The general idea is that the integrity of the criminal justice system is at least an order of magnitude more important than the outcome of any particular case.

> Isn't it the court's job to establish guilt?

No, that's the prosecutors' job.

The Court's job is ensure that the defendant receives due process.

It's arguably impossible to have a perfect justice system. So, you have to try to construct the best one you can.

While the exclusionary rule does allow guilty people to go free, that negative is arguably overwhelmingly outweighed by keeping innocent people out of prison, providing equal protection to all, and maintaining public faith in the criminal justice system.

One can argue that the system as implemented doesn't do such a good job of providing those three outcomes, but if we assume it does, wouldn't you agree maintaining such a system is more important than ensuring every last (actual) criminal who makes it to trial is convicted?

It also strikes directly at the incentive structure for defendants.

If you prove that the government wronged you but even then you still go to jail, you have little incentive to spend your resources proving that. And neither does anybody else, because prosecutors are not very interested in looking for prosecutorial misconduct.

But if proving government misconduct will keep you out of jail then you have every incentive to do it and the government won't be able to get away with it as much.

There are too many bad laws out there. If I meet a bad guy, I can defend myself. If I cross the government, I'm doomed. I much rather support things that increase my likelihood of meeting a bad guy that I can defend myself against while reducing my ability to cross the government and being doomed without recourse. This is the whole reason I justify that it is better to let 99 guilty go free than to jail 1 innocent (assuming the government doesn't also take away my ability to defend myself, which it does seem intent on doing).

The *principle* is that one is innocent until proven guilty.

The reality is that not every person adheres to that principle in every situation when it comes their own internal judgement of people.

> I'm not interested in weakening this fundamental right to accommodate people who are uncomfortable admitting the fallibility of the police or our justice system.

The problem is that they aren't asking you to accommodate them. They already are there, perfectly accommodated, in the state of prematurely judging people's innocence.

The reality is that any policy has to work by improving this not ideal situation.

I think that's a fine ideal (that I agree with), but I don't think any reverence for it is shared by many in law enforcement or the legal profession in general. Conviction rates are king, and incentives are often not aligned with true justice.

Isn't the latter the official standard most places? Innocent until proven guilty. It's just not really a dilemma if you ask me. If you have authority to do something based on some event, then you have to prove that event happened.

When someone keeps violating their parole you start asking them to justify why you shouldn't send them back to jail.

We're past the trial phase. The guilt of corporations has already long been established over the past 100+ years. Furthermore, I am not the government and am not required to give them the presumption of innocence.

On a personal note, my great-great-grandfather didn't die shooting Pinkertons for nothing.

I don’t know how popular this is, or at least how popular it should be.

Conviction is based on the extremely high bar of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This is the standard for depriving a person of their liberty.

Society rightly does not operate at that standard. Conviction was never meant to be a proxy for whether you ought to do business with somebody.

Think about killers who “got off on a technicality,” where everyone knew they were guilty. Or open criminals who for whatever reason were unable to face a jury, like many mass shooters. It just doesn’t make sense to say “well the courts never formally convicted them so we have a duty to defend them.”

Sorry if this is long-winded. I am just alarmed by this trend of equating legal standards with social standards.

The entire western criminal justice system is FOUNDED on the idea that it should let guilty go free if that avoids convicting the innocent. Criminal justice system which convicts innocent people is by its own foundational definition something that needs to be scrapped and reworked.

So find another way to punish it. Why should that get some off of a criminal charge. Most of world has no such rule.

And the point of a good-faith exemption is because allowing good-faith fucks up to be used as evidence doesn't increase (much) the likelihood of violations.

>Better to let one guilty person go free than to injure and possibly lock up a hundred innocent people.

But throwing out ill gotten evidence after it was obtained doesn't decrease the chances of locking up innocent people.

Well, not really, that's more about simply being accused not being enough to imprison or hang you.

The principles of the law makes it clear that it's far, far worse to have an innocent person in jail that a guilty person go free. Many legal principles revolve around this.

Reminds me of something my dad always told me, "I'd rather see 10 guilty people walk free, than have 1 innocent person in jail."

True, but I see a bigger problem with sentencing being based on conduct that the defendant was acquitted of. The concept is supposed to be that if you were acquitted, you didn't commit the crime.

While I understand why this is true, I hate it about our legal system. If you're not guilty then you shouldn't be coerced into a plea because of the draconian maximum punishment they hold over your head.

This is evident nowhere more clearly than drug convictions, where they can lock you up for the rest of your life because you're doing something they don't like.

Not anymore. Now what happens is that once you are targeted all these laws that aren't enforced normally are pulled out, and you end up with an insane maximum potential time spent in prison. At which point a relatively light plea deal is offered. Even if you are innocent, unless you are rich enough to have money to afford a good lawyer, it isn't worth fighting. And even if you are rich, the prosecutor can just fine tune the plea deal until it is better than fighting the charge. This has strongly tilted the system now that most people (something around 90% if memory serves) do not get their day in front of a jury.

The great virtue of private industry over government is the ease with which you can opt out.

Except pretrial detention, which is where bail comes in, is done prior to adjudication (plea bargain, trial, etc.), not after.

As such, the folks we're talking about haven't been convicted of anything. And if, as is supposed to be the case, that one is innocent until proven guilty, you're advocating for innocent people to be punished.

Is that actually your stance on this, or were you not understanding the situation?

This is different from what I wrote. When there's a serious punishment like the death penalty, then any ounce of doubt should waive it. Other lesser punishments can still hold if evidence is strong enough.