ATLANTA – The evidence police typically obtain through no-knock search warrants aren’t worth the inherent risks of knocking unannounced on a citizen’s door in the middle of the night, a criminal defense lawyer said Tuesday.
“No-knock warrants are almost exclusively used for drug cases. They’re never used for kidnapping, burglary, murder or theft,” Catherine Bernard, a partner with Atlanta’s Bernard & Johnson LLC, told members of a state Senate study committee. “[But] no-knock warrants are incredibly dangerous for everyone involved on both sides of the transaction.”
The Senate Study Committee on Law Enforcement Reform was formed this year as a follow-up to a hate crimes bill the General Assembly passed at the end of this year’s legislative session in June. Both the Senate panel and the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee held hearings during the summer and fall to consider potential reforms to policing and the state’s criminal justice system.
Besides no-knock warrants, the committees also have been taking testimony on Georgia’s citizens arrest law and the legal doctrine of “qualified immunity” that protects police officers from civil suits under certain circumstances.
While Georgia law does not give police the authority to execute no-knock search warrants, judges can and do sign orders allowing them if law enforcement authorities can show knocking on a criminal suspect’s door might be dangerous or might inhibit an investigation by, for example, giving suspects time to flush drugs down a toilet.
Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, said no-knock warrants are rare in Georgia.
“I’ve been a prosecutor for 32 years. I have not seen many of them,” he said.
Bernard said no-knock warrants are routine, but most don’t get attention because they don’t yield the tragic results that make them high-profile cases.
Exceptions in Georgia include the death of David Hooks, a 59-year-old grandfather in East Dublin shot in 2015 during a drug raid based on false information from an informer, and Kathryn Johnston, an elderly Atlanta woman shot to death in 2006 during a raid by undercover police officers at what turned out to be the wrong address.
“Innocent lives are destroyed by no-knock search warrants,” Bernard said.
Bernard said justifying no-knock warrants as necessary to keep suspects from getting rid of illegal drugs doesn’t hold up because anyone possessing a large quantity of drugs wouldn’t be able to dump them so quickly.
“If it’s something that can be flushed down the toilet, it’s not worth risking somebody’s life over,” she said.
While Bernard urged senators not to tamper with the current state law that prohibits no-knock warrants, others who testified called for the repeal of Georgia’s citizens arrest law, which has come under scrutiny because of the Ahmaud Arbery case.
Three white men were arrested last spring in the February shooting death of Arbery, an unarmed Black man from Brunswick who was jogging in the men’s neighborhood. At first, the local prosecutor declined to bring charges, citing the citizens arrest law.
“The racist history of our law is on display,” said Mazie Lynn Causey, general counsel for the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “It allows private individuals to take on the role of enforcer, prosecutor and judge.”
Other witnesses at Tuesday’s hearing complained that allowing police officers who commit misconduct in carrying out their duties qualified immunity from civil suits makes the burden of proof to win such cases virtually impossible.
Chris Stewart, an Atlanta personal injury and civil rights attorney, said he’s working on legislative proposals to either eliminate or modify Georgia’s qualified immunity law.
But Skandalakis said qualified immunity serves a useful purpose in law enforcement in that it encourages police officers to do their jobs without being afraid of being sued.
“Qualified immunity is not absolute immunity,” he added. “A police officer who does not follow policies and procedures or does not act in a reasonable manner can lose qualified immunity.”
Both the House and Senate committees are expected to make recommendations for the full General Assembly to consider when lawmakers return next month for the 2021 session.