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Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

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Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#71

Post by _DeadFred_ »

pcaharrier wrote: post #56
mjd wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not reasonable to hold someone accountable for doing something illegal in 2020 that was only determined to be illegal in 2025. The police officers applied to a judge for a warrant. The judge gave them the warrant. Now another judge says that the warrant should not have been issued in the first place. How is that the police's fault? How would you hold them accountable?

This is the basic idea of the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule. The exclusionary rule was supposed to deter police misconduct (e.g., searching a house without a warrant, thereby violating the Fourth Amendment) by preventing them from using evidence they never should have had. But the deterrence rationale doesn't hold up that well when the police reasonably (and that's key) believed that they were acting…

'Your constitutional rights were violated but tough luck, nothing can be done about it because the court is extending special 'good faith' courtesy to the police that you don't get (some animals are more equal than others in court decisions/considerations when minor laws (the fourth amendment) are broken)'.

And people wonder why American's are apathetic to it all. A judge can just wave away constitutional violations all day/every day because 'good faith'.

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#72

Post by multjoy »

RHSeeger wrote: post #51
mjd wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. In 2020 the police went to a magistrate judge to ask for a warrant. The judge issued the warrant. Five years later, another judge has determined that the warrant should not have been issued in the first place. That is not the fault of the police, and there is no reason to punish them for it.

> That is not the fault of the police, and there is no reason to punish them for it. It's not punishing the police. It's not allowing them to use evidence that they shouldn't have been allowed to gather. Fining them, firing them, and/or jailing them for breaking the law; those would be ways of punishing them. That's not what is being discussed here. Admittedly, we pretty much _never_ punish police no matter what they…

They were allowed to gather the evidence - they had a warrant from a judge. The judge erred, not the police.

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#73

Post by [deleted] »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #67
reverendsteveii wrote: post #3

How many times recently have we seen rulings from judges that establish that something is definitely illegal but the person who did is still allowed to do it or at least there's no mechanism by which they can be punished for doing it? Having laws and then picking and choosing when they'll be enforced and against whom is the same as not having laws in the first place. And before you cite the good faith exception, pass…

Remember in every system people push up to and just as far over the line as they can get away with. 'Good faith' is given when chain of custody is broken. 'Good faith' is given way too much. Either the 4th Amendment is serious enough to have power/force over law enforcement/judicial, or it doesn't. And with good faith, it doesn't. 'our side violated the law but because of the divisions of power, our side didn't viola…

[deleted]

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#74

Post by einpoklum »

mjd wrote: post #13
hiatus wrote: post #2

> U.S. District Juste Miranda M. Du rejected this argument, but wouldn’t suppress the evidence. “The Court finds that a tower dump is a search and the warrant law enforcement used to get it is a general warrant forbidden under the Fourth Amendment,” she said in a ruling filed on April 11. “That said, because the Court appears to be the first court within the Ninth Circuit to reach this conclusion and the good faith e…

The rule that illegally obtained evidence is inadmissible exists to disincentivize the police from obtaining evidence illegally. But if the police believed, in good faith, that a particular search was legal and reasonable, based on the fact that a judge authorized them to perform it, then excluding the resulting evidence doesn't serve that purpose. Update : This is not a new thing. The good-faith exception has been i…

Reminds me of the de-facto good-faith exemptions for US police for not shooting civilians, or for the US government for arming death squads, or dictators, or genocidal military campaigns etc.

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#75

Post by [deleted] »

mjd wrote: post #16
Analemma_ wrote: post #8

Do law schools even bother teaching about "fruit of the poisoned tree" anymore? It's clearly a dead letter; this is yet another ruling that if you gather evidence illegally you'll get a finger-wag but allowed to proceed as usual. Why even have a notion of legality of evidence if it doesn't matter?

