The moral of the story is - the prosecutor should get the correct warrant, and/or the police should read it. Either the police (negligently) did not realize they could not seach that location, or deliberately ignored the limits. Either way, I don’t think I’d want a police force that felt they could kick in doors because “they knew in their gut” that they would find evidence; just read the cases of many wrongfully convicted, where once the police became convinced that they “had their man”, they ignored all other leads and twisted the evidence or coerced witnesses to frame the guy. (Huricane Carter?) Nor do I want a police force that can’t read the house numbers on the door properly.
Based on what they found, the case would have been a slam-dunk if the police had gotten a sufficiently inclusive warrant, or stayed away from the location until they had one. Obviously they had reason to believe they needed to search the place. The question is not “why should this guy get off?” but rather “why did the police screw up enough to let him get off?”.
None, because the basic principle in the legal system of a democratic country* is that overall it’s more desirable to let 9 guilty people walk than incarcerate one innocent person.
There was an article with an interesting graph that I can’t find right now, how a parabola moves across the spectrum of innocence and guilty. There is no point where you can be sure of only sentencing guilty people and always letting the innocent go, that’s impossible in a system run by humans; so the only question is in which direction to you err: towards the innocents, preferring to make sure they will go free, even if a few guilty ones also go; or towards the guilty, preferring to sentence a few innocents along with them? (And because the system is not perfect, no matter what direction you decide for, there will still and always be innocents in jail and guilty people on the street).
No matter how frustrating that may be in the individual case, it’s preferable overall for society.
Even though the US is a republic, not a modern democracy, it also follows this principle.
I don’t think you know what the term republic means. It doesn’t equate to first past the post, it just means sovereignty isn’t held by a hereditary monarch but is instead held by the people who are represented by elected officials.
I would guess you probably are slamming the U.S. because we have single-member districts and first past the post, thus we do not use the proportional representation system of Germany (based on your posting history I will presume of course you default assumption is Germany’s system is the best in the world and the U.S. system is the worst.) However you can use proportional representation and be a republic or even a constitutional monarchy, the electoral system doesn’t determine whether a country is a republic or not (and in fact pretty much all political scientists would consider any country in the E.U. that isn’t a constitutional monarchy to be a republic–none of them are direct democracies.)
I have some experience in the realm of civil commitments (because I was for a brief time in my life a bureaucrat in the state agency that dealt with the treatment of people civilly committed), and generally it isn’t seen as a trial in which you are punished at the end. A civil commitment hearing is about finding out if someone is because of mental illness dangerous to self & others or unable to care for themselves and then deciding on if they need to be civilly committed because they cannot be successfully treated otherwise–just because they are found to be dangerous to self & others or unable to care for themselves does not mean they necessarily must be hospitalized and the judge has discretion to order other things. Since it is not a matter of putting someone’s liberty in jeopardy (in a constitutional sense) virtually no constitutional protections apply, and all kinds of things like blatant hearsay, statements recorded without warrants, items seized without warrant or etc can be used in a civil commitment. That is because the state is not attempting to convict someone of a crime, and further the state is not even technically suing someone in a more traditional civil action (in which there are various long standing rules on evidence.) Since the primary focus of a civil commitment hearing is determining whether someone needs to be committed, you shouldn’t look at it as anything even approaching a criminal trial.
I do not know the law behind it, but I know the “other side” of the civil commitment process (basically getting monies to fund treating such people requires some level of experience with how they got there) and generally speaking it’s not really akin to a criminal proceeding but more like a fact finding mission in which the court is actively looking for whatever it can find to help it make the best decision.
I’m guessing he’s really refering to the differnce between demokratia and democracy and the further removal from direct democracy inherent in the modern US system. I’m not saying it’s a perfect representation of the meaning - I’m just guessing that that’s his gist.
