Actually, the case demonstrates only that the police may not use evidence gained incident to that search to prosecute that individual.
They probably did violate his rights by stopping him in the first place. However, had they not arrested him, his remedy would have been limited to his actual damages, i.e. none.
Let’s assume that the friend, upon being impermissably stopped, gives information regarding the location of the original boyfriend. Then the police arrest the boyfriend based on that information. Furthermore the police perform a second search incident upon the arrest and discover incriminating evidence.
The question is, could the boyfriend argue that since the information and thus the arrest had been based on the original illegal search, could he have that arrest and the evidence resulting from the second search suppressed?
Since I get all my legal information from Law & Order, I’ll let the real lawyers handle this.
First, I recognize and fully support the principle that someone should be considered as innocent until proven guilty. But we also have to recognize that crimes do happen and some people are guilty. So laws legal procedures like the right to have an attorney present during questioning (which helps the innocent and guilty), the right to refuse to answer questions (which helps the innocent and guilty), and the right of habeus corpus (which helps the innocent and guilty) are all good things. But a right that says evidence of a crime can be excluded at a trial is of no benefit to an innocent person; if you are innocent then there would be no evidence to be excluded. (Otto’s argument that an innocent person could be protected from evidence that falsely indicates his guilt should have been argued against by the standards of the testing not the inadmissability rule; if his theoretical gun had been legally seized it would have convicted him.) Can anyone give me an example of how the exclusionary rule would benefit an innocent person? I’m talking specifically, not just as a general deterent to illegal searchs.
Second, I’m not a police officer but I do work in law enforcement. My job does deal with having to comply with court decisions. I’m not suggesting that the individual police officers should be held personally liable for illegal searches. They should be covered by their indemnification and their department should assume the burden of any financial liability. But this burden would cause the department to make sure that their officers were aware of what consituted a legal search and did not violate these procedures. I can tell you from personal experience that once a financial burden is placed on a department it goes to extraordinary lenghths to make sure it comes into compliance.
Third, several posters have argues that illegal seaches are bad because they create a general distrust of the police. Certainly this is true. But I think that by the same argument, the exclusionary rule is bad because it creates a general distrust of the wisdom of the court system. Decisions like Miranda and Gideon are generally respected because people can see the wisdom of these decisions even though in some cases they can lead to apparently guilty people being freed. The fact that the exclusionary rule is so genrally disrespected is evidence that it was not as wisely conceived as these others were.
Fourth (and finally), on a different subject, I was surprised to read about the challenges to the Miranda decision. Here’s a possible scenario. Let’s say someone is suspected of a crime in Baltimore, is not read his rights, and confesses to the crime. Under section 3501, his confession would be admissable. Couldn’t he argue that he was unaware that his confession was admissable? Miranda is so well known that he could have assumed that any confession he made without being read his rights would be thrown out and was therefore not serious. Maybe he confessed to a crime he didn’t commit because he wanted to leave the interrogation room and get back to his cell in time for lunch.
There is an exception to the exclusionary rule called the good faith exception.
From “A Murder” by Greg Fallis:
In the example in the book the officers obtained a search warrant because they saw what they thought was a photo of the victim. It ends up it wasn’t the victim at all. So, the search warrant was defective but the officers only made an honest mistake. They had honestly thought it was the victim (they woman in the photo and the victim looked similar).
In the example in the book, the officers went to the suspects house to interview him, when they saw the picture during a sweep. This was after a search warrant was denied. It was suggested that the officers used the sweep rule to get a “kind of” search without a warrant. The officers maintained that they honestly went over to interview the suspect, so again they were acting in good faith to investigate the crime.
Does the good faith exclusion count in this case? Well, clearly the NY courts didn’t think so. Any opinions from Bricker or DS?
The good faith exception is a relatively new addition to our jurisprudence, deriving from the Supreme Court case U.S. v. Leon (468 U.S. 897) (1984). It is both a subjective and an objective standard. It requires the officer’s subjective belief that that warrant or other search was valid, and the warrant must also pass an objective test as to reasonableness.
In other words, if I hand a police officer a “search warrant” written in crayon on the back of a shopping bag, with words misspelled, it’s not relevant that the officer honestly believed it was valid - that warrant fails the objective test. And if a warrant looks valid, but the officer knows it is flawed, he may not rely on it.
In this case, there was no warrant. The validity of the stop itself is at issue. It is inappropriate to apply a good-faith analysis here.
Probable cause to initiate a stop is an objective standard, requiring only that the officer, taking into account the totality of the circumstances, had reason to believe that a crime had been committed and that the target of the stop committed the crime. In other words, the standard of “probable cause” doesn’t require that the officer be right every time. In a way, it encompasses “good faith” to the extent that it relies upon what the officer reasonably believes.
