Via Techdirt:
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has just made it much easier for Texas cops to skirt the Fourth Amendment. Why secure a warrant when you can just take a look around beforehand to see whether a warrant's worth pursuing? (h/t to Techdirt reader K Marshall)
The case - Wehrenberg v. State - involved a drug bust in Parker County in which officers received a tip from a confidential informant that the defendant and others were "fixing to" cook meth later that evening. Three or four hours later, after midnight, officers illegally entered Mr. Wehrenberg's residence "without a search warrant and...