3 ms·

Illegally collected evidence is by its definition not reliable.

• pluma 10y ago
  Not really. There are reliable ways to collect evidence that might still be illegal. For example it might be illegal to search a diplomat in the same way as would be legal for an ordinary civilian. But there's no obvious reason why evidence gathered from a non-permissible search would be less reliable than from a permissible one by default. Likewise although it is true that torture is not a good means of gathering intelligence or extracting confessions (because there's a clear incentive for people to make up things just to stop the suffering) if the information can be verified it could still reasonably be considered evidence that the tortured person possessed perpetrator's knowledge. "Evidence" is never absolute. Even if you have a video recording of a suspect shooting and killing a victim and then walking into police custody that's still not a 100% guarantee. Evidence is however cumulative (beyond a certain threshold anyway). You rarely base a conviction on a single piece of evidence alone.