Except in your ludicrous analogy, it's as if God were able to step in after the murder, point out that the murder was illegal, and then resurrected you. Sure, you spent some time dead (in jail/on trial), but afterwards you're free to go.
And it absolutely deters offenders, as prosecutors and cops aren't fans of failing to prosecute someone because they fucked up and illegitimized the evidence they planned on using.
I mean, sure, that particular cop got to laugh at your texts to your ex, but as far as evidence goes, it's a slam dunk for you.
Cops easily get around this with parallel construction. They illegally read your texts about you going to go pick up some drugs, then pull you over for "driving erratically" and "accidently" stumble upon the drugs you bought. The police do not care about your rights.
That's the kind of faith in the system that only people who have never seen it in action still have.
A friend got pulled over for speeding. Cop did not clock their speed, at trial they did not even know the speed limit for the road. Judge "seems legit, your guilty."
That's not really doing anything. We don't do anything.
What we do is violate someone's rights and then hope we don't get caught. Police are likely to cover up for other police.
In the meantime, the person gets arrested. May or may not be able to post bail and may or may not be able to afford a lawyer. The longer he sits in jail, the more likely it is to severely mess up his life. Some places will let someone go or suspend them just for being arrested.
It is unlikely that the prosecutor refuses to prosecute because someone's rights might have been violated. So we take it to court. The public defender might have spent very little time on the case, and may or may not bring up the violation. The prosecutor definitely doesn't, and they might get found guilty.
If the defendent is really lucky, somewhere like the ACLU picks up his case and it goes to the surpreme court, like this one. Now this is where we really don't do anything:
We've completely screwed up this person's life. They get no compensation for the rights violation. Most times, the police nor prosecutor do not receive any punishment. And we do absolutely nothing for other folks in the same situation. Absolutely nothing. Their rights have been violated too - but they weren't public.
The checks and balances the system is supposed to have are broken. Simply broken. And we don't have the inclination to fix any of it. We refuse to hold different bits in the chain accountable and we refuse to provide more comprehensive training to the police. We refuse to make sure folks have adequate defense when they cannot hire an attorney - and in many states we make them pay for the defense nonetheless, regardless of how poor they actually are.
> The court system is the check against officers violating rights
It's supposed to be, but in reality it certainly isn't. What happens when officers go to court? Oh wait, usually they don't. And when they do, they usually aren't convicted. And when they're convicted, they usually don't get strict sentences.