[tptacek]

Parallel construction should be unlawful. The point of the exclusionary rule for evidence is to address the incentives of law enforcement. It's not a recognition that specific pieces of evidence are somehow tainted and untrustworthy. That's a broken premise parallel construction seems to rely on.

But then a follow-on question: for the big 3 EU countries, what are the exclusionary principle rules? From a little research last year, I know that the exclusionary rule in the UK is more complicated than it is in the US.

[Tomte]

Germany: none at all (barring extreme cases), and that's really the overwhelming mainstream opinion of German scholars. Only defenders lament it.

The idea is that much harm comes from letting people walk, just because the police did an honest mistake. Or even a willful, outrageous thing.

Punishing the police officer should be enough to deter such behavior.

I think that it's a reasonable stance, but I'm not invested into it much.

I tend to see it as another example where we try to find a reasoned and weighted position, whereas America usually takes a very black and white approach.

I don't mean that disparagingly, it's a valid position. Just an observation.

[pluma]

IMO this is unquestionably a good thing about German law. There have been a few rare cases of "rogue police officers" (there was a case a few years ago where a police officer tortured a suspect because he wanted to save a child, which led to a huge debate about the morality of it all over the media) but the system seems to be good at making those the very rare exception.

Of course evidence still retains its context. An admission made under torture, for example, is likely to be considered inherently invalid because it is extremely unreliable. This is actually a bit ironic (Morissettian irony, not literal irony) if you consider that the US is engaging in systematic torture to extract bullshit intel out of terrorist suspects (whereas reliable evidence provided by a police investigation could be dismissed because of mere formalities).

[hundt]

Do the police officers actually get punished in Germany?

[Tomte]

At least every prosecutor's office has a whole department dealing only with crimes committed by officials, and I guess they're not just sitting around. :-)

I believe it's just like you would expect if you knew nothing about Germany: many crimes are punished, many aren't.

For whatever reason, and yes, cronyism and a certain reluctance to prosecute does happen. But that's a null statement.

I won't claim that reality is great, I just have no reason to believe that police officers regularly get away with major infractions.