Re: Legal System Struggles With How to React When Wicket Keepers Lie

[Husband of All FBI n NSA Agents]

"Calvin" <cal...@phlegm.com> wrote in message
news:op.uoq0u...@1ls2-2c084.staff.ad.bond.edu.au...
>
> Fixed typo
>
> --
>
> cheers,
> calvin

Democracy is better than dicatorship because cops in a democracy lie and
send you to prison while dictatorships force you to go to prison without a
trial.
LOL

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123319367364627211.html

a.. LAW JOURNAL
a.. JANUARY 29, 2009
Legal System Struggles With How to React When Police Officers Lie
By AMIR EFRATI
It's one of the most common accusations by defendants and defense
attorneys -- that police officers don't tell the truth on the witness stand.

Of course, defendants themselves can be the ones lying, but the problem of
police perjury -- and what can be done about it -- is being debated anew.
Fueling the discussion are recent court cases in New York City and Boston
that indicated officers may have lied and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this
month that could have broader implications for cases in which improperly
obtained evidence is in dispute.

Questionable testimony by police comes up most often in firearm- or
drug-possession cases in which officers often testify that a defendant had a
bulge in his pocket -- which they thought might be a gun -- or dropped drugs
in plain sight as they approached him, giving the officers the right to
seize the contraband. Defense lawyers say in many of these cases, officers
are "testilying" and that the guns or drugs were actually discovered when
their clients were unjustly frisked by officers. They also say testilying
frequently occurs in more serious cases.

In Boston, a federal judge last week ruled that a police officer there
falsely testified at a pretrial hearing in a gun-possession case about the
circumstances of the defendant's arrest. The judge, Mark Wolf, is
considering sanctions against the prosecutor for not immediately disclosing
that the officer's testimony contradicted what he told prosecutors
beforehand.

A federal judge in Brooklyn, N.Y., last fall ruled that a U.S. marshal and a
New York City police officer lied when they testified that a defendant
dropped two bags of drugs in front of them and then invited the officers to
his apartment, where he revealed a large cache of cocaine.

Though few officers will confess to lying -- after all, it's a crime -- work
by researchers and a 1990s commission appointed to examine police corruption
shows there's a tacit agreement among many officers that lying about how
evidence is seized keeps criminals off the street.

To stem the problem, some criminal-justice researchers and academic experts
have called for doing polygraphs on officers who take the stand or requiring
officers to tape their searches.

A Supreme Court ruling this month, however, suggests that a simpler, though
controversial, solution may be to weaken a longstanding part of U.S. law,
known as the exclusionary rule. The 5-4 ruling in Herring v. U.S. that
evidence obtained from certain unlawful arrests may nevertheless be used
against a criminal defendant could indicate the U.S. is inching closer to a
system in which officers might not be tempted to lie to prevent evidence
from being thrown out.

Criminal-justice researchers say it's difficult to quantify how often
perjury is being committed. According to a 1992 survey, prosecutors, defense
attorneys and judges in Chicago said they thought that, on average, perjury
by police occurs 20% of the time in which defendants claim evidence was
illegally seized.

"It is an open secret long shared by prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges
that perjury is widespread among law enforcement officers," though it's
difficult to detect in specific cases, said Alex Kozinski, a federal
appeals-court judge, in the 1990s. That's because the exclusionary rule
"sets up a great incentive for...police to lie."

Police officers don't necessarily agree, says Eugene O'Donnell, a former
police officer and prosecutor who teaches law and police studies in New
York. "Perjury is endemic in the court system, but officers lie less than
defendants do because generally they aren't heavily invested in the outcome
of the cases," he says.

Testilying may have taken off after a 1961 Supreme Court decision boosted
the exclusionary rule by requiring state courts to exclude -- or throw
out -- some evidence seized in illegal searches, such as when police frisk
people without probable cause or search a residence without a warrant.

Immediately after the decision, Mapp v. Ohio, studies showed that the number
of annual drug arrests in the U.S. -- most cases are prosecuted in state
court -- didn't change much but there was a sharp increase in officers
claiming that suspects dropped drugs on the ground. "Either drug users were
suddenly dropping bags all over the place or the cops were still frisking
but saying the guy dropped the drugs," says John Kleinig, a professor at
John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

This month's Supreme Court decision added an exception to the exclusionary
rule by holding that the prosecution of an Alabama man for drug- and
firearm-possession charges was valid, even though the contraband was found
after the man was wrongly arrested and searched. Police officers had
mistakenly thought he was subject to an arrest warrant.

Throwing out evidence because of wrongful searches and arrests "is not an
individual right and applies only where its deterrent effect outweighs the
substantial cost of letting guilty and possibly dangerous defendants go
free," wrote Chief Justice John Roberts.

Civil liberties advocates and defense lawyers say losing the exclusionary
rule would harm the public. "We'd risk far greater invasions of privacy
because officers would have carte blanche to do outrageous activity and act
on hunches all the time," says JaneAnne Murray, a criminal defense lawyer in
New York.

Write to Amir Efrati at amir....@wsj.com