The purpose of the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine is to disincentivize illegal collection of evidence. But there has always been a good-faith exception to it: if the police genuinely believed that what they were doing was legal, as they did in this case, relying on established legal precedent, then throwing out the evidence doesn't disincentivize anything. But the declaration that cell tower dumps are illegal…

[deleted]

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#76

Post by anon373839 »

mjd wrote: post #13
hiatus wrote: post #2

> U.S. District Juste Miranda M. Du rejected this argument, but wouldn’t suppress the evidence. “The Court finds that a tower dump is a search and the warrant law enforcement used to get it is a general warrant forbidden under the Fourth Amendment,” she said in a ruling filed on April 11. “That said, because the Court appears to be the first court within the Ninth Circuit to reach this conclusion and the good faith e…

The rule that illegally obtained evidence is inadmissible exists to disincentivize the police from obtaining evidence illegally. But if the police believed, in good faith, that a particular search was legal and reasonable, based on the fact that a judge authorized them to perform it, then excluding the resulting evidence doesn't serve that purpose. Update : This is not a new thing. The good-faith exception has been i…

It is an established principle. But it also is an exception to how our legal system works: you are usually bound, retroactively, by new legal principles when courts “discover” them.

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#77

Post by multjoy »

kevinventullo wrote: post #65
mjd wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine is to disincentivize illegal collection of evidence. But there has always been a good-faith exception to it: if the police genuinely believed that what they were doing was legal, as they did in this case, relying on established legal precedent, then throwing out the evidence doesn't disincentivize anything. But the declaration that cell tower dumps are illegal…

if the police genuinely believed that what they were doing was legal, as they did in this case, relying on established legal precedent, then throwing out the evidence doesn't disincentivize anything This is obviously false. It would disincentivize the police from collecting evidence without first ensuring that the method of collection was legal.

They did. They went to a judge and got a warrant.

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#78

Post by einpoklum »

mjd wrote: post #38
flipnotyk wrote: post #4

"It's unconstitutional and illegal, but you're not being held accountable and you can still use the data." Yeah that tracks.

It is not reasonable to hold someone accountable for doing something illegal in 2020 that was only determined to be illegal in 2025. The police officers applied to a judge for a warrant. The judge gave them the warrant. Now another judge says that the warrant should not have been issued in the first place. How is that the police's fault? How would you hold them accountable?

You're conflating "holding accountable" and "letting benefit".

The question isn't whether the police officers who initiated the tower dump should go to jail or be fired, but whether the evidence they obtained would be admissible. It shouldn't be.

Also, a cell tower dump is not an act in good faith - neither in 2020 nor in 2025, regardless of whether the court lets it slide or not.

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#79

Post by [deleted] »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #66
mjd wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Fourth Amendment was violated by the magistrate judge who issued the illegal warrant, not by the police officers who, acting in in good faith, executed it.

If my lawyer tells me selling a specific analog version of fentanyl is legal because it's different enough/whatever, and I good faith sell an analog version of fentanyl, do I get a good faith exemption?

[deleted]

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#80

Post by ty6853 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #61
addicted wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe in good faith that you have not broken the law, and can reasonably convince a jury of that, you almost certainly will receive a lighter sentence than you would have otherwise and in some cases also be acquitted. So this isn’t really a good argument even if we ignore the fact that it’s a non sequitur. A better argument is that the good faith exception, while making sense in principle, can easily be abus…

> If you believe in good faith that you have not broken the law, and can reasonably convince a jury of that, you almost certainly will receive a lighter sentence than you would have otherwise Juries usually don't decide sentencing, and even if they did I don't think that would matter with crimes viewed as wrong in themselves ( mala in se ) though it might with crimes viewed as wrong because they are prohibited ( mala…

Well there's also the case that a main component in having your sentence reduced is expressing genuine remorse.

I'm not sure how on earth someone could be remorseful for a mala prohibitum victimless offense while simultaneously maintaining they in good faith thought they were following the law. Any expression of those two views simultaneously would in practice be seen as not much more than "sorry I got caught -- doing something I thought was legal."

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