{"id":143,"date":"2016-10-23T16:50:46","date_gmt":"2016-10-23T20:50:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fys-rca-bowie\/?p=143"},"modified":"2016-10-23T16:50:46","modified_gmt":"2016-10-23T20:50:46","slug":"good-faith-or-abuse-of-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fys-rca-bowie\/2016\/10\/23\/good-faith-or-abuse-of-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Good faith or abuse of power?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The case of United States v. Leon (1984)<\/i> addresses whether or not evidence can be suppressed if the warrant the evidence was obtained under is found to be invalid. The case is a result of a tip in 1981 from an unreliable source who\u00a0said that Patsy Stewart and Armando Sanchez were selling drugs in both a house in Burbank, CA and at another location. Going off this tip, the police placed the house under surveillance, and while doing so saw Ricardo Del Castillo\u2019s car, who had a history of drug possession. After going through Del Castillo\u2019s probation records, it became clear that he had been associating with Alberto Leon. Based on these observations, surveillance and informants, the police secured a warrant from a judge, which led to the arrest of all four defendants. <\/span><\/p>\n

At trial, the defendant\u2019s lawyers argued that the evidence found under the warrant should be suppressed, as it was based on outdated observations and unreliable informants. The prosecution agreed with the defendants, but argued that the evidence should not be discarded, as the officers did not intentionally violate the Fourth Amendment during their search. <\/span><\/p>\n

Justice White wrote the opinion for the Court and concluded that as long as the officers acted in good faith, the evidence should not be suppressed. He argues that without this principal, guilty offenders could receive no or lesser sentences based on a technicality. The Court believes that as long as there is a \u201cdetached and neutral magistrate\u201d issuing the warrant, then there is a safeguard in place to ensure that the magistrates are not simply \u201ca rubber stamp for the police\u201d (U.S. v. Leon<\/em> 1984, 507). Furthermore, the Court believes that the warrant can always be rejected lated during trial if there appears to be \u201cimproper analysis\u201d on the issuing magistrates part (U.S. v. Leon<\/em> 1984, 507). Therefore, the good faith exception only applies to situations where all parties involved, including the magistrate and law enforcement, were acting in good faith and not intentionally trying to deceive or be dishonest when obtaining the warrant. <\/span><\/p>\n

The problem with this is, at least in my opinion, is that this assume that all law enforcement officers and judges are acting in good faith at all times. It does not take into consideration human motivations or error. One of the reasons that the Court gives for upholding the good faith rule is that judges can be \u201cdetached and neutral\u201d since they \u201chave no stake in the outcome of particular criminal prosecutions\u201d (U.S. v. Leon<\/em> 1984, 508). Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Many judges are elected, and therefore do have a \u201cstake\u201d in different cases. Even though some of these judges may not be magistrates issuing warrants, it is too easy for this kind of scenario to lead to corruption. <\/span><\/p>\n

As seen in Just Mercy<\/em>, there were multiple times when this type of corruption occurred. In one particular instance, Judge Key personally called Stevenson and told him to drop the case, even though he was supposed to not have a \u201cstake\u201d in the outcome. While I am sure that this is the exception and not the norm, it does prove the it can happen. Even though the Court argues that law enforcement and the judicial system are not the same entity, too often their jobs and motivations can overlap. While the Court argues that the abuse of power can be stopped by a check and balance system, it is too easy for this system to be overridden. Therefore, I disagree with the judgement of the Court and wonder how many times this type of power has been abused? How many innocent people have beens sent to jail from this exception? <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The case of United States v. Leon (1984) addresses whether or not evidence can be suppressed if the warrant the evidence was obtained under is found to be invalid. The case is a result of a tip in 1981 from an unreliable source who\u00a0said that Patsy Stewart and Armando Sanchez …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3186,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60377],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-v-leon","column","twocol"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fys-rca-bowie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fys-rca-bowie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fys-rca-bowie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fys-rca-bowie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3186"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fys-rca-bowie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fys-rca-bowie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fys-rca-bowie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fys-rca-bowie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fys-rca-bowie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}