The reason we talk about good faith exceptions in the context of a warrant is that a warrant may appear valid to the officer that serves it, but be invalid as a matter of law for any number of reasons. Police officers are not expected to be lawyers, and are not required, for example, to conduct an extensive analysis of the affadavit supporting a warrant. If a ‘neutral, detached magistrate’ signs the warrant, the officer is generally entitled to rely on it.
But with the stop of a car, all the facts needed are within the officer’s reach. He knows, or should know, that the law requires probable cause to stop a car. Even if he believes otherwise, that belief is not objectively reasonable. A police officer is expected to know the law as it applies to stopping cars. It’s not “good faith” if he does not.
So… in summary… there is a “good faith” exception, but it is inapposite here.
Oh, my hypothetical attorney would have argued standards of testing at trial. I hypothetically only hire the hypothetical best! As the hypothetical best, she knows you don’t rely on a single line of defense, and she also knows you get the case kicked as quick as you can for whatever reason you can. There is no reason to wait for trial to argue testing standards when one can argue 4th Amendment at a PC hearing. So I think my example works. Who’s with me, non-hypothetical attorneys?
Interestingly enough (to me anyway), I’m having pretty much this same argument on an ACLU board, with a focus on racial profiling. I’m trying to convince this guy that being young and black driving an expensive car is not probable cause for a traffic stop and he just refuses to accept it. Anyone have any suggestions for case law I can quote him?
[QUOTE]
Originally posted by Little Nemo:
) Can anyone give me an example of how the exclusionary rule would benefit an innocent person? I’m talking specifically, not just as a general deterent to illegal searchs.
I apologize that I can’t answer your question in the way that you have requested, but I’m afraid that protection from illegal searches is specificallyhow the exclusionary rule protects innocent persons. Its quite easily sufficient justification of the rule for this innocent person.
Absolutely correct. The argument that the evidence was seized illegally is an argument made to the the judge pre-trial, and if the gun is suppressed it may well mean the entire case is dismissed. Although it may require the judge to make findings of fact, it’s at heart a matter of law.
The weight to be accorded to two different experts, each testifying as to the liklihood of a particular lands and grooves pattern matching a particular weapon, is a matter of credibility for the fact-finder (usually the jury) to determine.
In short: much better to get the case kicked first at a suppression hearing, as Otto suggests.
Any case law that recites the probable cause is sufficient. “[P]robable cause exists when the facts and circumstances within the officer’s knowledge, and of which he has reasonably trustworthy information, alone are sufficient to warrant a person of reasonable caution to believe that an offense has been or is being committed.” Taylor v. Commonwealth, 222 Va. 816, 820, 284 S.E.2d 833, 836 (1981), cert. denied, 456 U.S. 906 (1982).
Apply that standard to being young, black, and driving an expensive car. What offense has been or is being committed?
It’s as simple as that.
Finally, Little Nemo asks:
As has been explained above much more eloquently, the primary purpose of the rule is to deter police misconduct. So the direct application of the rule does, admittedly, tend to favor the guilty, but the indirect application favors all people.
However, Otto’s example was good. To provide another, let us say that as I’m stopped at a red light on a cool autumn evening in a bad part of town, a street corner drug dealer goes running by my car and, unnoticed by me, tosses something in my back window. Moments later the cops pursuing him appear as well, in hot foot pursuit. I drive away, happy not to be involved. But a few minutes later, as I’m on the interstate home, driving at the legal speed limit, a cop pulls me over because he doesn’t like my bumper sticker, which says “NEED A COP? CALL DUNKIN DONUTS!”
As he approaches the car to inform me that cops are out doing a good job, he shines his light into my back seat, and moments later I’m under arrest for possession of crack cocaine, futilely arguing that it isn’t mine and I’ve never seen it before. “Yeah, sure,” says the officer. “I’ve heard that one before.”
Under these circumstances, the exclusionary rule will save me. The stop was illegal, and the fruits seized are inadmissible.
Unusual? Of course. But certainly possible.
Again, though - the focus of the rule is to deter police misconduct by removing the incentive for it. If the misconduct won’t secure a conviction, there is little reason to engage in it.
My apologies for not making my earlier question clearer. I agree that illegal searches are a bad thing. I also feel that there a number of different ways that illegal searches could be discouraged. Two of them that have been discussed here are the exclusion of evidence that was found illegally and a financial settlement for being searched illegally.
My question then was not “why do we want to discourage illegal searches?” It was “why do we use evidence exclusion as the means of discouraging searches?”
Otto, edbenson, and Bricker: You’ve all pointed out that the exclusionary rule can help a person who is innocent. But in none of the cases you outlined was the defendant helped because he was innocent. In the situations you described, the defendant’s innocence was immaterial to his acquittal; he could just as easily have been guilty and walked.
