43
Ohio's top court to hear Boardman drug bust case
BOARDMAN
The Ohio Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case in which Boardman police failed to say “search warrant” before they broke down an apartment door to make a drug bust.
Their failure to say those words Nov. 2, 2012, led Judge John M. Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court to exclude the heroin and other items police seized from evidence in the case.
After the occupants of an Applecrest Court apartment failed to comply with the police order to open the door, officers broke down the door and arrested Sherri A. Bembry and Harsimran Singh.
A county grand jury indicted Bembry, 31, on a charge of permitting drug abuse and Singh, 28, on charges of heroin possession and trafficking and receiving stolen property.
Even though the prosecution conceded police violated the state’s “knock-and-announce” law, a three-judge panel of the 7th District Court of Appeals ruled unanimously in January that Judge Durkin should not have excluded the items police seized from evidence because police had a valid search warrant for the apartment they entered.
Ralph M. Rivera, an assistant county prosecutor, told the appellate court the purposes of the “knock-and-announce” law are to protect police by discouraging occupants from violently defending their homes and to give occupants a chance to properly clothe themselves before police enter their homes.
Rivera, however told the appellate court exclusion of evidence from a criminal case shouldn’t be the remedy for violating the “knock-and-announce” law and, instead, suggested a civil remedy.
The only remedy that will motivate police to follow that law is exclusion of the evidence they seize if they violate it, argued Atty. Louis M. DeFabio, who represents Bembry and Singh and who took the case to the state’s top court.