The American Issue

HOUSE BILL NO. 363 ATTACKING SEARCH AND SEIZURE; WOULD BE BIG BOON TO BOOTLEGGERS

As indicative of the lengths to which the wets will go in undermining all law enforcement in order to gain their ends, House Bill No. 363, now pending in the Legislature, is a fair example. This bill would punish a sheriff or police officer who enters and searches any place without a search warrant by a sentence of as high as nine months in jail. It would make impossible the efficient detection and apprehension of law violators of every class. It would change the common law and repeal statutes of this state in effect from the beginning by preventing, for example, entry by an officer into a building where he sees a crime being committed, to arrest the offender and search for the implements, fruits or evidence of crime, without a search warrant. Under the present law, and such has been the common law always, a peace officer may enter a building in which he sees an offense committed and may search for the criminal and evidence of the offense in his immediate custody or surroundings. He could not do so if this measure should be enacted until he had gone to a magistrate and sworn out a search warrant.

Obviously in most cases by the time the officer returned there wouldn't be any offender to arrest nor any evidence to seize. Moreover, premises which may include fields and open spaces, which are not protected by the constitutional provision which inhibits unreasonable search and seizure, could not be searched without a warrant if this measure should become a law.

The Illinois Search and Seizure statutes applicable in liquor cases have very carefully safe-guarded all constitutional rights of citizens. The Supreme Court of Illinois has declared these provisions in entire accord with the Bill of Rights and has held them constitutional in every particular in several recent cases.

We submit that this measure is not designed to protect citizens in their constitutional rights. It is not furthered in the interests of the law-abiding citizens of the state. On the other hand, there isn't any doubt but what every bootlegger is for it. And in order to save this class from the law, the wet advocates are willing that all law enforcement, even against murder and other felonies, shall be sacrificed.