Smith v. Whitehead

If this case were a sports event, the lead paragraph describing it might read as follows:

The criminal element today scored a startling victory over a law enforcement team. Juries now are free to decide whether police officers executing search warrants committed the tort of conversion by taking items of property into official custody, and assess judgments— including punitive damages — if they don’t approve of what the officers did.

The reporting of sports, of course, is but a form of history. The majority’s opinion, however, establishes precedent. That precedent, in my view, is ominous. In…