In England if your rights have been violated you bring an action against the police. That way the perpetrators of the offense (the police) are the ones punished, not the victims of the original crime.

Theoretical opinions of why systems without the exclusionary rule won’t work aren’t relevant because we have practical examples in many countries. Are there consistent and egregious violations against personal rights committed by the police in England because of their lack of the exclusionary rule?

I thought you didn't like trial lawyers.

This is the first time I've heard you suggest that we should follow Western Europe in anything.

That the suggestion comes in the context of protecting Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights is something I find particularly curious.

I won't debate the exclusionary rule. I think that without a rule protecting citizens from unlawful search and seizure, you've no business calling yourself a democracy (and utterly no business at all prancing around telling any other nation they'd better become a democracy).

But regarding your first point, you can sue the police here. You can also sue the fed govt, the states, the city and any other municipal entity you can serve. But sovereign immunity and exceedingly high standards make the chance of success really low, unless you've got some Rodney King or Abner Louima type of case. Trya a 1983 against the cops. The standard is next to impossible to reach unless the behavior is so egregious that there's no question the case must be settled immediately.

Shhhh. Spanky doesn't realize that you can sue the police here, too, but that his fellow tort-reformers have made it all but impossible to win.

He also doesn't realize that if such suits were easier to win, the by virtue of respondeat superiore you would still be punishing society at large.

Which one of you guys get the win against Spanky? Way. To. Go. !!!!!

I can't believe I am even having to argue this. The exclusionary rule destroys confidence in our legal system. In almost every cop show, TV movie and any other show about the police criminals are getting off because of the Exclusoinary rule. The exclusionary rule is the most consistently and universally aspect of our criminal justice system that is critisized. Whether or not that is reality is not that important. In public life perception is reality.

And why shouldn't this rule lessen people's confidence in our system's ability to dispense justice. Only a person that has had their mind twisted by law school could come up with a rationalization of why the corpse of a tortured and molested four year old child found in a molesters home could not be used as evidence because the police didn't get the right search warrant. Such an idea goes against common sense. If people don't respect the legal system it can't operate efficienty. As long as we have the exclusionary rule the average person won't respect our system or lawyers.

The one main argument for the exclusionary rule is that it protects our rights. Without it the police would trudge over our rights willy nilly. Well if that is the case, why doesn't this happen in any other country? Are civil liberties consistenly trounced and disregarded in England, Denmark, Norway and Holland? Has their lack of an exclusionary rule turned them into police states? NO. So then why can't we do the same? Do the people in these countrys possess some talent our resourcers that we lack? Why do we have to hold on to this rule that has such heinous outcomes when other countrys don't need it?

In addition, the United States seems to have thrived without the exclusionary rule for at least its first one hundred and fifty years of existence. It was just made up by the courts. Why all of a sudden has it become necessary where it wasn't before.

People are saying that guilty people getting off on a technicality doesn't happen much in real life. In my opinion if one murderer or child molester gets off because of a technicality that is one time too many.

In sum:

1) We don't need the rule. Any argument against that is ridiculous on its face because if other democracies can thrive without it, certainly we can.
2) When implemented it can have heinous consequences.
3) It destroys people's confidence in the legal system.

There is simply no reason to keep it.

Nor can I, Spanky. Nor can I. If this twit can't understand why we need to shape criminal justice policy based on what makes good drama on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, then there's just no helping him.

As a member of that society, how would you rather pay?

1) Higher taxes to cover police damages suits (or salaries or insurance).

2) By having criminals roam the streets.

Calling out SD Legislature
 

As the new SD abortion law hurtles its way through the judicial system, commentators are examining the language of the law and uncovering interesting caveats. Prof. Samuel Buell of UT Law School writes in today's LATimes:

• WHAT IF THE Supreme Court overrules Roe vs. Wade by allowing South Dakota's new abortion statute to pass constitutional review? Abortion, which has been governed in our time by constitutional law, again would be a matter of criminal law. The chief question would be: Who goes to prison?
  
  South Dakota's legislators included this language in their new law: "Nothing in this act may be construed to subject the pregnant mother upon whom any abortion is performed or attempted to any criminal conviction and penalty." If abortion is a crime, why excuse the woman from punishment?

Indeed. Buell rather methodically examines and then knocks down possible public policy arguments for such an exception, eventually concluding:

• In truth, if, as the South Dakota Legislature emphatically has said, abortion is a crime against human life, only one explanation exists for the decision to excuse the pregnant woman from criminal responsibility: political strategy. If the public believed that banning abortion would mean jailing women, those who seek to criminalize abortion could not hope to achieve their goal.
  
  Debate about the constitutional right to privacy and the future of Roe vs. Wade should not obscure the serious flaw at the heart of criminal abortion laws. With a legal exemption for the woman, such laws are either intentionally discriminatory or devoid of rational justification. Without such an exemption, they are politically doomed.

He's right. Unless the legislators of SD obtain more pleasure from the sight of the jailing of doctors instead of the women that request their services, then they lack the courage of their professed convictions, such as they are. Bunch of fucking cowards, each and every one of them.

Gattigap

Are you bothered that they're playing politics, or bothered that they're winning?

Both.

If they had this new criminal statute to have criminal punishment of some sort, it would at least have the virtue of being intellectually honest.

If we're entering this beautiful Post-Roe period in which we have a fifty-state debate on when abortion should be illegal and why, we should at least have a debate in which each side is willing to acknowledge the practical effects of its policy. Declaring that abortion is murder (as I believe SD's culture-of-life legislators did declare here) and therefore illegal under almost every circumstance but excusing culpability to a critical actor is preposterous as a matter of public policy, and only makes sense if you're trying to make it politically palatable.

The Army of God just kills the Doctors. They pray for the moms.

Shhhh. You're exposing the Achilles Heel of SD's new law for other legislatures who might try to pass similar measures. This flaw could be the basis upon which to strike it without getting to the privacy issue at the heart of Roe.

1. Do criminal defense for a while. You don't even know what the fuck you're talking about, and you're making an ass out of yourself in this debate. Your comparison of this nation to European nations - as though we were interchangeable (disregarding the innumerable cultural/geographic/size differences) - makes you sound a shade below Mortin Downey. O'Reilly wouldn't hamfistedly make the absurd and uninformed statements you've made on this issue. Until you spend a couple years actually dealing with the police and FBI, I suggest you shy away from this debate.

2. Agreed. But they exceedingly rare. More damage is done by early paroles granted to assuage overcrowding in jails than by th exclusionary rule. A court which has a known guilty party in its hands finds a way around the exclusionary rule.

3. Nonsense. You couldn't hope to back this staement up with a stitch of hard facts. That's your opinion.

If you find Uncle Sam indicting you someday, you'll need it. You'll want it. You'll think differently. Our Govt can ruin innocent people's lives, and it does, every day. Until you've seen it up close, you don't fully understand it. You're talking shit here and you've no fucking clue. If you were investigated - if you were audited - if you stood in court while law enforcement agents perjured themselves - you'd get it. When the mob mentality of any law enforcement agency takes hold and its mindless agents decide you belong in jail, they'll do anything and everything to put you there, rules and ethics and morality be damned. You'll want any rule you can use then. When its the system versus you, and your liberty is on the line, you deserve every benefit the rules can give you.