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Oh how I wish that the UK way of admitting illegally obtained evidence spreads around the world. In the EU country I live in, judgments regularly get thrown ou
by nsajko 6y ago
Oh how I wish that the UK way of admitting illegally obtained evidence spreads around the world.
In the EU country I live in, judgments regularly get thrown out after guilt has been established because of technicalities like these. And, yes, this applies to high-profile corruption cases, and, yes, the politicians (and similar stars) proceed to play the ultralegalist card ("everything's OK and we're blameless because we're not in prison") and ignore the fact that the guilt has already been established.
It sometimes even happens that a journalist records a call with some scum like that, gets a boast/confession out of them, and almost nobody cares because the call recording is not admissible as evidence without the consent of the guilty party.
I mean, sure, part of the blame lies with the possibly incompetent and/or malicious law enforcement, prosecutors and the judiciary; but the justification for the rules of excluding otherwise valid evidence obtained illegaly just don't make a lot of sense to me, especially as they tip the scales against a fair society and towards corruption.
- conanbatt 6y agoAccepting Illegally obtained evidence is accepting legally planted evidence. But I think I have an even stronger argument, which is that in a system where the state can get evidence any way, is a system where everyone can be made a criminal and prosecuted at the absolute discretion of power.
- nsajko 6y ago> Accepting Illegally obtained evidence is accepting legally planted evidence. Whether evidence is illegally obtained is independent from whether it is planted. Or am I missing something? Similarly with your second point.
- conanbatt 6y agoIllegally searching might mean that you can look for any evidence for any reason anywhere. That means you can plant evidence anywhere, because you never need to justify how to find it or why. On the second one: you might be surprised but it is likely the vast majority of people are breaking the law. Might depend on country, but there are more laws that can even be counted in the United states: very likely you are breaking some!