Another important protection that does not exist during a civil commitment proceeding is doctor-patient confidentiality. Anything a person believed to be mentally ill has said to their health care professionals can be considered by the judge. Note that while this all makes it sound like an end run around the constitution, you should recognize the vast majority of civil commitment aren’t actually people from the criminal court system. In reality most criminal court commitments come from the actual criminal court system in which the court determines the person is not fit for trial or there is a finding of not guilty by reason of insanity, and those are typically referred to as “forensic commitments” and not “civil commitments.”
It’s actually a relatively new and still rare thing for the civil commitment process to be used to put someone into a mental hospital who has “beaten the rap” in the criminal courts. While it has always been something that could happen if the person was genuinely mentally ill, it wasn’t until I believe relatively recently that many states started programs in which sexual predators could be put through civil commitment. I think it may have actually started in my state, we had a relatively notorious child rapist who was due to be paroled and his victim openly advocated for a law that would forcefully commit the man the moment his prison sentence ended. The victim’s advocacy resulted in actual legislation and the last time I heard civil commitments of sexual offenders who have finished up their entire prison terms still happens in Virginia (the predator that actually inspired the law was I believe murdered in prison before it could actually be applied to him.)
How far do “the fruits of tainted evidence” rules extend?
Let’s say the cops find these videos and arrest the guy, and his face is splashed all over the media. One of his past victims see his pic and steps forward as a witness.
Could the defense successfully argue that without the illegal search that produced the tape evidence, he could not have been arrested, and therefor his face wouldn’t have been all over the media for the victim to see, and therefor the ID and testimony by the victim is yet another tainted result of the illegal search?
First, that is not “the definition” of republic, it’s one of several. We use a different one.
And second, whenever I’ve in the past said on this board that the US should have certain structures or rights as a democratic country/ system, other posters informed that the US is not a democracy, but a republic, so the measuring systems used for democratic countries in Europe don’t apply to the US.
What has that got to do with the justice system? That’s legislative, not judiskative.
I don’t know what your problem with me or my posts is. I never said or implied that. I talk about Germany’s system because I know it better than that of France or Denmark, but I know that all European countries have a similar understanding and principle.
I don’t think Germany’s system is the best and would never say that, because I know how much there is to improve. I don’t think and have never said that the US has the worst, since Somalia, Iran and other places surely have worse.
I do believe that the German (European) system is better than the US, but I don’t consider that hard to achieve or something to crow about. I think it’s rather depressing that the US is so caught in the “we are the best! U-S-A! Number!” Hype, - even going so far to portray and believe that European countries have an unfair justice system, because the only good justice system in the whole world is in the US - that they are unwilling to fix the broken parts. Coupled with the vindicte, revenge-based approach to justice, which European countries have gotten rid of several decades ago, to me the whole system is outdated mess, that causes suffering and problems more than it solves, and has too little fairness.
I didn’t talk about direct democracy, but over here in Europe, we don’t see democracy = direct voting a la Swiss, or republic = no monarch. In fact, many countries have both.
But maybe you could tell those Dopers who always shout me down “The US is a republic, not a democracy because we don’t vote directly, and we are a republic because we have no monarch” when I talk about the fundamental requirements for democratic states today. I’m only listening to what your people say.
How do you define republic? How would you describe Germany’s political system?
What countries in Europe do you feel are democratic?
I understand you probably do not speak English at native level so I will say that in English democracy has essentially two meanings (to be very simplistic.)
One hand you have the ancient Greek δημοκρατία , a form of government in which all people periodically met at a meeting place to make decisions. [All people excluding various groups such as women and slaves.]
The fear that classical political philosophers from the 17th and 18th centuries had of that form of government was that it could devolve into “mob rule.” The flavor of the month could inflame passions and great tragedy could occur.
By that definition English speakers around the world would probably not say there is any government today that is a true pure form of δημοκρατία as seen in Ancient Greece. However many governments a lower, local levels do have such a system. Many governments also incorporate some of the principles of that system into their government. For example many towns in New England are ran by town hall meetings. Many States within the United States have a referendum process in which all voters have the ability to decide on issues at the ballot box.
