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Gov't Database Errors Leading To Unconstitutional Searches?
Wired is running a story about a case the Supreme Court will be hearing on Tuesday that relates to searches based on erroneous information in government databases. In the case of Herring vs. US 07-513, the defendant was followed and pulled over based on a records indicating he had a warrant out for his arrest. Upon further review, the local county clerk found the records were in error, and the warrant notification should have been removed months prior. Unfortunately for Herring, he had already been arrested and his car searched. Police found a small amount of drugs and a firearm, for which Herring was subsequently prosecuted. Several friend-of-the-court briefs have been filed to argue this case, some calling for "an accuracy obligation on law enforcement agents [PDF] who rely on criminal justice information systems," and others defending such searches as good-faith exceptions [PDF].
I don't understand, shouldn't any evidence obtained under a false warrant be unusable?
I am against erroneous data. I don't think anyone would be for it (except to manufacture evidence).
So what's the big deal with it? I'll tell you.
The big deal is that if Mr. Herring wasn't an unlicensed gun-toting drug user, the detrimental effects of the bad data would be obvious. But since Mr. Herring is actually a "bad guy" and Americans love to see bad guys put away, it makes it hard for anyone to sympathize with him.
The ACLU couldn't have picked a worse poster child in this case.
IANAL but I'd that this was unwarranted because otherwise it could easily be exploited.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If I make a mistake on my taxes, there are penalties. Some of these may be severe, including jail time.
IANAL, so could someone provide to me the list of penalties or sanctions which could be assigned to the decision makers in this case?
It would make me feel better knowing we're all equal under the eyes of the law.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Playing devil's advocate here....
What's to keep the police from having faulty information in the database, either on everyone, or a modifiable "Error" they can just put on people they don't like?
What kind of audits are in place for this information?
I'm sure the jury's still out on whether any country is a member of the "Free world" until the answers are out on this.
My brother-in-law works at Lowe's, and happened to take a weekday off one week, only to find out through a friend that some US Marshall's were there looking for him (w/ shotguns in tow). -- He sought legal counsel immediately (smart!). -- Turns out, there had been a clerical error when he paid a court fee on a rather mundane charge, they mispelled his name in the court system, and confused him with someone who was on the loose for murder charges! (his lawyer filed the necessary paperwork to get them to realize their mistake though). -- If he had been someone who didn't have the money to get a lawyer though, this could have ended much more badly!
isn't it customary for the courts to throw out illegally obtained evidence? it's my understanding that this is done so as to discourage prosecutors & law enforcement from doing illegal/warrantless searches.
if the courts routinely allowed illegally obtained evidence/testimony/etc. to be used, then it would encourage law enforcement professionals to encroach on the rights of individuals if they think it will get a conviction. if you don't throw out confessions obtained through torture, then law enforcement will start using torture to gain confessions--it's the same principle.
i know that many people hold personal prejudices against drug users, but a corruption of justice is a corruption of justice, regardless of who it happens to. it just happens to drug users and low income individuals more often because they can't defend themselves, and they have more run ins with the law.
one of my good friends in Chicago was a former heroin addict. he was a really friendly guy and a kind and honest person. however, he started using heroin at a very young age. this inevitably landed him in jail. he's in his late 20's now and has been through the system many times on drug possession charges (never for drug dealing or theft, or anything other than drug possession). and he's recounted to me several occasions where he's been wrongly imprisoned due to clerical error.
one time in particular he'd just finished serving time for a drug offense (i think it was something like a 6 month sentence), and the very weekend he got out he was picked up again and taken back to jail. he hadn't broken any laws, but the patrol vehicle computer showed that he had an outstanding warrant. apparently the warrant was issued while he was doing time for his last sentence. the warrant was for an offense registered in a different county, and so they didn't realize that he was already in prison. he knew that there'd been a mistake, but he couldn't make bail and ended up having to spend another few weeks in jail until it was shown that he'd been falsely imprisoned and the warrant shouldn't have been issued in the first place.
"already been convicted of a crime."
I have a disorderly conduct charge that I was convicted of. In PA, this is a misdemeanor.
I was pulled over for "running" a stop sign--I had come to a full stop at a 4 way stop, allowed 2 cars to go through the intersection that been at the intersection before me, and I took my turn. An officer ran the stop to my left (where one of the two cars that went through the intersection had taken their turn), I avoided getting slammed in the rear.
The officer subsequently put his lights on, U turned in the middle o the intersection, and pulled me over. He stated I had run the stop in disgust when I asked him what I had done. I stated I had stopped. This went back and forth where I stated I had stopped and he stated I hadn't, and I received a citation for the stop sign "violation" and a disorderly conduct charge; while I was frustrated, I never raised my voice and was respectful the whole time but clearly irritated.
