Many posters on this thread believe that the guilty people should be acquitted because "police ought to have the same duty as citizens to know and obey the law." A better argument, offered by Blood of Tyrants follows immediately:
Otherwise the cop could make up an imaginary law to justify the stop as an excuse to search a vehicle.
In other words there is a higher value at stake here than merely punishing the guilty, assuring that our rights of privacy are protected against overreaching police. That means that the right of privacy is so important that we are willing to have guilty people go free to prevent its abuse.
Note, that in turn assumes that there is a relationship between denying police the right to use the fruits of an improper search and maintaining our constitutional right of privacy. Is there no other way to protect our privacy and still convict the guilty? Is this a good case in which to quash the evidence and acquit guilty people? Is this a case of overzealous police? Hardly.
Our general rights of privacy are not at stake from cops making an honest mistake in conducting a search based on an honest misconception of the law. Therefore, unless an argument can be made that to permit such searches under honest mistake of law circumstances is to open the floodgates to improper searches, the evidence should be admitted.
So these facts we have two hurdles to overcome if we want to exclude the evidence: First, we must agree that withholding the evidence discourages police from making improper searches. The Supreme Court has already made this decision in the affirmative. Second, cops will likely make up laws in order to justify improper searches.
Merely to argue that the police should be held to the standard of knowing the law because the public is held to that standard is not persuasive. A practical level, police have to act under extreme pressure in a moments notice without the ability to go to law library and research difficult search and seizure questions or questions of law in general. The test should be whether the policeman makes the judgment of breaking of the law in good faith. This is a factual question which could be handled either by a jury or by a judge in a search and seizure hearing. The law makes those judgments all the time. It asks was this reasonable under the circumstances? There is no rational relationship between protecting privacy and the idea that cops should be held to the same standard as citizens. That might be a satisfying emotional argument but it does not on its face relate to our constitutional right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures.
To rule that under all circumstances and in all cases in which a policeman misconceived the law renders evidence inadmissible against an admittedly guilty party is a remedy that is unnecessarily broad to achieve its proper constitutional purpose of protecting the public from invasive and unreasonable searches and seizures. It is unnecessary because the courts have proven ability to litigate these issues and determine reasonableness. To propound an arbitrary rule is likely to cause more societal harm as guilty people are released back into society to commit more crime.
This is not the case of SWAT teams gone wild or of rogue policeman extorting innocent civilians, this is a run-of-the-mill case which can be easily handled on its own merits by the court system.
