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While I agree that it's painful seeing evidence thrown out for procedural reasons, there is certainly logic behind it, as it provides a check on the power of the police. It may well be the lesser evil (as intended). Simply disciplining an officer who doesn't follow procedure may not be sufficient incentive to prevent people's rights from being ignored. That's especially true if officers cover for one another so it's not even possible to determine who is responsible. Unless the punishment is extremely harsh (which would unfairly penalize legitimate mistakes), it may often not be effective anyway, as many well-meaning officers could accept punishment in order to put (who they believe is) the bad guy away. The problem is, when you start going in that direction, innocent people's rights will be infringed as well. You already see cases all the time where innocent people go to jail due to police bending or breaking the rules. I have to think that allowing all factual evidence regardless of source would make that worse.

That said, it's obviously not a just result in an individual case like this. It would be nice to be able to have justice in these situations without losing the overall disincentive. I'm not sure that it's possible, but would love to be wrong.

>While I agree that it's painful seeing evidence thrown out for procedural reasons, there is certainly logic behind it, as it provides a check on the power of the police. It may well be the lesser evil (as intended). Simply disciplining an officer who doesn't follow procedure may not be sufficient incentive to prevent people's rights from being ignored.

Then escalate that punishment as needed, still without throwing out evidence? E.g. fire the officer outright, don't just "discipline" him, and impose a penalty to his whole department.

Evidence is processed correctly almost every time. This suggests that inadmissibility is already an effective penalty.

We weren't discussing whether inadmissibility is an effective penalty or not though.

What we where discussing was if inadmissibility is good for serving justice (as opposed to serving as a guard against illegally obtaining evidence, and if so, whether we can abolish inadmissibility and use other, equally capable guards against illegally obtaining evidence).

Read the whole comment before posting, please.

I've read the whole comment before posting.

If you think someone missed something from the comment he was responding, say what that was, instead of posting zero-content critiques please.

There's the latter two third of the grand parent comment that completely counters your comment.

Keep in mind the judiciary doesn’t directly control the police, including hiring/firing decisions; it can only really control what goes on inside of the courtroom. The exclusionary rule[1] is kind of weird, but nobody’s figured out a different, noticeably better way to protect against unlawful search and seizure that works in the States.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapp_v._Ohio

Is that the correct place for that check though? Other countries do this check outside of the court and do just fine without compromising the goals of the court that in other countries are establishing the truth, the legality and deciding on punishment.

The problem with allowing illegally obtained evidence to be admissible is that it sets a legal precedent. There are no one -offs in common law countries. The DA can use this case as an argument next time, effectively incentivising police to breach protocol in other more egregious ways like tapping into your phone calls without reason.

It saddens me deeply that Chahal is getting off on a technicality but ultimately there is no such thing as an objective spirit of the law. All we have is the literal text - the letter of the law - that's in the books and two sides arguing the best way to interpret that.

Writing warrant laws that protect good citizens and good citizens only is impossible. Sometimes bad people slip through the cracks as a result. It's a tragedy, but not one that is easy to remedy.

>The problem with allowing illegally obtained evidence to be admissible is that it sets a legal precedent.

I think what the parent is asking for is precisely for it to be the case ALWAYS, so whether this specific instance would set a legal precedent shouldn't matter.

>The DA can use this case as an argument next time, effectively incentivising police to breach protocol in other more egregious ways like tapping into your phone calls without reason.

Not if in addition to using the evidence they also punish the policemen who broke protocol as severely as needed to de-incentivise them.

Except we have some reason to believe they would value nailing some specific criminal with video evidence over their careers...

Are you suggesting evidence should be presentable to the court so long as the judge/just know it was illegally gained and the officer fired?

If so, this is to me is an absurd conclusion.

Why is that? The purpose of evidence is to help determine the truth. How the legality of how evidence was obtained affects its validity?

Those two things should be independent. If policeman obtained evidence illegally but it's still good evidence (not planted for example) then it shouldn't be ignored.

Policeman should be prosecuted for breaching the law that specifies how evidences can be obtained and punished, but that's separate case.

For me at least, I think we are on shaky ground when we start accepting the 'evidence' as true/valid when we know it was gained illegally. Who knows what evidence can be collected if the rulebook is thrown away.

In this case also, surely the crime committed is against his girlfriend, who herself can go to the police and make charges against him. I appreciate in domestic abuse cases this is hard, but this is how it needs to be done to maintain any trust in the legal process.

The guy is clearly a disturbed specimen and needs rehabilitation.

"Who knows what evidence can be collected if the rulebook is thrown away"

Pretty much all Europeans - the legality of evidence here is only refused in very intense cases (read: torture). And it works quite well tbh...

I would be interested to hear of any cases where in-admissable evidence is deemed admissable for the purposes of finding someone guilty. As a European (currently!) I would not want to allow this to continue.

