Denver criminal defense lawyer / defending the exclusionary rule

On this blog, I recently talked about the exclusionary rule and how it is one of a Denver criminal defense lawyer's most important tools. In that post, I alluded to some criticism of that rule. The exclusionary rule typically tends to be criticized the most out of any part of the criminal justice process. Many people see the rule as a "technicality" that allows guilty people to go free. To many in the general public, the rule simply serves slimy Denver criminal defense lawyers in their quest to let criminals roam the streets (or something like that). To them, it has nothing to do with justice or civil rights.

The most famous criticism (or maybe just the most elegant phrasing of this criticism) was Judge Cardozo's observation that the "criminal goes free because the constable has blundered." Of course there is some truth here. The remedy of not letting the evidence in to the trial has no real relation to the wrong committed by the cop. The cop is not punished by the suppression. The people (who are the plaintiff in the case against a defendant) did not do anything wrong. And yet they "lose" because somebody who committed a crime is released. Basically the theory here is that two wrongs balance each other out. Which everybody learned at about age 6 is not the case. You didn't have to go to law school to figure that out.

The issue comes when we try to think of a better way to deal with this. I don't really believe that every wrong requires something to right it. There are simply some things that will be unfair and will suck. But I firmly believe (and believed this before becoming a Denver criminal defense attorney) that the 4th Amendment cannot be one of these. The 4th Amendment is too crucial a guarantee of individual rights.

That said, the alternative remedies to the exclusionary rule fall way short. The only one I've ever seen proposed with any semblance of chance of working is allowing people to sue for violation of their 4th amendment rights. That sounds fine, until you realize you'd be regularly asking juries to award judgments against themselves (the taxpayer). Also, juries like cops, and would be unlikely to side with the plaintiff in these cases. So there are very few options to remedy a civil liberties violation. The exclusionary rule is about the best we've got.