> As the district court correctly ruled in the alternative, the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule supports denial of Maher’s suppression motion because, at the time authorities opened his uploaded file, they had a good faith basis to believe that no warrant was required
So this means this conviction is upheld but future convictions may be overturned if they similarly don't acquire a warrant?
> the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule supports denial of Maher’s suppression motion because, at the time authorities opened his uploaded file, they had a good faith basis to believe that no warrant was required
This "good faith exception" is so absurd I struggle to believe that it's real.
Ordinary citizens are expected to understand and scrupulously abide by all of the law, but it's enough for law enforcement to believe that what they're doing is legal even if it isn't?
What that is is a punch line from a Chapelle bit[1], not a reasonable part of the justice system.
The courts accept good faith arguments at times. They will give reduced sentences or even none at all if they think you acted in good faith. There are enough situations where it is legal to kill someone that there are laws to make it clear that is a legal situation where one person can kill another (hopefully they never apply to you).
Note that this case is not about ignorance of the law. This is I knew the law and was trying to follow it - I just honestly thought it didn't apply because of some tricky situation that isn't 100% clear.
The difference between "I don't know" and "I thought it worked like this" is purely a matter of degrees of ignorance. It sounds like the cops were ignorant of the law in the same way as someone who is completely unaware of it, just to a lesser degree. Unless they were misinformed about the origins of what they were looking at, it doesn't seem like it would be a matter of good faith, but purely negligence.
“Mens rea” is a key component of most crimes. Some crimes can only be committed if the perpetrator knows they are doing something wrong. For example, fraud or libel.
> “Mens rea” is a key component of most crimes. Some crimes can only be committed if the perpetrator knows they are doing something wrong. For example, fraud or libel.
We're talking about orthogonal issues.
Mens rea applies to whether the person performs the act on purpose. Not whether they were aware that the act was illegal.
Let's use fraud as an example since you brought it up.
If I bought an item from someone and used counterfeit money on purpose, that would be fraud. Even if I truly believed that doing so was legal. But it wouldn't be fraud if I didn't know that the money was counterfeit.
At the time, what they did was assumed to be legal because no one had ruled on it.
Now, there is prior case law declaring it illegal.
The ruling is made in such a way to say “we were allowing this, but we shouldn’t have been, so we wont allow it going forward”.
I am not a legal scholar, but that’s the best way I can explain it. The way that the judicial system applies to law is incredibly complex and inconsistent.
This is a deeply problematic way to operate. En masse, it has the right result, but, for the individual that will have their life turned upside down, the negative impact is effectively catastrophic.
This ends up feeling a lot like gambling in a casino. The casino can afford to bet and lose much more than the individual.
Thus, it's not clear that any harm was caused because the right wasn't clearly enshrined and had the police known that it was, they likely would have followed the correct process. There was no intention to violate rights, and no advantage gained from even the inadvertent violation of rights. But the process is updated for the future.
I don't care nearly as much about the 4th amendment when the person is guilty. I care a lot when the person is innocent. Searches of innocent people is costly for the innocent person and so we require warrants to ensure such searches are minimized (even though most warrants are approved, the act of getting on forces the police to be careful). If a search was completely not costly to innocent I wouldn't be against them, but there are many ways a search that finds nothing is costly to the innocent.
If the average person is illegally searched, but turns out to be innocent, what are the chances they bother to take the police to court? It's not like they're going to be jailed or convicted, so many people would prefer to just try to move on with their life rather than spend thousands of dollars litigating a case in the hopes of a payout that could easily be denied if the judge decides the cops were too stupid to understand the law rather than maliciously breaking it.
Because of that, precedent is largely going to be set with guilty parties, but will apply equally to violations of the rights of the innocent.
I want guilty people to go free if their 4th amendment rights are violated, thats the only way to ensure police are meticulous about protecting peoples rights
This specific conviction upheld, yes. But no, this ruling doesn't speak to whether or not any future convictions may be overturned.
It simply means that at the trial court level, future prosecutions will not be able to rely on the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule if warrantless inculpatory evidence is obtained under similar circumstances. If the governement were to try to present such evidence at trial and the trial judge were to admit it over the objection of the defendant, then that would present a specific ground for appeal.
This ruling merely bolsters the 'better to get a warrant' spirit of the Fourth Amendment.
So this means this conviction is upheld but future convictions may be overturned if they similarly don't acquire a warrant?