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Illegally acquired evidence | |||||||||||||||||
If the police acquire evidence illegally, such as without a proper search warrant, the evidence is inadmissible in court. This law has allowed many criminals to get off even though the police had irrefutable evidence of their guilt. Of course, we can't allow police to go around obtaining evidence illegally, but I think there is a better way to handle this. If evidence is obtained illegally, it should still be admissible in court. However, the police officers responsible for misappropriating the evidence should be held legally accountable. This means that instead of rewarding the criminal for police errors or misconduct, we would punish the police. A police officer that is discovered to have acquired evidence illegally has committed a crime and should be prosecuted accordingly. He/she may be fined, lose their badge and in extreme cases may even go to jail. This would discourage police from collecting evidence in inappropriate ways more effectively than simply making it inadmissible. The police officer should be liable regardless of whether the evidence collected is used. This is only right, being that they committed a crime in collecting the evidence even if it is not used. Of course, if they don't present the evidence, then it would be less likely that they would get caught, but it's the same way under our current system. Some people might complain that the police are unlikely to get punished harshly. This might be true, especially in cases where it appears that the police made an honest mistake. But I don't think this is a bad thing. The purpose of the law is to prevent the police from abusing their power. If a policeman is charged repeatedly with illegally gathering evidence, he will undoubtedly lose his badge. This would effectively solve the power abuse problem. In some cases, a police officer may feel that a particular crime is so serious and so needing redress that he may be willing to sacrifice himself by illegally gathering evidence to get a conviction. Frankly, I would applaude his heroism. If he feels that stongly that this case needs justice, then he's probably right. If a criminal is convicted with illegally acquired evidence, he should have the right to press charges. This will not overturn his conviction in any event. If he is guilty, he should do his time. Misconduct by the police does not make him any less guilty Of course if misconduct is discovered, charges should be filed regardless of whether there was a complaint. The police have a responsibility to uphold the law. Bear in mind I am talking about legitimate evidence. Obviously, if there is good reason to suspect the evidence is false, such as something "planted" by the police, then it should be excluded as it is currently. So this will not increase the likelyhood of an innocent person being convicted. It makes a mockery of our legal system when criminals are acquitted because of technicalities that prevent the jury from hearing the facts about a case. Justice is only possible with the truth. We cannot find the truth if we withhold the evidence. All genuine evidence available in a case should be presented to the jury. Withholding evidence is withholding justice.
Dwane Anderson, Jan 20 2007
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Although the general principle of punishing the guilty is valid the dependence upon punishing the police for illegal methods of obtaining evidence is likely not to deter the police from illegal methods. The strongest punishment is the current practice of ruling the evidence inadmissable. Recent cases of police killing innocent people with very little or no grounds for their action and then being not held accountable does not bode well for prosecution of police for illegal actions. The attitude of many prosecuters to acquire convictions at any cost rather than to reveal the truth indicates that very strong deterrence is required for illegal police actions. The inadmissability of illegal evidence is the strongest deterrence and much to be preferred to the dependence upon further doubtful convictions of police illegality. This is not an assumption that all prosecutors or police are corrupt but enough irregularities occur to make me very cautious about approving illegal procedures even slightly.
Inadmissability is not a strong deterrence at all. Say there is a policeman trying to nail a criminal, but he can't get the evidence legally. He can:
A. Not get the evidence. The bad guy will probably go free.
B. Get the evidence illegally. In this case, the results could be:
a. He gets away with it. The bad guy goes to jail.
b. He doesn't get away with it and the evidence is thrown out. The bad guy will probably go free.
Notice that the worst thing that can happen if he steals the evidence is the same as what will happen if he doesn't. Therefore, he has nothing to lose by stealing the evidence.
The only deterrent that can prevent police from trying to obtain evidence illegally is effective punishment. If the current punishment of police is inadequate, then that needs to be corrected. Letting criminals go free is not the right solution.
Your easy dismissal of the difficulty of problems of correcting current punishment of misbehaving police indicates a complete misunderstanding of the problems involved. If a prosecuter obtains evidence by illegal means and successfully convicts by these means he will be little motivated to prosecute the police who acted illegally. This is not a negligible problem. People in power rarely if ever punish themselves for improper action. The frightful mess in current Washington politics is an obvious example.What you propose is a huge encouragement for corruption in the legal system and I would think there are sufficient problems there already.
Obviously, it shouldn't be the prosecutor's job to prosecute police that work for him. Somebody else should be doing that job. Easy or difficult is somewhat beside the point. If our justice system isn't just, then it should be fixed, difficult or not.
I appreciate your optimism but past experience indicates it to be unjustified. Opening a new can of worms in an exceedingly wormy environment is unlikely to improve things.
The prosecutor probably wouldn't go looking for misconduct, but he doesn't have to. Convicts have lawyers and grudges and plenty of time to devote to getting back at the people who convicted them. If there was any significant misconduct, it will frequently come to light.
The prosecutor would be more motivated to prosecute police criminal conduct with my system than he is now. Currently, the prosecutor has a vested interest in hiding police misconduct because revealing it could overturn his convictions. Under my system, the prosecutor doesn't have to worry about losing any convictions, so revealing them doesn't cost him anything. In fact, he could prosecute the police and thereby add more convictions to his resume. Convicting police would be unpopular with the police, but it would be popular with the public. Also, if the prosecutor is aware of criminal misconduct and covers it up, he could be prosecuted himself as an accessory after the fact. This would give him an incentive to reveal the misconduct.
I have no illusions that this will elliminate all corruption in the legal system, but you shouldn't compare my system to some Utopian perfect world. Compare it to the system we now have. Corruption is rampant, police get away with murder and dangerous criminals are aquitted over technicalities. The current hides evidence and creates secrets. This encourages corruption. My system is more transparent, which will generally reduce corruption.
Your trust in the legal system is kind of sweet. Keep in mind that the founding fathers of the USA trusted no one and broke the government into three pieces so that they could keep an eye on each other. It was a good try but it seems to be breaking down.
"Your trust in the legal system is kind of sweet." Huh? If I trusted the legal system I wouldn't be trying to fix it.
Legitimizing violations of basic safeguards is not a fix.
I think there would be an operational problem with this novel suggestion. The prosecutor would first have to use the cop in court to present the illegal evidence, and then weeks later, prosecute that same cop for procuring illegal evidence. In the first go-around, if the cop knows that presenting the illegal evidence is going to only get him in trouble, he won't help the prosecutor to convict. In fact, by presenting the illegal evidence, the cop is creating his own downfall, and would presumably refuse to testify, per the 5th amendment right not to be a witness against yourself.