A second definition in common usage is that any government which is ultimately responsible to the people is a democracy. Montesquieu had great influence on the men who framed our constitution, and on political science on both sides of the Atlantic. Montesquieu delineated three types of governments and expands on them further in his works, but I will quote part of it here now:
Montesquieu would consider Rome a Republic (prior to the Emperors) but not a Democracy, Republican Rome would be classified by Montesquieu instead as an aristocracy. At least in the later periods. Like many enlightenment thinkers Montesquieu is guilty of idealizing early Republican Rome as a proper virtuous democratic state and it is his understanding that through loss of virtue it devolved into a corrupt aristocracy. I think the truth of history is Rome transitioned from monarchy to aristocracy (or oligarchy if you will) and was never a true democratic state, but I won’t fault 18th century thinkers for being unaware of modern day historical studies.
It should thus be noted that Americans by and large have been influenced by what I pasted above, and that also Montesquieu was a European not an American so it is disingenuous to act as though we invented a definition of Republic not heard of outside this hemisphere of the world.
This may also help explain the dual definitions of both Republic and Democracy you find with Americans. Americans would consider their government democratic but would consider their form of government to be Republican. Montesquieu delineated essentially two types of Republics, ones which he referred to as democracies and ones which he referred to as aristocracies. Given our near universal suffrage, near universal right to stand for office (once age requirements are met) and etc, I find it very difficult to understand not regarding our government as democratic.
Further, I find it difficult to understand what material differences in our system of governments you see that makes America a “backwards” democracy and Germany a modern democracy. Again, I am talking about our government systems, our criminal justice systems are totally outside the purview of this discussion.
The German wikipedia says:
Now it has been many years now since I was stationed in Germany but I still feel confident enough in my grasp of the language to say there isn’t any nuance I am missing there. Germany considers itself a federal parliamentary democracy.
Again to steal from Wikipedia (English version this time), because I think their definition is entirely adequate:
I don’t think many people would have a great disagreement with that. I will note that system of government is at least 100 years older than the United States is, so to refer to such a system as “modern” in comparison to the United States does not make any sense to me at all. I feel that both parliamentary democracies and presidential systems in which the executive branch is a separately elected office should both be considered democratic systems. I think applying words like “modern” to either or to one in order to look detrimentally at the other is backwards thinking.
Nothing at all. Which is why I wondered at your reasons for bringing up the fact that “America is not a modern democracy.” A political system is not the same as a criminal justice system. A country can be a 100% direct, town-hall style democracy and have the most draconian justice system in the world. They are separate things, and I’m talking about political science here not vague emotionalism which I think you may be engaging in. When you describe a country’s political system you are talking about the technical aspects of how decisions are made for the country, who makes the decisions, if the people in total do not make the decisions who makes the decisions for them, how are those people who make the decision chosen…that is how you come to the technical definition of a country’s political system.
If you are confused and think things like a “liberal European criminal justice system” is part of the “innate” definition of a “modern democracy” then I’m sorry but you’re not talking political science at that point you are talking political philosophy, and I’m not talking American political science but the discipline as a whole, from the U.S. to Hong Kong.
There is virtually no evidence the U.S. system is revenge based. We have punishments that are spelled out in statute, which judges or juries follow when handing down sentences. Our criminal justice system is not based on the principle of “this person has wronged this other person, so let us get vengeance for that person.” It is instead based on statutory law which specifies specific punishments for specific criminal actions.
So how would you classify Germany’s system? How would you classify the United States?
It’s late at night, so I’m not going to go full scholar here and give the different definitions of republic.
We’re a federal, democratic, republic.
After the fall of communism, pretty much all. Though some have more problems with their democracy (Italy with Berlusconi), and some are new and thus going into worrisome tendencies (Ungary is limiting freedom of press; Bulgaria and Rumania, the latest addition to the EU, have serious corruption problems which means that proper democracy is compromised.
