Court Asked To Strike All MediaSentry Evidence

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In Capitol v. Thomas, the RIAA's Minnesota case scheduled for trial on June 15th, the defendant's new attorneys have filed a motion to suppress all of the evidence procured by MediaSentry, on the ground that it was obtained in violation of state and federal criminal statutes. The defendant's brief (PDF) accuses MediaSentry of violations of the Minnesota Private Detectives Act, the federal Pen Register and Trap and Trace Devices Act, and the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986. The motion is scheduled to be argued on June 10th."

Comments

Where's the sting, oh thy sword?

[InMSWeAntitrust]

It's lovely to see that illegally obtained evidence is still illegitimate in the courts. Kinda gives you a warm feeling inside.

Re:Where's the sting, oh thy sword?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. A motion is one thing, get back to me when some judge has ruled. Then it'll be appealed. Then another set of judges will rule...

And it'll all be pointless.

Re:Where's the sting, oh thy sword?

[VShael]

Well that depends. If they'd obtained the information by waterboarding, then it probably would have been okay.

You can ask for the world

[initialE]

It doesn't mean you'll get it handed to you. Speculation for nerds, Wishes for Fishes.
Wake me up when the Judge files a ruling either way, that's what I call news.

Well,

[Nekomusume]

It's about freaking time. Too bad Media Sentry has shifted it's primary focus overseas. Would be nice if they end up being found to be criminally responsable though.

Re:TCPdump?

[mattmacf]

No, it means it's illegal to do so for somebody else (and charge for it) for one of the reasons enumerated under the applicable statue (as posted above). Or simply get a license to do so.

Re:Nice Briefs!

[Earthquake Retrofit]

If your video needs music, it should have music. The web is fairly bursting with people who want others to hear their music. No need for third parties; just make a deal. See below... Steve

Illegally obtained evidence

[peterhoeg]

Am I the only one who find the whole issue about illegally obtained evidence not being admissible in court preposterous?

Let's say I go out and kill somebody, but the only evidence against me it is an illegally obtained wire-tapping. It doesn't make me any less guilty. And the people who obtained it illegally obviously need to be prosecuted but it still shouldn't change anything in terms of me. Obviously in this case most people would argue that making me walk on a technicality is not in everybody's best interest. Without going into special cases, can anybody tell me why illegally obtained evidence should not be accepted? Evidence is evidence and it carries its weight irrespectively of how it came about.

For the record, I like the RIAA's actions as little as the next guy, but that's not what we're discussing here.

Re:Illegally obtained evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

The police have a lot of power, a lot of easily abusable power. By demonstrating a hard line approach "You abused your power to gain this evidence now you don't get to use it" acts as a deterrent for that abuse of power, if the goal is to convict a criminal then its the perfect soloution, because then it becomes "We could cheat but there is no point, anything we learn by cheating wont help us at trial"

Re:Illegally obtained evidence

[MrMista_B]

Because how do you determine if the illegally obtained evidence is real, or faked?

Let's say you're accused of having gone out and killed somebody. The only evidence against you is illegally obtained. It might be real, it might be faked - either way, the evidence was criminally obtained.

These people who the RIAA are accusing are innocent, until proven guilty. Let me repeat that - they are /innocent/, unless guilt can be proven.

The evidence against them, was obtained criminally - again, they are innocent, unless proven guilty.

Your argument is a straw-man fallacy.

Re:Illegally obtained evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

regardless of what you have done, untill you are convicted you are still innocent and still have all your rights under the constitution. those rights are part of our rule of law, and so the must be respected. Another right you have is to a fair trial, even if you are guilty. We are not allowed to break laws to convict someone else of breaking laws, thats not fair. so to remedy that, everything presented against you has to be legally obtained, and if it isnt then you cant admit it. yes, that might let a known murderer go free, but that is par for the course. while its not the best outcome, i'd prefer to keep as many rights as possible even if they occasionally help those who dont deserve their protection.

Re:Illegally obtained evidence

[Sasayaki]

Let's say I'm really really offended at your post. So offended that I decide to plant a terabyte drive full of child porn in your house, then break into your house and "uncover" it. I admit to everything except planting the drive ("The guy wanted to sell me a drive full of kiddy porn, so I broke in to see if it was real so I could take my information to the police"). I face a fine/misdemeanor for burglary (or nothing and get lauded as a hero), you face at best a lengthy court battle along with the social stigma of being accused of being a pedophile, and at worst registration on the sex offenders list and possibly decades in prison.

And let's not get into what might happen to multi-billion dollar corporations who can pay any "gathered evidence illegally fine" without any trouble (even if it's millions). Do you really want a situation where any big company could send you to prison on a whim?

