Mr. Balko’s point about the disparate treatment by prosecutors of those who accidentally shoot police versus police who accidentally shoot civilians may be well taken — he’s done the research, and I haven’t. I don’t know what the metrics are, what the size of his samples are, etc., but as a former prosecutor, I would concede that instinctively and institutionally, I’d be more apt to be sympathetic to the cop and suspicious of the civilian. That’s not about right-or-wrong; it’s just an honest observation about reality, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find that reflected in the statistics.

But Mr. Balko’s suggestion that it was a failure on the part of the court to “provide a sanction for police” who fail to follow the rules is off the mark. That is not the court’s job; it’s the job of legislatures, which can create civil and criminal remedies — and which can conduct extensive hearings toward that end rather than deal with issues only as they come up in litigation, as those issues are teed up by the litigants.

If the legislature of Michigan enacted, and the governor signed, an exclusionary rule for no-knock violations, they would be perfectly within their rights to do so. Even if Justice Scalia and the rest of the majority personally thought that was an excessive remedy, they would surely leave it undisturbed. And then voters would have someone to hold accountable when it inevitably turned out that dangerous criminals were escaping conviction due to the excessive rule. And the voters, through their representatives, could then change the law to something more measured and sensible. That’s how things are supposed to work.

Put another way: liberals and civil libertarians can easily get the exclusionary rule they want for no-knock violations; all they need to do is persuade people that it’s the right thing to do. It’s not, so they won’t. (In fact, it’s so obviously too criminal-friendly that most legislators wouldn’t dream of proposing it.) Let’s not pretend that the complaints today are are anything more than people grousing that they couldn’t get the Court to impose by judicial fiat something they don’t believe they can achieve through the democratic process.