I’m also excepting Russia and Belarus, because after the pure-market capitalism failed people, they have returned to authoritarin, unfree states.
I highly doubt that this is the official usage in English. American English, yes, but I wonder what the Canadians, Brits and Aussies say about this.
What the ancient Greeks thought about that is not relevant today though. We have the modern system. Women and non-landowners can vote, too.
If I ask the average European on the street if Democracy = direct democracy (as we call it here to distinguish the different forms in which democracy turns up), they would laugh in my face and tell me of course not.
I doubt it’s the English language at fault here, but rather the peculiar American definition is considered the only true one.
The thing is that Montesquieu is also dead for some time now, so while his ideas are interesting when looking at the historical development of democracy over the ages, they count zero at all towards the modern definition. It’s a huge difference if one guy with no personal experience theorizes about how a democracy might work, if at all, in the 17 or 18th century; or if a modern country looks at the failed old and current new attempts, and writes down the best from everything.
Again, first because your people themselves retort “The US is a republic, not a democracy” because the only type of democracy that USians know of is direct democracy.
Seondly, because of what we in Europe call “Democracy light” which the US introduced in the Latin America, and the lack of proper democratic society.
Democracy is not only elections. I think that’s where the misunderstanding comes from. A modern democratic state needs not only voting rights for women and blacks and landless. It also needs a bunch of human rights and proper structures in society to actually enable democracy to work. And that’s what Americans don’t seem to understand - your country was pretty advanced for the 18thc century; but with a 20 or 21st century yardstick, you’re barbaric and behind: death penalty, revenge-based justice system; no fourth estate (on paper, your media is free from govt. censorship, but in reality, your media is controlled by half a dozen moguls and ratings and has no interest in being the watchdog of the people); no secular state (again, on paper you have a stricter separation than Germany, but in practice, vocal fundies have a large influence on laws passed or kept). And so on.
Some cases, you have nice law on paper, but society doesn’t listen; in other cases, like children’s rights, you don’t even have the right laws.
Because a fair justice system, without corruption, not revenge-based, is part of a democratic system and society. If after free elections the loosers are rounded up and put in prison (as recently happened in Belarus), then that is not a true, working democracy.
Since the US is not up to the standards of democratic societies in Europe in many instances - because it is a republic and thus doesn’t need to adopt universal human rights and other requirements of a democratic state - I mentioned that even the US has this principle.
Yes, it does. Parliamentary means that we don’t use direct democracy, but elect representatives. But furthermore, to avoid the mistakes of Weimar, we have institutions beside the Legislative that guard democracy, like Human Rights, and a fair justice system.
Again to steal from Wikipedia (English version this time), because I think their definition is entirely adequate:
The question isn’t how old the system itself is. The Brits trace their parliamentary system to the Magna Charta, but it has undergone several changes since. The question isn’t how old or by which way it’s elected, it’s the whole framework around it and the attitude in society itself.
While we have our share of backward and stupid people, Europe tries to be Enlightened and behave like grown-ups. Americans act generally as a nation like bratty, spoiled, entitled teens. The emphasis of appearance over content - like saying “but we vote, so that’s democratic” without looking at the other issues - is one of the problems.
No, the term democratic country is far wider. A lot of the communist countries, like East Germany, called itself democratic, and even had elections, but we knew for several reasons that they weren’t.
And a country where children don’t have full rights, were an election can be stolen with a fiat by court instead of recounting (or redoing with better cards); where people are tortured under flimsy excuses - a country like that is not a democratic country under the European definition, even if you get allowed to vote.
You have the death penalty. Most punishments that are spelled out are harsh and cruel. The approach and philosophy behind the whole penal and justice system in the US - and which a large part of the population agrees with, as we can see the Dopers expressing - is based on “Lets punish the bad person”. That is revenge-based, compared to the modern rehabilitative approach of the European states.