I was found guilty in at the magistrate level and at the county level. I had a passenger in the vehicle who witnessed the whole thing at both hearings. At the magistrate level, the officer claimed I had run the stop sign. At the county level, he stated I had stopped then didn't wait my turn (same traffic code violation under PA law); he had noted on the citation itself that I had "failed to stop." In PA, the county level is de novo, and besides, the magistrate level has no transcript (makes me wonder if it is this way really so prosecution can modify witness claims at the next level on appeal).
So before stupid ass like you states that anyone who has been convicted of a crime is liable for a "good faith" warrant based on past "crimes," you are including in fact people like me who have done nothing wrong.
And in case you meant (but didn't) to only mean "violent" or felony offenders, you might want to look into the 1984 Bail Reform Act and the definition of violent offenses; this is one of the reasons California's 3 strikes law puts minor drug offenders in jail for years, because a "violent" offense is defined legally to include what most people would include non-violent offenses.
is my receipt for your receipt."
"It's not my fault that Buttle's heart condition didn't appear on Tuttle's file!"
"I understand this concern on behalf of the taxpayers.
People want value for money. That's why we always
insist on the principal of Information Retrieval
charges. It's absolutely right and fair that those
found guilty should pay for their periods of detention
and the Information Retrieval procedures used in their
interrogations."
"Don't fight it son, confess quickly. If you hold out too long, you could jeopardize your credit rating."
"I assure you, Mrs. Buttle, the Ministry is very scrupulous about
following up and eradicating any error. If you have any
complaints which you'd like to make, I'd be more than happy to
send you the appropriate forms."
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
If they HADN'T found anything on Mr. Herring, what do you think would have happened? Maybe a cursory apology. Probably not. His inconvenience for arrest and search? I suppose he could in theory have cause for a civil action, but against who? The cops who arrested him in good faith they had good information? The county clerk who made a minor paperwork error that went undetected for months? Please. Who's going to bring that case? And how does it not get tossed before a court even cares about the question of whether the information was bad?
Like it or not, if there's going to be a test case on whether it's OK to conduct searches based on "oops!" information, it HAS to be someone who had something to lose--where the results of the bad search end up in court. So it has to be something where something illegal was found in the search.
Hypothetical Gettier scenario:
The officer phones the clerk to ask if there is a warrant for this person's arrest. The clerk wants to trick the officer, so she says there is a warrant when she doesn't think there is. But she is mistaken and there really is a warrant she doesn't know about! The officer makes the arrest in the belief there was a warrant, which there was. Was the officer justified in making the arrest?
The root problem in this case really boils down to whether the officers should be allowed to treat someone's word that a warrant exists as if that were the actual warrant. The correct course of action would be to have kept him in sight until a copy of the actual warrant was in the officer's possession. This is especially so now that police vehicles are routinely equipped with computer and communications gear that can immediately transfer the warrant to the officer on the scene.
Basically, they jumped the gun (no pun intended) here and ended up executing a non-existent warrant.
Your post is an excellent argument for why those who claim more authority than the average citizen should never be allowed to use "good faith" alone to excuse a mistake. With the extra power must come extra responsibility to get things right, and the rule for such people must be "if in doubt, don't". The consequences of any system not biased strongly in that direction are far worse than any individual mistake. It's just like the fundamental principle that it is better to risk letting a guilty man go free, at least for now, than to risk sentencing an innocent man erroneously.
Thus in cases like this, I think it would be far better if there was an immediate presumption that no evidence or charges at all connected with the inappropriate search ever have legal standing. Moreover, the person or persons responsible for the mistake should by default be personally liable for their illegal actions just as anyone else would be. There may be some good faith defence in the latter case, but good faith should never take precedence over the safeguard that the former offers. Even in the latter case, one must be careful that the benefits of good faith remain proportionate to the mistake, to avoid the risk of authorities erring on the side of "shooting the innocent man" and escaping the penalty for it later.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
He never said that anyone who has been convicted of a crime is liable for as much
No, the original poster said
and based on that,
To put these ideas together: cops should be able to search anyone who had ever been charged with a crime at any time regardless of what the person is doing, because the fact that they were charged with a crime at some time in the past is "reasonable suspicion" that they're engaging in criminal activity now.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
What I read from the summary was that there was a warrant erroneously entered, and that the correction hadn't made it back in time...
On the other hand, I see you haven't seen "playing devil's advocate" in my post either...
Going back to my argument...
