This article was about a man, Bradley Harrison, who was stopped by Canadian police in 2004 because of “license plate confusion” (Liptak, 2008) and was arrested after an officer did an unlawful search of the car and found several million dollars worth of cocaine in the car’s trunk. “Without minimizing the seriousness of the police officer’s conduct or in any way condoning it,” the Court of Appeal for Ontario ruled in Mr. Harrison’s case in February, “the exclusion of 77 pounds of cocaine, with a street value of several millions of dollars and the potential to cause serious grief and misery to many, would bring the administration of justice into greater disrepute than would its admission.” The case is now before the Canadian Supreme Court.” (Liptak, 2008).
My take on this exclusionary rule is that it should not be. I feel this way because if some damning evidence is found “illegally” by a cop, it should be used. Especially if it will put away a murder, child pornographer, rapist, or a thief. I feel that it would be stupid to pull someone over and illegally, maybe accidentally on the policeman’s part, search their car and find out they are a serial killer, but we couldn’t use that evidence against them in court and it would be thrown out? I totally disagree with the exclusionary rule because if evidence is found that will put a dangerous person in prison, that’s on the streets, why not do it? The criminal did not care about rights or people or the law when they committed the crime, so why should they get the respect of the United States government?
No comments:
Post a Comment