Posted on 07/18/2008 12:03:59 PM PDT by reaganaut1
...
The United States is the only country to take the position that some police misconduct must automatically result in the suppression of physical evidence. The rule applies whether the misconduct is slight or serious, and without regard to the gravity of the crime or the power of the evidence.
“Foreign countries have flatly rejected our approach,” said Craig M. Bradley, an expert in comparative criminal law at Indiana University. “In every other country, it’s up to the trial judge to decide whether police misconduct has risen to the level of requiring the exclusion of evidence.”
But there are signs that some justices on the United States Supreme Court may be ready to reconsider the American version of the exclusionary rule. Writing for the majority two years ago, Justice Antonin Scalia said that at least some unconstitutional conduct ought not require “resort to the massive remedy of suppressing evidence of guilt.”
The court will soon have an opportunity to clarify matters. The justices will hear arguments on Oct. 7 about whether methamphetamines and a gun belonging to Bennie Dean Herring, of Brundidge, Ala., should be suppressed because the officers who conducted the search mistakenly believed he was subject to an outstanding arrest warrant as a result of the careless record-keeping of another police department.
Elsewhere in the world, courts have rejected what the Ontario appeals court in Mr. Harrison’s case called “the automatic exclusionary rule familiar to American Bill of Rights jurisprudence.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Well... than go ahead and start arresting everyone who says something bad about the government on the charge that it’s “Hate Speech”.
than = then
“The United States is the only country to take the position that some police misconduct must automatically result in the suppression of physical evidence.”
That’s because America tends to believe in these things called “rights” for all citizens regardless of what they may have done.
Ping
A mechanism to keep LEO’s sharp, effective and on the straight and narrow. Sure, let’s get rid of that, right?
If there is no writ you must aquit.
I'll believe in that when I hear that Lon Horiuchi is in prison for murder.
Is Scalia going to recite “foreign law?”
Don’t blame LH, blame the agency he worked for and his superiors for the fact they should not have even been there.
If this happens there will be zero incentive for law enforcement to care about any of our constitutional rights. Why bother with a search warrant at all?
How sad that our Justices are so ignorant.
I hope not. Strange words coming from him.
Scalia has a point. Why do people doing bad things get a pass because of a LEO mistake? I understand the need to protect against police abuses but do we let the child molester, islamic terrorist, rapist or other criminal go and feel superior about it because someone errs?
It is already the law in Georgia that an officer may rely on the reports of other police departments (and transmissions on the radio) as "probable cause" for a warrant.
The key is the reasonable reliance on what appears to be accurate information.
If that becomes the law in Alabama (and nationally), it won't change Fourth Amendment law very much.
Yes, because as a matter of public policy the system of incentives currently in place offers the greatest level of protection to the most people.
What happens if the police purposely blunder, to get someone they know or like off? This is a problem, esp in small towns. I know.
The rule is idiotic, and has in some cases led to violent criminals going free and killing/maiming/raping again. If there is police misconduct, punish the misconduct (in the case described, it was not the officers who conducted the search, but the staff responsible for the sloppy recordkeeping.
They do not care now. Dock their pay, and then you'll see full compliance.
Any blunder should be met with disciplinary action, up to and including termination. If the action is purposeful, criminal charges should also be filed.
All Scalia is questioning if we have to automatically exclude inadvertent mistakes.
Yeah. LH was just following orders!
I've never thought a criminal should benefit from a technical mistake by a LEO. Reprimand or punish the LEO, but facts are facts.
It is insane that when a procedural error is made, and it can be clearly shown that it was not made intentionally or with malice or forethought, that things found after it are tossed.
Our legal system is also the only one I know of in the industrialized world with plea bargaining as well. The entire concept of plea bargaining is insane. If you can prove they have committed a crime, you charge them with the crime.. you don’t plea away the gun charge out of the gate because you’re a lazy ass prosecutor with designs on higher office, and want the automatic win to a lesser charge so you can make your tee time.
Better question. Has one ever been denied?
