02/02/09: MORE ON POTENTIAL ABOLISHMENT OF THE "EXCLUSIONARY RULE"
Posted by: JOHN
"Law Talkin' Mike," a prosecutor in South Carolina had this to say about the Supreme Court's possible abolishment of the exclusionary rule (that prevents illegally obtained evidence from being used against a criminal defendant):
"Horror stories about how the exclusionary rule lets awful criminals get away on technicalities is one of the great urban legends of the criminal justice system. I've been either a prosecutor or a public defender for 15 years and I can think of only a small handful of cases where real bad people got away with something because of a minor police error. There is already a good faith exception that saves law enforcement from purely innocent mistakes. And inevitable discovery (we'd have found it anyway) saves other screw ups.
It does happen once in a great while and maybe there is room for some enlargement of the good faith exception, but a wholesale rejection of the exclusionary rule would be stupid and unnecessary. Plus, it would overturn years of established precedent, something I thought conservatives were against.
"Horror stories about how the exclusionary rule lets awful criminals get away on technicalities is one of the great urban legends of the criminal justice system. I've been either a prosecutor or a public defender for 15 years and I can think of only a small handful of cases where real bad people got away with something because of a minor police error. There is already a good faith exception that saves law enforcement from purely innocent mistakes. And inevitable discovery (we'd have found it anyway) saves other screw ups.
It does happen once in a great while and maybe there is room for some enlargement of the good faith exception, but a wholesale rejection of the exclusionary rule would be stupid and unnecessary. Plus, it would overturn years of established precedent, something I thought conservatives were against.