"How do you know it's an illegal search?"
The prosecution might be punished if they used erroneous information to get a conviction... But they aren't held onto admitting they had information in the first place...
How do you know what's erroenous and what's not?
What kind of reviews are in place? I'm sure most concerned citizens want to know this... Those that aren't... might well become interested through misfortune.
Exactly. If the government can make an error, then do a legal search based on their own error the government can in practise search anyone at any time. Even if you've never been near the legal system they can just say "whoopsie, someone must have mistyped the SSN" and they're off the hook. The officers who did the search acted correctly but the evidence should be thrown out because it's fruits of the poisoned tree.
I don't understand how this can even be called into question. The article says that "noone disputes the search was unconstiutional" and the good faith exception only applies to "minor or technical errors". In this case it's no detail, it's the single material fact that lead to the search. Without the error there would be no search, no evidence and no case. I can understand allowing evidence for a search that should have taken place but was in some minor way flawed, but not this. No way should it ever be allowed.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
If not for the error, there would not be probable cause to stop and search the guy. Therefore, it never happened, and by extension, nothing found was really found. Maintaining our moral standards are far more important than convicting one man. The ends most certainly do not justify the means.
If I get pulled over for an incorrect warrant and searched, they wouldn't find drugs and guns in may care except if they were legally obtained. And once they figured out the warrant was bad there would be nothing else for them to do. And I wouldn't be in the news, and I would make even a worse ACLU poster child because nothing happened to me.
Now what would help is if I was falsely arrested due to a computer glitch then beaten to a pulp in jail while waiting for it to get sorted out. And if they held on to me long enough I'd lose my job too. But that wouldn't even be an ACLU issue, because no rights were really violated (unless it was happening often to the same people or to lots of people). They would have just screwed up and backed off when they fixed the fuck up. But the ancillary bits to the story would be a serious case in civil court.
Basically it seems the deeper shit you get yourself into, the more likely you'll end up in a situation where your rights are violated. This is one reason the ACLU has a hard time finding a "poster child" that is favorable.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Quite simply, the point of the second amendment is for self protection, both against bad guys and against a government which is literally out of control. Anyone who argues otherwise is quibbling over nothing because the truth scares them. The arms protected are exactly what a policeman or ordinary infantry soldier carries. Indeed, it is quite reasonable to allow cannon, since merchant ships of the time had cannon not owned by governments, and so did individuals for the common protection.
If gun haters want to argue whether it is still useful to think of an armed uprising against a government, or even whether it makes sense to allow guns in crowded cities, the solution is not to circumvent the constitution in sneaky ways, the solution is to *change* the constitution. There is even a procedure for that which has been used a couple dozen times.
If the restrictions put on the second amendment were applied to freedom of the press, the only press protected would be manually powered flat bed presses. No power presses, no rotary presses, no newspapers with circulation over a few thousand, no internet, no copy machines, no private printers on private computers. Is that what you want?
It works the other way too. If the degradations put on searches and habeas corpus were applied to guns, we'd have it worse than nowadays. You think magazine capacity is a problem? Wait until you can't even have a flintlock or cap gun or knives with sharp edges or points.
What really burns me up about those who wish to change the constitution thru backdoor sneaky underhanded methods is that they set a precedent for other sneaky backdoor amendments, such as the recent degrading of protection from search and seizure, habeas corpus, etc.
Dammit, there's a process for amending the constitution! If you don't like it the way it is, change it properly, have a proper discussion, but don't sneak around, because all you do is reduce respect for the process and make it easier for the other guys to do the same thing in ways you don't like.
Every time I hear Republicans defend the degradation of the constitution by the Bush regime, I always wonder what they would think of Hillary having the same power they want Bush to have now. Ditto for Democrats who hate guns -- how would you like it if Reagan / Bush / McCain limited your favorite rights exactly as you have limited the second amendment?
