[ChrisKnott]

It just means they were completely transparent with the court when getting the data, and believed themselves it was lawful.

What’s hard to believe about that? They clearly put some effort into minimising the collateral privacy intrusions.

[superxpro12]

"Sorry we broke the law, but its ok this one time because it would be detrimental to the case".

I mean... slippery slope? Just because they were sincere about it doesnt make it magically ok to use the illegal evidence.

[ChrisKnott]

Well, it potentially does make it “ok” in the sense of being less bad than letting the guy off. That’s why the legal concept exists. There are other contexts where there is no good faith exception, but in this situation there is one.

In this case the crime is a bank robbery which isn’t victimless but most people think of as somewhat “victim-lite”. If the crime was the stranger rape of a little girl then the vast majority of people would have been outraged if the police had not obtained this warrant.

[protocolture]

If the cops believe hard enough anything is legal.

[plagiarist]

In retrospect, the part I quoted is very unclear for what I intended. I should have added more.

What's hard to believe is the data is apparently still allowed in the case. Like... how?

[tsimionescu]

Apparently, the legal understanding is that the Fourth Amendment doesn't guarantee some right that illegally obtained evidence can't be used against you (it merely guarantees that those obtaining the evidence illegally will be punished).

The reason why evidence obtained illegally is generally suppressed is to act as a deterrent to the Government. Even if individual officers were willing to risk their own punishment for illegal search or seizure (say, maybe they believe they are acting for the greater good), the evidence will generally be suppressed so that there is no rational gain from these illegal actions.

However, if the officers who obtained the evidence illegally were acting under good faith, then there is no deterrence obtained from suppressing the evidence they obtained. They did not act to illegally obtain evidence, in a way that they might be deterred from doing again if the evidence is suppressed - they thought they were collecting the evidence legally so they would do this again. So, in this case, there is no point in suppressing the evidence - no one is harmed by it being admitted (because, again, the Fourth Amendment doesn't promise you that illegally obtained evidence would not be used against you, it just promises that the Government will do all it can to avoid illegal search and seizure).

[plagiarist]

That interpretation is insane to me. If all it takes is, "haha, oops," to use evidence gained from an unconstitutional search, people do not actually have Fourth Amendment rights.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, knowing that civil asset forfeiture is a thing.

[tsimionescu]

You have to consider the fact that it's really weird for everyone to know that evidence against you exists, but be forced to pretend it doesn't and hide it from the jury. It's not at all self-evident that this is the only, or the best possible, remedy against the government abusively collecting this evidence from you. Ultimately it's very important for the good functioning of society that guilty parties are appropriately punished and innocent parties are exonerated, and disregarding evidence can harm both goals. It's of course also important that the government doesn't seize your property or violate your privacy without a reasonable cause, but this doesn't necessarily conflict with the primary goal of justice.

Also, the good faith exception is supposed to be relatively weak - it's supposed, at least originally, to only apply in cases where the officers performing the illegal action had no reasonable way of knowing that it is illegal; the original case is quite clear - a search was conducted in one state based on an out-of-state warrant, and that warrant itself was later deemed to have been improperly issued. I find it quite reasonable to say that the officers conducting the search had no reasonable way of knowing that this warrant was problematic. If the good faith doctrine was watered down so much that an "oops, I didn't know I was breaking the law" from an officer is enough, then the problem lies with these standards, not with the principle.

[plagiarist]

I guess I am a 4A absolutist.

The original case is clear that that person's rights were violated. It certainly is reasonable for the officers to believe they could conduct a search in that case, so they should not have consequences. (Officers that do unreasonably violate rights should experience consequences, they currently don't.) But there's nothing in there curing the violation of rights.

It's so weird to me that this is possible. If that happened with other rights, it'd feel like, "oh, yeah, definitely these soldiers shouldn't have been allowed to live here. They do now, though, and will continue to. Sorry."

[qingcharles]

This is mostly true.

You have to remember that evidence exclusion for a constitutional violation is a modern thing, and it is what's known as "judge made," e.g. it wasn't made by legislature, it was invented by the courts. (Miranda warnings are the same -- I remember one time-travel book I was reading where the guy went back to 19th century New York and was complaining about the police beating him and not reading him his rights)

So sometimes it can be kinda hand-wavy and bullshit, especially using the "good faith" exception which has been very over-used in the last decade or so, especially because of new technologies, which gives a get-out clause to the police unless the exact fact pattern of their "search" exactly matched some previous case that was solidified in appellate case law in their state or federal district, or by SCOTUS.

[simoncion]

> ...and it is what's known as "judge made," e.g. it wasn't made by legislature, it was invented by the courts.

In fairness, this describes so much of US law, and is why you can't really understand much of the rules that apply to you without also understanding all of the cases in which those rules were applied in novel ways.

Is it good that things work like that here? I don't think so, but I haven't thought through all of the particulars of another system.

[adastra22]

“Haha oops” isn’t good faith. You’re making a false equivalence here.

[twoodfin]

Because the police got a warrant, exactly as this decision now says was required.

And there's something called the "good-faith exception" for unreasonable warrants: If you get a warrant where it's required (or in this case, where the government tried to argue it wasn't!), and a magistrate grants that warrant, it's a legal warrant so long as all participants were acting in good faith, believing their actions to be legal. Even if a court later finds that the warrant should not have been issued for one reason or another.

This is why Alito was grouchy during oral arguments and in his opinion that the Court took the case in the first place. The police got a warrant, acting in good faith. It allowed them to identify the criminal, who was later convicted. It wasn't clear that any decision by the court on the warrant requirement would have anything but an advisory effect, and SCOTUS doesn't do advisory opinions by longstanding tradition.

[Aerroon]

So, all you need is a magistrate that rubber stamps every warrant and it removes all protections from search and seizure from anyone?

[twoodfin]

Rubber-stamping every warrant without regard for Constitutional and other legal standards would not be operating in good faith.

[rootusrootus]

Would that not, by definition, preclude the argument that the warrant was obtained in good faith?