Legal procedures should help separate the innocent from the guilty. A procedure that helps acquit the innocent if right even if it occasionally helps acquit the guilty. A procedure that helps acquit the guilty is wrong even if it occasionally helps acquit the innocent.
Because it is well known that the average citizen is a lazy, immoral scumbag who doesn’t care if someone is tortured to death so long as he gets his.
It has been suggested (not alone in this thread) that the proper way of handling Fourth Amendments now subject to the exclusionary rule is to allow civil suits against indivudal policemen and/or police depatrments, and/or to levy fines against same for such violations. In a utopian world in which the citizenry, full of virtù, was concerned about such violations, this would likely work better than the exclusionary rule, and as well as any method of handling the matter (actually, in such a utopian world, there likely wouldn’t be Fourth Amendment violations, save by sheer accident, but that’s another story).
However, we do not live in such a utopian world. In the case of civil suits, we might well ask whether a jury will rule that a policeman, or his department, owes any damages whatever to an obvious (and, of course, we can unerringly distinguish criminals at a glance, yes? :rolleyes and convicted criminal, even if certain of his rights were violated. Granting that damages are occasionally awarded now for violations of civil rights, such violations tend to be rather egregious ones.
The question of fines is even less promising. It would take a remarkably small amount of public pressure and cronyism combined for a prosecutor to simply decline to file charges in such an instance. After all, since we concede, by this argument, that evidence has been gathered that led to the conviction and (presumably) punishment of a more-or-less dangerous criminal, who would then be so demanding of justice that they would demand that an ADA then fine the very policemen that so stalwartly collected that evidence? As there are no private prosecutions in criminal, as distinct from civil matters, these offenses would remain unpunished?
Of the exclusionary rule, it may be said that it is like democracy: that it is the worst system, except for all of the others.
“I don’t just want you to feel envy. I want you to suffer, I want you to bleed, I want you to die a little bit each day. And I want you to thank me for it.” – What “Let’s just be friends” really means
I think you underestimate the court system. I work in a prison and I can tell you that convicts can readily win lawsuits when their rights are violated in prison. If an incarcerated felon can persuade a jury to find in his favor, I can’t imagine the average man on the street will have any trouble.
Little Nemo: I think the analogy you draw is mistaken. A prisoner has access to two things that an ordinary citizen, especially one with a low income, does not: plenty of free time and access to a law library.
Regardless, the objection against civil suits is that they would be too effective, thus paralyzing the police. The argument against criminal prosecution is that the district attorneys are by definition biased in favor of the police thus rendering it ineffection.
The current exclusionary rule fulfills two purposes: It dissuades police from making illegal searches while encouraging clear and consistent procedure, and it prevents the courts from being tainted by illegal procedure.
It’s a good system, because there’s really no excuse for an officer to violate procedure. Even when, as in Denver, the courts are overly lenient in granting warrants, the procedure ensures that accurate records are maintained whereby the people may fairly evaluate the operation of the justice system.
If Cecil Adams did not exist, we would be obliged to create Him.
No, Otto, “judges, juries, lawyers (and) rules of evidence” are all part of a system designed to acquit the innocent and convict the guilty. That’s the seperation of the innocent and the guilty I refered to. The fact that it doesn’t always work is unfortunate but understandable; no system is perfect. However, every legal procedure should be designed with this goal in mind as its intent.
I’m interested in the Dickerson case you mentioned, and I’ve got a question.
If the exclusionary rule is solely a question of the federal courts setting out federal rules of evidence, and not a constitutional requirement, how can the federal courts require the state courts to apply the exclusionary rule?
doesn’t the fact that the state courts must apply the exclusionary rule for breaches of the federal constitution mean that it is a constitutional requirement?
I think the UBB took so long to post my question that it got drowned out.
I’m curious about indirect consequences of Fourth Amendment violations.
Let’s assume that the friend, upon being impermissably stopped, gives information regarding the location of the original boyfriend. Then the police arrest the boyfriend based on that information. Furthermore the police perform a second search incident upon the arrest and discover incriminating evidence.
The question is: Could the boyfriend argue that since the information and thus the arrest had been based on the illegal original search, that the arrest and the evidence resulting from the second search be suppressed?
If Cecil Adams did not exist, we would be obliged to create Him.
In the uneducated opinion of this non-lawyer, he could attempt to argue that because the first stop was illegal, anything obtained from it is “fruit of the poison tree” and equally inadmissible. My understanding of the law is that the prosecutor can argue a) inevitable discovery; the police would have located the boyfriend using other police methods to the same result, and b) even if the original search violated the first person’s rights, it didn’t violate the second person’s rights. The second argument I’m not sure of but the first I’m reasonably confident would be/is accepted.
No other means of investigation would have lead to that car, because the witness was mistaken in pointing it out. So there would be nothing inevitable about the discovery.