Infuriate left and right
Should 'misinformation' vitiate police search and seizure? How about common sense ? Let's agree that 'crime' should be prosecuted firmly to 'punish' the guilty discourage potential perpetrators.. Or does it ? If a serious felony crime is determined from an illegal search , and we all agree that's okay. What then ? It's a racing certainty that some police joker will break down a door, beat up the householders, smash and search a previously tranquil home and vindicate the violation with : 'Outstanding parking fines led us to believe that this was a den of iniquity, sure enough we found them smoking a reefer.....they appeared surprised and upset when SWAT entered [swiftly with flash bangs ] so reasonable force [ Mace and Tasers may be painful but we could have shot them !] was employed to subdue the parents and the screaming children.' One may be inclined to suspect that police will be less careful with their search and seizure procedures, leading to greater disaffection between the police and citizens.. [ hardly likely to get much worse when Youtube shows that even with video surveillance most cops are quite prepared to beat the crap out of the average citizen without much provocation ] So how do we satisfy the desire to prosecute an obvious crime -based on evidence obtained during a search based on 'misinformation'- and deter the police from smashing open every car trunk and front door in the city? Make it into a real money game. Their money . If the police break into a private home or office and find nothing then ALL of the stormtroopers involved, up to the station commander, lose a week's pay which is paid as immediate compensation to the innocent citizen, and the local authority pays for all the damages done and USD5,000 a day penalty until the property is fixed. If , god forbid, an innocent person is hurt , detained , abused , insulted or otherwise delayed from their ordinary business â" based on misinformation that fails to result in a crime [misdemeanors excepted] then a scale of severe financial punishments kick in, and or civil action court hears the case immediately with jury awards. Police should also participate in the 'three strikes and you're out' routine.. Next job , guards on a nuclear facility waste dump. The cash prize would make being a casual police victim reflect the 'star' value of what we see on Youtube; when police Taser, Mace, thrash or shoot hapless innocents, typically pulled over for a tail light violation [tap on the light with a night stick] on a racial profile stop and search action, followed by coffee and donuts. Give a person a gun, uniform and modest training then inculcate them with the idea that this empowers them to be arrogant , sarcastic, power crazed guardians of the law and a goodly number will become what we fear the most - COPS: 'criminals on patrol stupid'. Oh, best if all search warrants are carried out by naked police and on video to improve the prospects of real discovery of evidence, and not the kind that appears with the police in handy carry to the scene of the crime sizes. We all want police to be decent law abiding people, but why should they be any better than the average citizen who: lie, steal , cheat , do drugs, alcohol, porn, sleaze and generally screw up without much encouragement? Experience shows that the police enroll a significant proportion of morally decrepit types give them guns, and back them up in court, with politically appointed public prosecutors that operate a corrupt legal system that has little inclination to serve the truth. Is anyone concerned about this empowerment of the police without a few checks and balances ? Not me, I've started posting loads of 'misinformation' on the Internet and hope to feature in a non-fatal police brutality live action video on Youtube , real soon now. My lawyers are on stand by with the cameras. Ready to settle â" out of court. BSBD
You're wrong. The 4th amendment is controlled by Supreme Court decisions that provide for a "good faith exception" to the exclusionary rule, meaning that if the officers were executing a warrant in good faith (meaning that they didn't know that there was an underlying clerical error), then the results of warrant are admitted. There's no reason to punish the cops for a database error.
You can disagree with the Supreme Court rulings (United States v. Leon (468 U.S. 902) and Massachusetts v. Sheppard (468 U.S. 981)), but legally the judge was not ruling unconstitutionally.
Personally, I'd agree with you, and like to see evidence thrown out at the merest whiff of official misconduct, but you're simply mistaken when you say that the judge ruled unconstitutionally.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
What in the FUCK is this guy going on about? His post looks like damn script automated it and linked to a random picture, and yet some douche bags modded him informative and insightful?
If you wish to troll this thread you must first complete form 27B stoke 6.
I am not a crackpot.
They are some poignant quotes from Brazil.
[insert witty comment here]
I don't understand, shouldn't any evidence obtained under a false warrant be unusable?
Sadly, not necessarily. The "good faith" doctrine says that evidence seized by officers relying on a facially valid warrant that turns out to later be invalid is still usable in court. The warrant must be issued by a neutral, third-party magistrate and the officers cannot have knowingly or recklessly (not negligently) given bad information for purposes of establishing probable cause, but the 4th Amendment is meant to shield against police misconduct and not simple error in the issuance of warrants.
See United States v. Leon , 468 U.S. 897 (1984) for the full, gory details. Additionally, the government in this case also relies on Arizona v. Evans, 514 U.S. 1 (1995) which states, basically, that the exclusionary rule did not require suppression of evidence obtained through a police officer's good-faith reliance on an error made by a clerk of the court that had issued a warrant for a person's arrest.
I'm sad to say it, but that latter case is *really* on point for this issue, and EPIC does a miserable job of trying to argue against it. The quality of legal writing between the two briefs is night and day. One takes a line of nearly eighty cases and rigorously applies the facts of the case to the rules found therein, and the other references two cases (one only in the concurrence) and makes a bunch of policy arguments about database systems completely unrelated to that used by the sheriff's office in the case at hand.
EPIC fail.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Well, a warrant that exists under conditions that it should not seems to be pretty much false in my book. It was invalid, and the conditions under which it was created were not longer valid (expired).
