> Question for Brin-Law... > Last night on West Wing here (probably 3 seasons ago there...) the Joint > Chiefs wanted to arrest a major terrorism sponsor, and they had hard > evidence linking him to a barracks bombing, including forensic chemical > analysis, money trails etc. All this because a prisoner under torture > gave them a tip which started them looking in the right direction. Once > they had a starting point they pieced together a convincing argument > which was based entirely on evidence and not on the prisoner's tip. > The judge ruled that all the hard evidence, forensics, documentation, > everything were not admissable in court, and the whole thing collapsed. > (if this is an ongoing story line, as I suspect it is, please don't tell > me the outcome). > > While it is obvious that the evidence gained from the prisoner should > not be admitted, it seems kinda nuts to rule clear hard evidence - proof > of guilt - as inadmissable. Why can't it stand on its own independent of > the tainted evidence, and how permanent is the "tainting" of the hard > evidence? > If the point is to punish the investigators, it punishes society and the > legal system far more the the investigators. (esp in this case where the > investigators acting on the tip were unaware of the source of the > information - the prisoner was interrogated by a foreign power who then > supplied the information to the US.) > > Cheers > Russell C.
You are nowhere near that far behind us in episodes. That was just showed last Nov or so, unless I saw a repeat of a repeat when I first saw it. Ha! Just checked episode guide, it was first showed in MAY, 2002! But Law & Order does this all the time. In fact it was just brought up yesterday when they covered the Johnie Bin Walker sentence. They pointed out that the federal interrogators followed rules that were 30 years old. If they had turned Walker's interrogation over to NYC police, they would have had video tape, stenographers, and both sides' lawyers are there making sure no laws are broken. They were surprised Walker got any jail time. Obviously we should operate using "the end does not justify the means" and they are just showing that all hard evidence that may have been found from an illegal source should be thrown out. It's good actually that judges are setting clear rules, it forces the police to do the exactly right things to make sure a person is convicted. But it's bad when a conviction is thrown out because some lab worker ten years ago wasn't following the rules set in place this year. Kevin T. we abide
