Quote:
Originally posted by Spanky
What I think you are ignoring is the corrosive effect on the system of finding relevent evidence and the pretending it is not there. I believe it is much better if the evidence is not found in the first place.
I think the exclusionary rule brought a huge backlash against the system in the 1970 and 1980s. I think it was this atmosphere let led to sentencing guidelines, more focus on the death penalty, locking up everyone person involved in drugs we can find. In my experience peoples biggest complaint about the judicial system is people still talk about people getting off on "technicalities". A lawyer maybe able to rationalize excluding probative evidence, but it is a very hard conecept to get across to the public. As I understand it from my friends in the DA's office, judges do all sorts of rational gymansastics to avoid the effects of the exclusionary rule. It encourages Cops to lie and for the judges to believe those lies no matter how crazy they are - which further corrodes the integrity of the system.
You can't unring a bell, but somehow people that designed our system think you can.
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I do not think the exclusionary rule was the only element in that backlash.