Re:Illegally obtained evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

Without going into special cases, can anybody tell me why illegally obtained evidence should not be accepted?

It would encourage all sorts of unethical and illegal behavior, as well as muddy up - and likely gum up - the justice system. What's worse is the illegal and unethical behaviors it would encourage would likely be carried out by underlings in a way to protect the attorneys (or DAs), similar to how presidents of this country or old mob bosses used to be able to keep a clean nose while doing illegal activities. You'd likely end up with agents of the law who are essentially criminal masterminds in order to improve their conviction rate or win the big cases that get them in the headlines and furthers their career, and you'd also encourage martyr-type of behavior.

You just can't give incentives to law enforcement-types to break the law or there's all sorts of nasty stuff that would happen. Just look at the disgusting behavior that arises from civil forfeiture laws -- and I tend to think most police at least believe they're doing the right thing.

Re:Illegally obtained evidence

[Lloyd_Bryant]

Am I the only one who find the whole issue about illegally obtained evidence not being admissible in court preposterous?

Let's say I go out and kill somebody, but the only evidence against me it is an illegally obtained wire-tapping. It doesn't make me any less guilty. And the people who obtained it illegally obviously need to be prosecuted but it still shouldn't change anything in terms of me. Obviously in this case most people would argue that making me walk on a technicality is not in everybody's best interest. Without going into special cases, can anybody tell me why illegally obtained evidence should not be accepted? Evidence is evidence and it carries its weight irrespectively of how it came about.

For the record, I like the RIAA's actions as little as the next guy, but that's not what we're discussing here.

The suppression of the illegally obtained evidence is a deterrent. If you know that illegally obtained evidence isn't admissible, then you won't go out and commit a crime in order to obtain such evidence. Without such a restriction, the use of illegally obtained evidence would become commonplace (especially in cases such as your murder scenario, where the tapper would be considered a hero by the community, and probably never punished or given a token punishment for the criminal act).

Also note that illegally obtained evidence is not *always* inadmissible. If I tap into your phone line for the purpose of using it for free phone service, and I overhear you talking about the killing, I may be able allowed to testify against you. The ban is primarily on those committing illegal acts for the express purpose of gathering evidence. Which is exactly what MediaSentry was doing for the RIAA.

Re:Illegally obtained evidence

[Jason Levine]

Not only that, but if illegally obtained evidence was admissible, people could be "raided" purely because certain people in power (politicians, police, etc) didn't like them. Suppose your city's mayor is corrupt and decides that you were a threat to him. He orders the police chief (his best buddy in corruption) to arrest you under some trumped up charge. Doesn't matter what, that charge isn't meant to stick. However, after arresting you, they fish through all of your stuff searching for something illegal to pin to you. They don't have a warrant to do this and so it is illegal, but it doesn't matter to them. They uncover something (everyone's broken some law at some point) and switch charges to the one with the (illegally obtained) evidence.

Now, if the court accepts the illegally obtained evidence, they are validating a corrupt mayor's abuse of power. This is likely a bigger crime than the charges that the illegally obtained evidence supports. If they toss out the illegally obtained evidence, they're letting someone guilty of what is likely a minor crime go free, but they are dealing a blow against abuse of power.

Re:Illegally obtained evidence

[gnasher719]

Am I the only one who find the whole issue about illegally obtained evidence not being admissible in court preposterous?

Yes. You are the only one who finds it preposterous.

There are laws in place that try to discourage illegal behavior. One way to discourage illegal behavior is to make sure that you cannot gain advantage by illegal behavior. It would do no good if bank robbery was punished with a $100 fine. In this case, trying to find evidence by illegal means is discouraged by making any evidence found that way inadmissible.

There are more reasons. Evidence has to be trusted. If evidence has been "found" by illegal means, how can you possibly trust that evidence? If MediaSentry did some illegal wiretapping, how can you trust them that they didn't do some even more illegal to "improve" the evidence they found? Like faking a few screen shots and so on.

Next reason: There are things like client-attorney privilege, rights of no self incrimination, privacy rights. These rights basically guarantee that to some degree you can "get away" with things. The RIAA bosses and their lawyers rely on this to a huge degree themselves (or how many of them would be put away for drug abuse otherwise? ). Destroying this right would destroy the fabric of human social life. Do you want to live as a monk (and they probably do things in the night that they shouldn't)?

Next reason: Wiretapping wasn't only done against the guilty, it was done against everybody. Making illegally obtained evidence inadmissible makes sure that nobody breaks the law in an attempt to find evidence, especially when the victim of the illegal activity hasn't done anything wrong.

Re:Sometimes I wonder about NYCL.

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

And how does it feel now, that your master plan has finally come to fruition and you have karma to burn?

I guess I feel.... pretty stupid.