Justices Will Hear Case on Evidence Suppression

[Lone_Star_Dem]

Source: New York Times

WASHINGTON — In theory, a criminal-law doctrine known as the exclusionary rule forbids prosecutors from using evidence obtained by the police as the result of an improper search. In practice, the rule has significant exceptions, like for evidence obtained in good faith through reliance on an invalid search warrant or as the result of erroneous information from a court official.

Justices on the current Supreme Court have made no secret of their desire to carve more exceptions out of the nearly 100-year-old exclusionary rule. On Tuesday, the court accepted a new case that could provide a route toward that goal.

The question in the case is whether the list of exceptions should be expanded to include evidence obtained from a search undertaken by officers relying on a careless record-keeping error by the police.

In this instance, officers in Coffee County, Ala., arrested a man, Bennie Dean Herring, in 2004 after being informed by the Sheriff’s Department in neighboring Dale County that he was the subject of an outstanding warrant. But the warrant, although still in Dale County’s computerized database, had in fact been withdrawn five months earlier. In the 10 or 15 minutes it took for the Dale County officers to realize their error, the Coffee County officers had already stopped Mr. Herring, handcuffed him, and searched him and his truck, finding methamphetamine and an unloaded pistol.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/us/20scotus.html?_r=1&ex=1361250000&en=90fcbf26f5ca3b20&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin

[Ian David]

1. If this goes through, expect the cops to make a lot more "errors."

I know one lady who was arrested on an outstanding warrant for unpaid motor vehicle registration, even though the thing was paid-off and vacated a year prior to that. She spent the night in jail and lost her job over it.

[liberal4truth]

4. The cops can use a licence plate obstruction or a light out to stop and search your car.

[noonwitch]

2. I thought the police didn't need anything more than probable cause to search a vehicle

At least, that's what we were told in Driver's education! Maybe individual states differ on that.

[liberal4truth]

3. Where I live the cops use "reasonable suspicion" all the time to pull drivers over for a search.

[bemildred]

5. Police search whomever they want to whenever they want to.

And it's always been that way.