>for the purposes of finding someone guilty

Also for finding someone innocent. You forgot that.

>As a European (currently!) I would not want to allow this to continue.

Because its drawbacks are?

>>for the purposes of finding someone guilty >Also for finding someone innocent. You forgot that.

True, some people may want to break the law to gain evidence to support someones defense. I have a gut feeling this is going to be in the minority of cases.

>>As a European (currently!) I would not want to allow this to continue. >Because its drawbacks are?

It's drawbacks are mainly being that it would be a massive retrograde step.

>Who knows what evidence can be collected if the rulebook is thrown away.

The very idea is that the rulebook is NOT thrown away.

Illegally getting evidence is still punished.

It's just that said evidence remains evidence.

And what does "Who knows what evidence can be collected" mean? Is there a bad kind of evidence when it comes to the truth of a situation? Especially video evidence?

> The very idea is that the rulebook is NOT thrown away.

I think you misunderstand what the rulebook is. The most basic "rulebook" in the US, and the one on which the exclusionary rule is founded -- the Constitution of the United States -- does not limit the actions of individual government agents, it limits the power of government. If you allow the government to use evidenced gathered outside of that rulebook, but punish government agents, you are, indeed, throwing out the rulebook, and the entire idea of limited government.

A central idea of the US system of government is that preventing tyranny by unbound government is more important than punishing individual wrongdoers in the criminal justice system.

Help me understand how the exclusionary rule follows directly from the Constitution. We are one of the few western countries to have it; it's an idiosyncratic response to the problem it addresses.

> Help me understand how the exclusionary rule follows directly from the Constitution.

Without the exclusionary rule, not only would the people not be secure in the persons and property from unreasonable searches and seizure (an ideal which is impossible to attain, though obviously necessary to strive forward under the Constitution) but would be deprived, by government, of life, liberty, and property -- through the criminal process -- without due process of law, insofar as they would deprived of such as a direct result of government exercising powers which are strictly and expressly outside of those permitted to it.

> We are one of the few western countries to have it; it's an idiosyncratic response to the problem it addresses.

The United States is unusual in the world (including among "western countries") in the degree to which limited government is a foundational principle. Even other countries with a strong attachment to the idea of fundamental rights often have strong foundational attachment to ideas of governmental (e.g., parliamentary) sovereignty and supremacy, with boundaries of rights and limitations on actions of government agents being determined through the regular legislative process and not being fundamental limits on government.

We've only had the rule since 1886. Also: it's pretty debatable that we have the rule because we're more attentive to limited government; other countries simply use other, more direct remedies to this problem.

The question isn't "why do we have 4A" or "why should we be concerned about due process". It's "why do we have this idiosyncratic rule, as opposed to the other obvious remedies to illegal searches, and how does the rule follow directly from the Constitution, which mentions it never?"

>other countries simply use other, more direct remedies to this problem.

The usually offered alternative remedy is not actually a remedy to the problem, its a remedy to a different problem (and one which has an insurmountable agency problem in a system with a unitary executive).

> The question isn't "why do we have 4A" or "why should we be concerned about due process".

Which is fine, because I didn't answer that. I answered why the rule was essential to protecting the limitations on government in the Constitution, including due process, not why we have the 4A or due process.

> It's "why do we have this idiosyncratic rule, as opposed to the other obvious remedies to illegal searches, and how does the rule follow directly from the Constitution, which mentions it never?"

I never claimed it "flowed directly from the Constitution", so to the extent that is your question, it is a non-sequitur where the question was offered. I have answered why the rule is essential to implement the restrictions on government in the Constitution. If you would like to pose a counterargument, or challenge any part of the answer, please feel free and we can have a productive conversation. But merely making oblique and unspecific references to alternatives is unproductive.

Some rule is essential to back up the Fourth Amendment. Is the exclusionary rule the only, or the best, way to do that?

>Are you suggesting evidence should be presentable to the court so long as the judge/just know it was illegally gained and the officer fired?

I'm suggesting something like video evidence of a person committing a crime should be presentable to the court whether illegally obtained or not. It IS evidence of the crime after all, in the dictionary, common, sense.

Now, if the video was indeed obtained illegally, then that's another, unrelated to the case on trial, issue, and can be tried separately, have the officer fired or fined, etc.

The idea is very simple: we don't want the police illegally obtaining video (so we discourage that), but in case there is one and it proves a person's innocence or guilt, we might as well use it at the same time.

Sounds perfectly logical to me.

The idea that: we throw video evidence that a man is innocent and let him get the death penalty, or we throw video that a man killed 5 people and let him get off, because we want to discourage the police from getting video evidence illegally, sounds totally illogical.

There are other ways to discourage the police from doing so in the general case, without throwing away perfectly good evidence if it's available in a particular case.

Of course I'm not an American, and so I was not accustomed from a young age on what should and should not be held as evidence, and what is the supposed one and only way to go about such things.

