Hi list,
Reflecting a bit on parallel construction, it seems to me that no
matter how sophisticated the system, you _cannot_ have a perfect
firewall between the illegal surveillance used to target an individual
and the officers who appear to use legal means in order to make the
arrest. Here are the reasons why:
* somehow, someone must communicate to the arresting officers where to
go and what to look for, and that is almost certainly not part of their
normal patrol
* having a perfect firewall would potentially put the arresting officers
in danger. If the officers truly have no idea that the "random" stop
they are instructed to make is going to be a drug kingpin, they aren't
going to be too crazy about participating.
* people like to talk
What if defense lawyers banded together, read through the leaked
documents about parallel construction, and created a standardized series
of questions to ask officers on the stand for cases where parallel
construction is a possibility? These questions could be cleverly
constructed to have a broad application-- succinctly covering most of
the known and likely scenarios-- while at the same time requiring direct
yes-or-no answers from the officers. If they cover their bases then
officers who made the arrests using parallel construction would either
have to a) be evasive and dodge some of the questions or b) perjure
themselves.
Now nobody wants to perjure themselves in a courtroom. But even more
than that, nobody wants to be part of a group that is systematically
perjuring themselves in the courtroom. The more members of the group
there are, the more any particular member of the group may be subject to
unpredictable repercussions. So either the testimony in cases that use
parallel construction becomes ineffectual due to chronic evasiveness,
_or_ the cost to the officers testifying becomes too great for them to
willingly participate in the program. Or maybe a little of both.
Finally, this wouldn't have any harmful effect on officers who make
arrests that aren't part of parallel constructions. They'd just
continue doing their jobs.
Best,
Jonathan
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