I am not apologising for LH. The fact is he was/is a coldhearted killer, thats what he does and he does it without remorse. The ATF hired him, put him in position gave him the gun and the ammo and the ROE.I do not hold him pesonaly responsible, he is a killing machine that does what he knows and he did it under the cover of the ATF.
There are alternatives to the exclusion rule. For example, evidence obtained without a warrant could be admitted and the officer guilty of such misconduct could be prosecuted.
If a crime is committed against society, society has the right to demand justice. Police blunders should not preclude that. Obviously that is a broad stroke.
Or, do we need to defend the rights of those who were engaged in acts that denied other people their rights?
Have fun with that one....
No. Next question?
For example, evidence obtained without a warrant could be admitted ..................So, you are in favor of doing away with the Bill of Rights are you?
So that innocent citizens can pay for police misconduct? That is trying to make Right out of two Wrongs.
“Better question. Has one ever been denied?”
Almost never because the cops know what lies they can tell and get away with to get a warrant issued.
Should criminals have evidence suppressed, or be acquited due to improper procedures by police?
Crazy as this may sound, but yes, evidence should be suppressed, and criminals acquited.
Case in point. Mr Bennie has a gun and some meth on his person. Officers screw up and grab him in a case of mistaken identity. They then bust him on a drug charge, and aggravate that with gun in possession during a crime. Mr Bennie was not engaged in activity that any reasonable person would identify as criminal at the time. Assuming that Mr Bennie did not have enough meth to be considered a distributor, nor was he uttering threats to shoot anyone, then Mr Bennie was NOT engaged in activity that could reasonably be assumed to be threatening harm to anyone else. Ergo, the cops have no reason to have any interaction with him.
Put this in a different perspective. Government agents harass citizens. They ignore the rights of habeus corpus. They break into the wrong homes and kill the inhabitants thinking they are drug dealers. They “discover” illegal weapons in the home, along with perscription narcotics where the perscription has run out. And subsequently charge the inhabitants for those crimes.
Under the viewpoint of “castle” law, as long as I am not an active, visible threat to anyone in the community, the fact that I keep a balisong knife under my pillow and a sawed off shotgun in my closet for self defense purposes is not discoverable by the police. i.e. they have no basis to even try to obtain a warrant to search my home for those things.
Similarly, almost every home in America has perscription drugs that no longer have a valid perscription that could be abused. Many people have multiple, expired perscriptions for oxycodone, hydrocodone, morphine, etc in their medicine cabinets. Far over the limit to be considered enough to be charged with distribution. That does not give the government the right to break into a home, arrest and charge a person with drug possession and dealing.
This is exactly the sort of thing that will occur if convictions are granted for evidence of crimes found with the use of improper policing procedures.
I don’t think the primary concern is error as much as misconduct. To answer your question, in the most extreme cases, yes.
Did you read my entire reply? I explicitly stated that the officer guilty of obtaining the evidence without a warrant would be sanctioned. How is that doing away with the Bill of Rights?
Did you read my entire reply? I explicitly stated that the officer guilty of obtaining the evidence without a warrant would be sanctioned. How is that doing away with the Bill of Rights?
Isn’t it for something like this that Bill Ayers never went to prison for his terrorist activities, and instead is an honored professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago?
It is unfortunate when justice is subordinated to laws.
See my earlier message. I have zero faith in the government's willingness to aggressively curtail the misconduct of its agents.
Because you still want to use evidence obtained with out a warrant. Read your Bill of Rights or do you want LEO going through YOUR stuff looking to see if maybe you commited a crime, gees is that so hard to understand.
The LEO would be rummaging through my records at his peril of a lawsuit and/or a criminal proceeding. A LEO cannot hide under cover of his position to commit illegal acts.
well, in our case, the police are immune to prosecution.
Unfortunately, this "right" was invented by the courts in the first place.
LEO would be rummaging through my records at his peril of a lawsuit and/or a criminal proceeding................But in the mean time you are advocating that anything he finds can be used against you in a court of law. Now tell me, when you are arrested and in jail and paying a lawyer to defend yourself over anything he found, he will be out and about under his own recog. Think about what you are advocating when you say you are for warrantless searches being allowed in a court of law.
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