Supreme Court Eases Limits on Evidence

[groovedaddy]

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that evidence obtained from an unlawful arrest based on careless record keeping by the police may be used against a criminal defendant.

The 5-to-4 decision revealed competing conceptions of the exclusionary rule, which requires the suppression of some evidence obtained through police misconduct, and suggested that the court’s commitment to the rule was fragile.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said that the exclusion of evidence should be a last resort and that judges should use a sliding scale in deciding whether particular misconduct by the police warranted suppressing the evidence they had found.

“To trigger the exclusionary rule,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “police conduct must be sufficiently deliberate that exclusion can meaningfully deter it, and sufficiently culpable that such deterrence is worth the price paid by the justice system.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/washington/15scotus.html?th&emc=th

[emlev]

1. Horrid. Heard this on Democracy Now! this morning.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued a dissenting opinion. Thank you, Justice Ginsburg.

[groovedaddy]

2. NY Times editorial response: The Fourth Amendment Diluted

With a lamentable 5-to-4 ruling on Wednesday, the Supreme Court carved a new exception to the nearly century-old exclusionary rule, which forbids prosecutors from using evidence obtained by the police as the result of an improper search. The result was a meaningful dilution of Americans’ Fourth Amendment protections and one more instance of the court’s conservative majority upsetting precedent without admitting that it is doing so.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/opinion/16fri2.html?th&emc=th

[happyslug]

3. Here is the Opinion

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/08pdf/07-513.pdf

[mcnamara09]

4. The American Criminal Justice System

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