I'm not sure its possible for evidence demonstrating innocence to be obtained illegally, since it would usually be obtained and presented by the defense.

I apologize if you already know this, but it sounds like you might not be from the United States.

Indeed, prosecutors do not think about legal precedent. There is nothing stopping them from trying to win a case illegally. However, a guilty ruling can be appealed by the defendant to another court, which will look at the original case and undo the guilty decision if it was achieved incorrectly. The judge hearing the appeal will interpret the law strictly. Only in situations where the law is vague can precedent be set. Precedent means that in the future, judges considering the same vague law will try to interpret it consistently with past interpretations. If a judge ruled that a blatantly illegal court procedure could stand, then this ruling would also be appealed. Appeals can go up a chain of appeals courts all the way to the Supreme Court.

If a prosecutor blatantly broke the law to win a case, and the judge allowed it or colluded with it, and an appeals review made this known, then this would adversely affect their careers. This, combined with that most prosecutors and judges want to follow the rules, is an effective deterrent against illegally obtained evidence.

Even if a prosecutor thought, similarly to you, that it's worth breaking the law to win a case, they are discouraged from doing so by the appeals system.

> There is nothing stopping them from trying to win a case illegally.

Are they immune to prosecution if they do illegal things?

You are right. Appeal overturn, censure, disbarment and prosecution are all options depending on the specific wrongdoing -- but all would happen after the initial case.

> Are they immune to prosecution if they do illegal things?

"Immune", no, but prosecutors are unlikely to prosecute prosecutors for overzealous prosecutions, and are also unlikely to prosecute police and others working for prosecutors for their actions in support of such prosecutions.

What you're suggesting would mean we can practically forget about warrants, especially in big cases. The prosecutor just needs to find an officer ready to take a punishment and he can get his evidence in any way he can.

And what about civil cases? I'm pretty sure there would be much more illegal surveillance if the gathered data could be useful in courts.

You're questioning some basic principles of our legal systems that are here to protect us. I agree that it's sad to see how far corruption can go and it's also discouraging to see criminals walk on technicalities, but those issues should be solved differently, not by reducing the scrutiny on obtaining evidence.

See [Blackstone's formulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation) and [Exclusionary rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_rule) for a more detailed explanation.

"I don't get why US judges often throw out evidence because it was not acquired according to correct procedure."

I see you've never been illegally searched. Don't worry, it will happen. If you're lucky they don't just take your things.

> The correct action in a case like this should be to use the evidence, and discipline the officer who violated regulations.

Illegally-obtained evidence applied in a criminal trial is always the government violating the fundamental law which governs its authority to use power against the people. Which is why it cannot be tolerated (and why it is not the exclusionary rule, but the increasingly broad exceptions to it, that are problematic.)

Its true that such excesses by government also involve violations of the law by individual agents of government, which ideally should be punished as well as the government being constrained from exceeding the Constitutional limitations on its powers, but such punishment -- which would require the government to pursue it, which is why it rarely happens -- is no substitute for restraint on government.

Why discipline the officer? The officer is just a cog in a political machine. The people who exist at the top of that machine take almost all profits from the high-status victory. And after that officer has been penalized, the DA, mayor, police chief, whatever, are going to be the faces that removed a rich villain in a popular way.

Also, the officer who violates will be penalized, and after they fall out of public awareness, they will be brought back for their fine contribution to somebody's political resume.

Because USA has antiquated British legal system that's very concerned with prosecution, defense, pleas, testimonies, punishments and not so much with what actually happened.

You're just guessing. Hint: look up the fourth amendment.

I'm not really getting your point. What protection about unreasonable searches has to do with the fact that some evidences must be ignored?

If somebody is breaching your 4th amendment laws he should be prosecuted, but if he finds a a photo of you and a corpse it shouldn't be ignored just because search was unreasonable.

It's really very simple. If the evidence is not ignored, it's an incentive for illegal searches.

> if he finds a a photo of you and a corpse it shouldn't be ignored just because search was unreasonable.

You could not be more wrong on that point.

> It's really very simple. If the evidence is not ignored, it's an incentive for illegal searches.

I know that's the theory, but most countries don't have this and they also don't have plague of illegal searches, because, you know, they are illegal and police tends to do legal things and they can loose their jobs and be prosecuted if they start doing illegal things.

I understand that the police in USA has a history of allowing police to do illegal things for "greater good" but ignoring evidence is way too late to prevent illegal searches.

> You could not be more wrong on that point.

In USA, maybe UK and perhaps few other countries I'd be. In virtually any other country I wouldn't be.

No, this is an important example of the protections afforded by the system, along with things like having access to the evidence being used against you. Secret tribunals and wiretaps might have worked for the Gestapo, but this is America, dammit!

because it gives the capital-S State a motive for constant countrywide warrantless surveillance?