Germany has a representative democratic system, and is (despite its faults we are trying to improve and regrettable incidents) by and large a democratic country.
France calls itself a Republic, back from the French Revolution, but also has a representative system and is a democratic country. (The Code Napoleon was of course the basis for most Western countries in the legal area).
The US has a indirect voting system, very convoluted, and is not a modern democratic state, as long as it doesn’t fulfill all the benchmarks.
I wanted to add: even the Scandinavian states and GB are democratic countries, although their system is officially parliamentary monarchy, because the monarch amounts to only the figurehead doing representing, and can not interfere with basic rights of the citizens.
Norway has an exemplary way of doing rehabilition in their penal system that many advocate we should learn more from; Sweden has a better way of dealing with rape victims than the German system, which during the recent trial of Kachelmann many recommended, and so on.
So having a king is not a barrier to being a democratic state.
But being what we call a “Rechtsstaat” (Leo gives this as constitutional state), where not only the citizens, but also the govt. itself and its institutions are bound to the laws, making rights guaranteed, is one of the several requirements for a democratic state - and the US has a long list of continiously ignoring and violating basic rights by its organs. One of several reasons why the US is not Rechtsstaat.
This relies on lots of bias and selective memory. It would be very difficult IMO to exclude the US on these grounds if you were using an objective measure.
No, the other way round: a democratic state needs to meet certain requirements in order to really be democratic and not just pretend it; the EU has written down what those benchmarks are.
It’s bias to say that various documented flagrant breaches of human rights by intelligence agencies, the FBI, or the military against citzens of the US happened? It’s selective memory that a list would be incomplete?
So what is an objective measure to you if several breaches of rights by state organs are not met with any punishment afterwards, if there is no change in structure to prevent similar transgressions?
Your argument reminds me of the old communist political joke: The problem are not those people who say that communists eat babies, the problem are those who declare that it is necessary for communists to eat babies.
Yeah, really, people, different debate, take it elsewhere – and stop trying to have the last word on it here.
Going back to the subject, Bricker’s first post describes what can be expected of the real-world legal system, and quite frankly I’d expect no less. In fact I’d be unsurprised if the appellate court in Delaware did not make some sort of finding of a “good faith error” on the police’s part when seizing the evidence.
However let’s be honest: some people want to see this person locked up for life somehow and want to know if there is any process where he could be taken to court without any rules protecting him so he can be sent away.
Well, that’s not how the law’s supposed to work, be it in the USA or EU.
In this Martin Hyde post, he makes some very good observations:
Thus, there was all along a difference between commitment for your crime and commitment for your dangerous disabling condition.
OTOH the latter version he describes, notice in those cases there already IS a conviction standing – and even then at least from my POV, must make one pause. For one, it has a certain whiff of trying to get around ex-post-facto, by extending the already-convicted person’s sentence to one of life confinement using civil rather than criminal principles. Meanwhile, as far as I can tell, not all states are rushing to make child rape a life-sentence offense, which would be the legally logical (and legislatively economical) thing to do. Could that be because then the suspicion in my prior sentence would be reinforced?
Now, the OP question raises the possibility of a third modality, one in which not only there is no conviction, there has been ruled that there is no evidence admissible in criminal court. Well, it’s really horrible that this has to be the example case, because it would really worry me that once you have people start thinking “how can we lock up people who are legally not guilty”, what tells me you are going to stop with child-rapists?
“Legally” not guilty is what a court finds you, even if you are factually innocent. When you’re acquitted it means “the State failed to prove, in accordance to the laws and rules, that you did X”, not “X did not happen”; proof that “X did not happen” would be just the best damn piece of evidence in your defense. Maybe some time in the past someone should have appropriated words other than guilt/innocence to refer to the concepts.
In the end, I suspect cases like this, where some heinous atrocity may be a wash because of a procedural technicality, are few and far between enough that I don’t believe we should make it any easier to impose removal of freedoms upon the “legally not guilty”.