What recourse would an American have against a punitive search? And what if something turns up which would retroactively justify it?

▲

perihelions 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> "And what if something turns up which would retroactively justify it?"

US constitutional law prohibits the introduction of evidence obtained illegally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_rule ("Exclusionary rule")

There's no "retroactive" exception. The core point of this rule is to deter police from intentionally violating people's rights, under the expectation that what they find will, "retroactively", vindicate them. Won't work.

▲

lurk2 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Won’t work.

How would you know when it did? You can’t “retroactively” justify an arbitrary search under the exclusionary rule, but this doesn’t exclude evidence tangential to a legally-executed warrant during the execution of that warrant. For example, suppose someone is suspected of illegally possessing wildlife. A search warrant is issued on the residence. No wildlife is found, and in fact no wildlife was ever on the premises. If officers find large quantities of cocaine during the search, they aren’t precluded from making an arrest, because the warrant used to gain entry and conduct the search was legal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

	▲	roywiggins 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Only if it falls under the "plain view" doctrine, which is not unlimited: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_view_doctrine > In Arizona v. Hicks, police officers were in an apartment investigating a shooting and suspected that a record player in the apartment was stolen. The officers could not see the serial number, which was on the bottom of the record player, so they lifted the player and confirmed that its serial number matched that of one that had been reported stolen. However, the Supreme Court ruled that lifting the record player constituted an additional search (although a relatively nonintrusive one) because the serial number was not in plain view.

▲

datsci_est_2015 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

See also: parallel construction, which has come up (rightfully so) in HN threads about dragnet surveillance.

▲

Supermancho 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> What recourse would an American have against a punitive search?

None. The endless videos, from better-years-gone-by of people refusing to answer questions at the border then having drug dogs run all over their car to scratch it up was my first exposure to federal agents acting maliciously.

▲

t-3 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

You can attempt to sue for damages, but the suit is likely to be dismissed because law enforcement and legal adjudication are tightly coupled and very friendly in ways that subvert the proper functioning of justice. More likely you'd just invite more harassment for daring to attempt recourse at all.