It is a slippery slope to a police state when our courts sanction police misconduct in the hopes of netting criminal activity and credit it to the “greater good.”

Our Courts have long held that when evidence is obtained through police misconduct it should be excluded in criminal trials. The Supreme Court’s decision in Utah v. Strieff creates a dangerous shift from that paradigm wherein the Court, in essence, ruled that the ends justify the means.The Court held that where an officer conducts an illegal stop that leads to the discovery of an outstanding warrant and the individual is arrested and searched based on the outstanding warrant, evidence obtained from the individual during the search is admissible despite the illegal nature of the initial stop. The Court’s ruling is based on the legal principle that if an officer’s illegal conduct is removed enough from the discovery of the evidence obtained, the taint from the illegal search has dissipated and the evidence can be admitted.

This case has single-handily redefined what it means for the illegality to have been removed or remote enough from the illegal act as to relieve law enforcement of any responsibility for their illegal conduct.

In other words, the Supreme Court has held that an officer can approach an individual, minding his or her’s own business, not under suspicion of having committed any crime, interrogate them and if that interrogation leads to the discovery of a crime or warrant, no matter, any evidence obtained as a result of this search, could be introduced as evidence. It

Justice Sotomayor’s powerful dissent hits to the core of the problem with this decision:

“We must not pretend that the countless people who are
routinely targeted by police are “isolated.” They are the
canaries in the coal mine whose deaths, civil and literal,
warn us that no one can breathe in this atmosphere. See
L. Guinier & G. Torres, The Miner’s Canary 274–283
(2002). They are the ones who recognize that unlawful
police stops corrode all our civil liberties and threaten all
our lives. Until their voices matter too, our justice system
will continue to be anything but.”