gerhard said:
Optophobia you idiot, they dont just let people automatically off if a police officer does something wrong, they just dont count that piece of evidence. And if that piece of evidence is the one that tipped the balance to 'no reasonable doubt', then he may get released.
So a 19 year old female, who is on her first day of the job, attends the scene of a murder. There, she finds a women with half her head blown off, with blood and gray matter everywhere. The most violent thing she has seen before in her life is a grazed knee when she fell over when she was 10.
In the shock of the moment, she arrests a man next to the body who is holding a pump action shot gun, forgetting, understandably, her requirements under section 201 of LEPRA (in exercising her power to arrest she must notify the person of the reason, the fact that he is under arrest, her name and office, station etc) and that he "is not obliged to say or do anything, but anything he does say or do will be taken down and used in evidence against him". However because of the obviously gory scene, she is overwhelmed and forgets.
The arrest at this point, is unlawful because she hasn't met the common law or statutory requirements. She isn't not caring about this because she has just seen a person with half their head missing and the man standing their with the shot gun.
Other police arrive at the scene. They assume that she has done the right thing, after all she has been taught it all before at university. They take him to the station. Everything past the moment she detained him is inadmissable.
They interview him, he admits to the murder, etc. They put him on trial. It all falls through because she forgot and the other police assumed. Due to double jeopardy he cannot be re-tried, and no other evidence can be presented.
He gets away with murder, because the poor little criminals rights have supposedly been abused by the police officer in her failure to meet the requirements.
:burn: Fuck that for a joke, he should be incarcerated. There is the "desirability" clause of the evidence act, which means the judge could admit the evidence even if it was improperly or illegally obtain evidence, but lets assume that the judge didn't think it desirable.
wheredanton said:
It's on thew heads of the police officers who knowing the standards, which everyone knows are there for a very important reason, decided to flaunt them. Police are not entitled to take the law into their own hands and forget about the rule of law.
The police officer is conducting the investigation on behalf of the state. It is not his personal investigation. As a result if he stuffs up the state stuffs up. It's the states investigation.
If the police officer bashes the crap out of someone or threatends to kill the accused persons loved one and the accused, as a result, makes an admission the admission should not be admitted should it now? The admission is not a real one, it is involuntary etc etc. Are you somehow suggesting that if this were the case the evidence of the admission should be admitted and the police officer be reprimanded? That's hardly fair or proper. It would cause police to become a 'law unto themselves' whereby a person is guilty because the police officer says they are (ie see 80 years of police verballing). Total and utter disrespect for the rule of law.
Interviews and the inducement of admissions by police is not personal, it is on behalf of the state. The police officer, when conducting the interview, is doing so as an instrument of the state.
That a bit of a massive oversimplification.
A Breach of s 201 of the LEPR Act doesn't automatically mean he is 'let off'. What do they teach you in your policing degree? If you fail to explain to the guy why you arrested him under 201 it comes back to a s 138 Evidence Act discretion whereby the court will only reject the evidence if the desirability of accepting the evidence outweighs the desirability of admitting the evidence. This determined by matters of public policy. Pretty much the court has to weigh up the public interest of the conviction of those who commit offences and the public interest in ensuring that the Criminal Justice System and the police respect individual rights and the rule of law. It is seriously unlikely that a judge would consider that the public interest of ensuring that police officers identify themselves under s 201 outweighs the public interest of convicting those of drugs offences.
the admissibility of confessional of other evidence has nothing to do with the rights of criminals. It is about the maintenance of a Criminal Justice System and a police force that respects the rule of law. When police start to flaunt the law or the regulations put in place by the legisature police become no worse than the criminals which they are chasing.
The problem is when police officers who think THEY ARE THE LAW decide that the flauting of regulations or laws put into place for very good reasons to enforce their own subjective interpretation of justice. A police officer has no right to choose to flaunt regulations or laws in the persuit of his or her personal conception of what the law should be. Officers who have this mindset risk prosecution cases due to their unimformed blundering and a lack of understanding as to their role in the Criminal Justice Process.
None of those questions should enter your mind. A police officer doesn't judge a persons guilt. A police officers role is to investigate and gather evidence for the prosecution. The only thing a police officer has to decide is whether there are reasonable grounds to suspect under s 99 so that he or she can be arrested. At no stage should a police officers conduct be influenced by his or her subjective belief as to whether a person is guilty or not.
It's not even automatically inadmissible. It goes back to the courts discretion whether to admit it or not. An generally a court will admit evidence of a finding of drugs if the only police impropriety is failing to do something insignificant under s 201.
You can galavant on all you want, saying what should and shouldn't happen.
Did he rape the girl?
We are seeing the fruits of respecting the rights of the criminals (yes, the rights of criminals, because thats what they are. You can't merely deflect it away by saying that its the maintainence of the CJS) by this very scenario.
>> If you fail to explain to the guy why you arrested him under 201 it comes back to a s 138 Evidence Act discretion whereby the court will only reject the evidence if the desirability of accepting the evidence outweighs the desirability of admitting the evidence
In exercising any power under LEPRA, he must state the needed information. The use of the power is invalid if the requirements of 201 aren't met. Therefore the arrest is invalid under LEPRA. Therefore he is unlawfully in detention, and he would probably not only get off on murder, but would be able to sue the police.
(yes, it gets worse).