Unless I misunderstand the point. That happens when I get tired. I should get some sleep>
Good question, and you would think at first blush that it was dispositive of the issue. Clearly, the Miranda rule must be one of Constitutional dimension, because it’s applied to the states.
Hwoever – not so fast. There is no Supreme Court case that explicitly makes Miranda binding on the states.
Since Miranda established a bright-line rule as to the voluntariness of a confession, and since it is unquestionable that the states are bound by the rule that confessions must be voluntary, it is possible to assume that the states adopted Miranda’s reasoning, if not its authority. That is, under this interpretation, each state theoretically used the logic of Miranda and applied it to their own cases.
Well, ha-ha, you might say. How about the fact that the Supreme Court reviews state cases that were based on Miranda, on direct appeal. Doesn’t that prove that it’s a constitutional question?
Well, ha-ha, I say right back. If a state relies on federal law in reaching a decision, it is well-settled that federal courts may review that decision. In fact, there are some states that have boiler-plate language in every appellate decision that says something like, “We review this case under state law, using federal case law not as authority but only as an aid to our analysis.” This language presumably forestalls federal direct review of questions of law.
But wait, I hear you cry. Miranda v. Arizona was itself a state case. Doesn’t that make a difference?
sigh
Not really. The Miranda decision was actually combined three other cases which each presented the question of voluntariness of confessions: Vignera v. New York (from the New York Court of Appeals), Westover v. United States (from the Ninth Circuit), and California v. Stewart (from the Supreme Court of California). In each case, the defendant, while in police custody, was questioned by police or a prosecuting attorney in a room in which he was cut off from the outside world. None of the defendants was given a complete warning of his rights at the outset of the interrogation process.
The Court held that unless adequate protective devices are employed to dispel the compulsion inherent in custodial surroundings, no statement obtained from the defendant can truly be the product of his free choice. This general concept is binding on the states. The Court does not, however, mandate a particular form of “protective device” upon the states or Congress:
This language is also clear. It identifies the “Miranda warnings” as a recommended prophylactic measure, but does not compel adherence to them; in fact, it specifcally contemplates the states, and Congress, fashioning their own rules.
So, a brief answer would be: no, the fact that states use the Miranda requirements does not prove anything, one way or the other.
Ever-conscious of wearing out my welcome, and rambling on too long, I chose to cut out the discussion on federal supervisory rule-making power, since your question was limited to applicability to the states. Details, however, on request.
A person may not vicariously assert another’s Constitutional rights. An illegal search of my house that turns up evidence that damages both you and me is not admissible as to me, but perfectly admissible as to you, assuming you had no expectation of privacy in my house. If you did, of course, then your own rights were also violated, and you could assert a defense of your own.
In the hypothetical above, then, if the information provided by the driver were used to locate the boyfriend, and the police had probable cause to arrest the boyfriend, then that arrest is valid, the search incident to the arrest is also valid, and any evidence found is the fruit of a lawful search, and presumptively admissible.
Otto speculates:
Actually, Otto, if you were a district judge basing a decision on point 1, and I an appellate judge, I would affirm you on other grounds. You hit the nail on the head: the search violated the driver’s rights, not the boyfriend’s. The “poison tree” isn’t poisonous as applied to the boyfriend, so its fruit is similarly untainted.
Inevitable discovery is a relatively recent addition to our case law. It arises from the Supreme Court case Nix. v. Williams, a 1984 Iowa case. In Nix, a 10-year-old girl disappeared in Des Moines, Iowa. Nix was arrested in connection with the crime in Davenport. The police told Nix’s lawyer that they would drive respondent back to Des Moines without questioning him. However, during the trip back, one of the officers began a conversation with Nix that resulted in Nix’s making incriminating statements and directing the officers to the child’s body. A systematic search of the area that was being conducted with the aid of 200 volunteers and that had been started before Nix made the incriminating statements was stopped when Nix showed the officers the exact location of the body. The body was discovered in the direct path of the searchers.
At trial, Nix sought to suppress his statements, his knowledge of the body, and the body itself and related autopsy evidence, all as fruit of the poison tree. His statements and knowledge were suppressed, but the body’s location and condition were admitted. The Supreme Court upheld this conviction, ruling that, under the circumstances, it was inevitable that the team of searchers would have found the body, and the evidence would have been available to the state, even if the tainted confession had not been used.
In order to avail itself of the doctrine of inevitable discovery, the state must show by clear and convincing evidence that, even if the police misconduct had not occurred, the evidence would have come to light.
In this case, I don’t think we have enough facts to argue inevitable discovery to a clear and convincing standard. The record is devoid of any evidence concerning other police procedures being used to search for the boyfriend. It is only speculation that he might have been found without the traffic stop – indeed, there is no information in the Spencer record that even suggests the boyfriend was ever found.
Still, as I said, the boyfriend’s arrest would be legitimate, as he has no standing to complain about the illegal stop of his friend’s car.
