I would assume the point is that the video is irrelevant and unnecessary unless the case makes it relevant and necessary. That only happens if it is necessary to disprove something else relevant to the trial- i.e. if the officer denies ever having planted evidence.
No – it’s because the video isn’t about the drugs found in the case on trial.
So evidence to show a witness/defendant is not trustworthy or attacking his credibility can only be entered to rebut oral statements by that witness/defendant?
(Please give me a break on the terminology if it’s wrong. I’m clearly not a lawyer, but this seems like an interesting piece of legal process that I would like to understand)
That’s the issue. I wanted to know what the rules were for entering evidence that wasn’t directly related to the case in question - especially in a situation where the case that the evidence was directly related to wasn’t resolved yet.
My understanding is that it’s called the elements of the crime. It’s all the things you have to show in order to find a person guilty of a crime. In a case like this, the elements would be a list like this:
- The drugs exist.
- They were illegal drugs.
- They were found at a specific location.
- The defendant was responsible for things found at that location.
In this particular case, the defense is going to push hard on #3. They’re going to argue that we can’t reasonably conclude that the drugs were found at that specific location because the officer who says he found them there planted them.
But in a different case, the defense might challenge a different element. They might challenge #1 and ask for evidence that the item was tested. If it wasn’t properly tested, how do we know it was drugs? Maybe it was baby powder. Or they might challenge #4 and argue something like “This item was found on the defendant’s front lawn. Yes, he owns the lawn but it is accessible to people on the street. Drug dealers frequent this neighborhood and one of them might have thrown it into his lawn when they saw the police approaching. Therefore, you cannot prove that my client was responsible for those drugs being at that location.”
No, for the reasons explained elsewhere. And as a general matter, the parties have more scope for impeaching witnesses other than a defendant. There are specific rules designed to protect defendants which don’t apply to other witnesses. For example, under the Fifth Amendment the defendant’s refusal to testify cannot be held against him, but the factfinder (jury, or judge in a bench trial) may draw an “adverse inference” from the refusal of other witnesses to testify - in other words, they can assume that their testimony would have been whatever the other party says it is.
The process (at least where I was briefly a DA) when something like this happened was to comb through all the cases for any involving Officer(s) XYZ and then decide on a case-by-case basis. Taking into account factors such as how integral that officer’s testimony was to the case, severity of the case, etc.
So, does the evidence have to show that the particular officer who testified in the trial was corrupt? Could the defense introduce evidence of widespread corruption in the department?
For example:
20% of the drug squad has been convicted of planting evidence.
A secret recording of the police chief talking to his lieutenants said “I want more drug convictions. I don’t care if your officers have to plant fake evidence to do it.”
An evidence technician who said “we leave extra drug samples in the closet all the time without logging them in. Any officer can just walk in and take some.”
Evidence that a gang has been paying off officers to frame their competitors, even though there is no evidence that the specific witness took any bribes.
It just shows that a thousand bad apples in a barrel can spoil it for the rest.
Not disagreeing, just continuing forward from this context.
ISTM there are three categories of case: Those still in progress, those that went to trial and resulted in a guilty verdict, and those that settled for a guilty plea to that offense or a plea bargain to some lesser offense.
Clearly the DA’s office is wholly within their prerogative to dig through the first category and decide whether to drop, proceed as-is, or recharge differently. So far so clear.
Now the messy part:
The second and third groups are similar in that they’re out of the DA’s hands. What now?
ISTM (a nonexpert) that they essentially depend on the judiciary or higher level government executive to decide these cases are important enough or egregious enough to re-open. Perhaps prodded by public outcry, class action suits, etc.
The really interesting / unclear thing to me is group 3 and the difference between it and group 2. The defendant admitted to doing something bad and accepted the corresponding sentence. But now we’re potentially reversing that.
I suppose it forms a variant of the coerced confession problem. “I didn’t *really *admit to doing it; I was simply taking the least bad option available given the figurative gun they were (illegally) holding to my head. Now that we all know about their illegal gun-holding, it’s appropriate to disregard my forced admission.”
Anywhere close to correct analysis?
What happens if the officer invokes the fifth amendment?
See post 26. The jury can infer that he is invoking the fifth amendment because he has planted drugs in the past.
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For what it’s worth, the State’s Attorney’s Office is dismissing numerous cases involving these three BPD officers.
The more attenuated the link between the evidence and the specific facts of the case, the less likely it is to be admitted. Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, the court may exclude otherwise admissible evidence if its probative value is outweighed by one or more of several factors. One of those is unfair prejudice.
It’s unlikely that evidence that police officers not directly connected with the case are corrupt would be admitted. To get from those facts to relevant facts requires inferences piled on inferences. On the other hand, the police chief’s and evidence technician’s statements lead to directly relevant inferences.
(bolkding mine)
Wouldn’t this be 5th amendment territory? You’re asking the officer to testify against himself - with potential legal implications for the officer in question.
Does it matter? You just have to raise reasonable doubt to the jurors that the drugs belong to the defendant.
Sure, the officer is entitled to refuse to answer, based on his Fifth Amendment privileges.
But then the defense is permitted to say to the jury, “You should assume that if he had answered, he would have incriminated himself, and that means he did plant drugs, and that means you can’t trust his claim in this case.”
In other words, the jury can draw an adverse inference from a witness’ invocation of the Fifth Amendment.
Sure. Which is why the officer is unlikely to answer, and you get into negative inferences:
In the OJ trial Mark Furman took the Fifth when he was asked if his prior testimony (about never using the word “nigger”) was true, after the defense had introduced tapes of him using it repeatedly while working with a screenwriter. The jury, as you’ll no doubt recall, drew an extremely adverse inference. 
ETA: ninja’d.
And the jury is not supposed to draw an adverse inference if the **defendant **does it, right?
(seriously asking, to make sure I understand)
This was my next question as well.