The problem with "good faith" in many of these cases is that it allows the rules to be stretched, which can lead to abuse. How many convenient "mistakes" would be needed before they start to seem "too convenient"
I have no problem (despite all the "stories" here) of this happening. If you weren't doing something illegal...you wouldn't have the issue. If Joe Blow hadn't had drugs in his car the police wouldn't have found it.
You have far more faith your fellow human beings and modern technology than can be reasonably justified. You might want to re-think your position before a database or clerical error puts you in the hot seat.
Hell, it almost happened to me. I was issued a bad ticket by a fat cop with Coke-bottle glasses who was sitting three blocks away at the time. He claimed I passed a school bus with its sign out. That was physically impossible since I was at a 4-way stoplight, the bus was on my left, and I was turning left. The driver was on a cell phone and waved me on. No stop sign was extended.
So I go to court, and the judge tells me that, because of recent changes in the relevant statute, she could no longer take my driving record into account. Automatic six-month suspension. However, the judge looked over at the cop sitting in the corner (you know, the right to face your accuser in court), looked back at me, and asked the prosecutor if there was anything he could do to help me. He pulled out a thick legal tome, and began poring over the wording of the statue. Turned out that the charge could be plead down to a lesser charge, at the judge's discretion. So I ended up with an illegal left turn, got supervision, and paid the fine. End of story, or so I thought.
Six months later, I'm at the local Secretary of State's office trying to renew my driver's license. The woman behind the counter pulled up my record on her computer, and said she was sorry, but they couldn't help me, and would I please go talk to the officer in the little room off to one side.
So in this room is another fat cop, this one with a moustache. He starts shouting at me, calling me a danger to the public, and that it was people like me that get children killed. I kept trying to get the guy to chill, but he was on a roll. After about ten minutes of abuse, I'd had just about enough of this idiot, and lit back into him at max decibels. Eventually the whole facility went silent, everyone listening to me argue with this fucktard, me still not knowing what the hell was going on. This guy couldn't even tell me, all he knew was that I was supposed to be arrested. Civil servant, my ass. Finally I told him to either arrest me or shut the hell up. Oddly, he chose to shut up and I left.
It turned out that either because of a technical problem with their database system, or an error by the court clerk, that ticket had gone through as a conviction for the original charge, my license had been suspended and an arrest warrant issued. I had been, of course, completely oblivious of this, and was utterly dumbfounded when I found out.
Had I been pulled over for a busted taillight or an expired license sticker, I'd have been arrested on the spot. For half a year I'd been driving on a suspended license with an arrest warrant in my name, and nobody in the system had the decency to tell me. A letter stating that my license had been suspended, something to let me know there was a problem. Nope, just fucking arrest me, print me, and let the courts sort it out.
So don't give me this crap. The system makes mistakes, lots of mistakes, and people get regularly shafted because of them. This "if you weren't doing anything illegal you wouldn't have the issue" philosophy of yours is morally bankrupt, and has no connection with reality whatsoever. People aren't perfect (either us regular citizens or those work work in law enforcement.) Yet, you seem willing to grant government officials a veneer of perfection that they have not earned, and certainly do not deserve.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Idiot. Why don't you read what I wrote? I clearly said that encroaching on the constitution for one reason encourages others to encroach for their own reasons, and that the proper way to change the constitution is to actually go thru the amendment process.
And all you want to argue about is one of the encroachments? Feh.
Infuriate left and right
This is exactly why historically an illegal search that nets evidence of other real crimes invalidates the evidence. Historically the courts have reasoned that the "oops" power would be abused and thus lead to problems. Now if they would only do so with drug laws and seizure we'd be better off.
If there is no penalty for errors in government databases, there will be no incentive to clean them. The evidence should be thrown out, and if it happens again, it should always be thrown out. This will mean that unless the government has absolutely clean data in their databases their evidence will be suppressed as a result. The police will have no choice but to ensure their databases are regularly cleaned of error. They essentially have no civil liability (sovereign immunity) for their errors now, if I'm not mistaken, if they are not forced to fix errors or suffer the consequences for their failure to do so, they will not do so.
Cops screamed bloody murder saying police would be destroyed by Miranda , and other cases whose names shine as beacons protecting us from the darkness of oppression ( Gideon, Escobedo, Mapp, Seibert ) and others, as bright-line standards. And you know what? Police adapted. They became professional. They did their jobs better when they were forced to behave within constitutional limits. I have a quote from a book I'm writing:
— Judge Edward 4 in Paul Robinson's Instrument of God
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.