Posted on 07/18/2008 12:03:59 PM PDT by reaganaut1
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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 ...
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.
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