senate Bill 1 on March 1, Representative Linda Lawson lamented that if it were passed the measure would signal that it’s "open season on law enforcement."
"You have men and women in your community who are willing to die for you, willing to die for your family," insisted Lawson, who – as a former police officer herself – spoke on behalf of 15,000 members of the police union. The only suitable way to display proper gratitude to the heroic paladins of public order, according to Lawson, is to protect their purported authority to invade your home and kill you with impunity – a privilege that would be undermined by SB 1.
The text of SB 1 states that its legislative purpose "is to protect citizens from unlawful entry into their homes by law enforcement officers or persons pretending to be law enforcement officers. Both citizens and law enforcement officers benefit from clear guidance about the parameters of lawful home entry, which will reduce the potential for violence and respect the privacy and property of citizens."
To that end, the bill recognizes that an individual "may use force … to prevent or terminate a law enforcement officer’s unlawful entry."
Although Lawson’s hunting metaphor was probably used because it was a convenient cliché, it contains a deeper significance that should not be ignored: Like the rest of the State’s exalted brotherhood of coercion, she assumes that the privacy of the individual’s home falls within the police officer’s natural habitat.
SB1 is not an innovation; it simply restores an explicit understanding of Indiana’s "castle doctrine," which was subverted last year in the Indiana State Supreme Court’s Barnes v. State ruling. As a wire service report observed at the time, that ruling effectively nullified the core protections contained in the Fourth Amendment and the equivalent provision in the Indiana constitution, as well as protections and immunities recognized by "common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215." The 3–2 decision last May 12 held that Indiana residents have no right to obstruct unlawful police incursions into their homes.
As summarized by a legislative report last November, the incident that gave rise to the Barnes ruling occurred four years earlier, when police were summoned to the home of Richard Barnes and his wife by a 911 call reporting a domestic disturbance.
Barnes was in the parking lot arguing with his girlfriend when the police arrived. She had already thrown a duffel bag of his belongings outside the apartment, and told him to "take the rest of his stuff." As Barnes re-entered the apartment to do so, the police attempted to follow him inside. Barnes quite properly told the police to stay out, and enforced that lawful order by shoving a police officer who disobeyed.
Barnes was charged with Battery on a Police Officer, Resisting Law Enforcement, Disorderly Conduct, and Interfering with the Reporting of a Crime. The judge rejected a proposed jury instruction that Barnes had the right to resist unlawful police entry, and he was convicted on the second and third charges. The Court of Appeals ruled that the trial court committed a reversible error by rejecting that jury instruction. The state, frantic appealed to the Supreme Court, which upheld Barnes’s conviction.
"We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence," wrote Justice Steven David. "We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest."
Although the "risks" to a police officer in such an encounter are vanishingly small, we shouldn’t forget that at all times, and in all places, "officer safety" is the controlling priority. "It's not surprising that [the court] would say there's no right to beat the hell out of the officer," commented Professor Ivan Bodensteiner of Valparaiso University School of Law.
When a cop invades a home without legal authority, he is acting as a criminal, rather than a peace officer. SB 1 recognizes that principle by focusing on the act of illegal entry, rather than the identity of the aggressor.
The measure allows for forcible entry only when the officer has a valid warrant or legitimate probable cause; is in pursuit of a criminal suspect; or is acting with the consent or on the invitation of an adult resident. In other words: It would restore the status quo ante Barnes, which – in nullifying the Fourth Amendment – actually issued a hunting license to the police.
Last June, 71 members of the state legislature filed a petition with the Supreme Court protesting the Barnes decision and demanding that it be revisited. In September, the Court issued a ruling reiterating the claim that "the Castle Doctrine is not a defense to the crime of battery or other violent acts on a police officer," and recognizing that the state legislature had the authority to create statutory defenses against that supposed crime.
"Our laws, our statutes, our Constitution, and the value of our country [were built] on one premise, and that was to defend our citizens against the government –not defend our government against our citizens," noted State Senator Mike Young of Indianapolis, author of SB 1. "The [Barnes] ruling was a ruling that defended the government against the citizens."
Rep. Jud McMillin of Dearborn, who wrote the house version of the bill, added: "The distinction here is not between police officers and citizens. The distinction to be made here is between what is lawful and what is unlawful. In a society where we value our freedoms, we cannot have a bright-line test that tells people when they cannot exercise their freedoms."*
Such talk is intolerable to those employed by Indiana’s affiliate of the Homeland Security State, who insist that public policy must preserve the privileges of the powerful, rather that the rights of the individual.
"We believe people have the right to be secure in their homes," testified Hendricks County Sheriff Dave Galloway, uttering a sentence pregnant with the invalidating conjunction "but" – which, of course, followed immediately. "But the people who hear about this law are going to think it’s okay to kill a law enforcement officer. What you and I think is `reasonable’ isn’t the same as somebody high on meth. They’re going to shoot first, and ask questions later."
A far greater and more common danger is that posed by police officers who are high on the most lethal of all narcotics – power. The official position of the Indiana Fraternal Order of Police is that any use of coercive force by the State’s costumed enforcers is self-validating.
"Our position is there is never an opportunity to resist law enforcement," insisted Bill Owensby, president of the Indianapolis FOP. A great deal is revealed in Owensby’s choice of adverb: "Never" would apply to situations in which police officers commit unambiguous crimes against person and property.
Among the most prominent critics of SB 1 are rent-seeking activists and social engineers attached to the state’s domestic violence industry, who insist that the measure would impede the ability of police to respond to situations involving spousal abuse. Under the "no-resistance" doctrine, however, a police officer can commit domestic violence and then charge the victim with a crime if she resists. As was illustrated by the case of Jerry Cunningham, the former assistant chief of the Danville, Indiana Police Department, police and prosecutors are eager to extenuate crimes of domestic violence when perpetrated by a member of their hyper-violent sodality.
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