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Comment by qingcharles | Hacker News Reader

Exactly.

I went to jail for a crime I wasn't guilty of simply because some rogue police decided to commit a raft of felonies to try and gather evidence against me. When I put that to the judge he told me that "the police are allowed to commit crimes to gather evidence."

I tried going to the prosecutor with it and they will just laugh you out of the building. It's not a crime if you can't get the prosecutor to prosecute it. And the prosecutor's office almost never brings criminal cases to court on their own, they rely on the police for 99% of their work. If they went around prosecuting the police they wouldn't get any more cases and they would put themselves out of business.

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Probably should have lawyered up. Illegally gathered evidence is supposed to be inadmissible in court. At least in the US.

People get off on murder charges because of this, like that lady that killed her infant but the cop searched her trunk without a warrant or probable cause. She obviously killed it, but the only evidence was inadmissible, so she walked.

That's not technically true.

Evidence gathered in violation of a constitutional law is often inadmissible.

But if you look at situations in which police gathered evidence in violation of a statute (e.g. committed a felony that wasn't additionally a constitutional violation), then I could count on one hand the number of times evidence has been excluded in courts across the USA in the last 100 years.

source: I play a lawyer on TV. (not really)

Ugh, another reason to not trust the legal system. Sorry for your troubles.

> If they went around prosecuting the police they wouldn't get any more cases and they would put themselves out of business.

The prosecutor works for the government. No business involved. They will be just fine if there are no cases.

Not really - budget is allocated (and taxes often created/raised) based on degree of public outcry/crisis.

No crime, no need to pay for a prosecutors office (or a lot of cops).

A variant of ‘use it or lose it’, which is the standard in gov’t and large Corp budgeting.

Sorry to hear how this played out. If you have the time and are okay discussing it, consider publishing a write up of the incident. Shining a light on abuse/raise awareness of problems is the first step to getting them fixed.

A lot of things that people think are entrapment don't count legally:

https://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=633

Another fun one is that if you join their conspiracy, they can charge you for crimes they committed as part of that conspiracy.

Hmm I have now been scrolling this comic for an hour. Thanks!

Here's a single page post format copy:

https://thecriminallawyer.tumblr.com/post/19810672629/12-i-w...

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