[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.