- Joined
- Sep 14, 2019
I'm not saying the warrant wasn't justified. I'm not even saying the police acted improperly.Except for the fact there are tweekers in the house with the kids and they had an AR.
Just because nick refused to give them the door code doesn't mean they have to wait. They had a warrant. They where going in with or with out baldo's approval.
What I am saying is that the scant details that we have suggest Nick may have grounds for a 4th Amendment violation claim and/or excessive force claim. Possibly even emotional distress on behalf of his kids.
The demonstrable belief that there's a present danger grants law enforcement vastly increased powers to act in the moment but even the appearance of invoking those powers at a time when they shouldn't be invoked can tank a prosecution.
We know he was doing drugs. The state knows he was doing drugs. The fucking pastor knows he was doing drugs. All of that while openly owning fire arms.
However. Legally, Nick's innocent until proven guilty. There's clearly no life-threatening urgency that requires immediate because they waited a full week to execute the search warrant. There's no mention of drug paraphenalia in plain sight, no sounds of distress coming from within the residence. There's nothing in the report that suggests a need for force when the home owner hadn't been shown the search warrant and appears to have been actively complying. At this point (the ~10 minute window before Nick arrived) the pre-existing knowledge of legally owned guns in the house cannot be used as the sole basis for escalating because there's no known danger.
So, even though we all know Nick fucked around and found out, how the police executed the warrant may possibly have a significant impact on the state's prosecution of Nick. The minor child not allowing police in can very easily be hand-waved away as them (the kid) being responsible in the face of stranger danger. The police ramming their way into a property they haven't yet properly served with a warrant? Not so much.
Honestly, rushing entry when they know there are guns could have put the officers into unnecessary danger because Minnesota has a codified Castle Doctrine statuate. It's a different state jurisdiction (with a very different political will behind it), but Breonna Taylor's boyfriend famously settled a shootout with the police that he started when (if you believe the official narrative) the police botched the execution of a similar drug-related search warrant. 2 million bucks to a drug dealer, for a shootout he initiated, on grounds of self-defense, all because the because the cops hadn't yet established contact to serve the warrant before they tried to enter. It's the type of precedent that Nick can very easily translate to his own situation as a legal argument.