Prove the original crime, don’t rely and peripheral procedure like “they lied to a federal agent” (uhh) cop-out. Do your job.
Likewise I’m not don’t of people getting off on “technicalities” (Some more than others)
See also: Blackstone's formulation: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Blackstone%27s_fo...
The officer has done wrong (entering the home without the warrant) and should face some punishment for that. The threat of punishment deters the officer from acting without a warrant.
On the other hand, releasing the criminal, who is actually guilty, is not a real deterrent. What if the officer doesn't particularly care if the suspect gets arrested or not?
It's the threat of consequences to the particular individual that decide their actions - not the threat of conflicts with the purpose of their organization. Put another way, I bet fewer police officers would commit misconduct if the consequences were "you personally go to jail" as opposed to "a criminal is freed and your organization is supposed to do the opposite of that, don't you feel bad?"
I think in the absence of actual injuries, the obstruction charge is actually the more serious criminal charge applicable. Which is not an indirect charge; obstruction is a distinct crime with its own harms.
Lying to investigators and destroying evidence is unquestionably wrongdoing, and required far more explicit intent and action than merely failing to correctly fly an aircraft.
Nobody was in it when it crashed, he jumped out of the plane midair.
Presumably there's some level of incentive to catch criminals. Otherwise why would police officers do anything? (Of course another possible answer is that they don't).
> If so, why couldn't we just keep that part and not release the criminals on the technicality?
Because it's very hard to maintain an incentive unless it's aligned all the way through an organisation. The consequences for police dishonesty needs to be something that will cause police chiefs to lose elections. Letting criminals go free is one of the few things that does that.
Sure, no evidence, no crime, but in this case there was evidence that the feds knew about. If you destroy the evidence before the cops know it exists, fair game. But this wasn't it.
As usual, the coverup is worse than the crime. Especially for the guy getting railroaded.
Crime A is $2500 fine or 2 mos in the slammer, let’s say.
The evidence that would convict me is worth a grand. I destroy it.
The penalty for destroying this evidence should not exceed the original crime or value of the property I destroyed in any rational way.
Also, the entire institution of police/prosecutors/courts/judges need a disincentive against misconduct not just individuals. Otherwise they can just use a revolving door of disposable/sacrificial cops to violate rights and get convictions.
Allowing convictions to stand in spite of illegal investigation methods makes rules against those methods completely meaningless for defendants.
The rational reason is that this is a behaviour we want to discourage. We want to diacourage it because it makes it more complicated and more costly to catch criminals, and more likely for them to get away with their crimes.
“Failing to correctly fly an aircraft” is quite an understatement. This person didn’t just accidentally run out of fuel, or accidentally stalled.
He intentionally set up the airplane with cameras, intentionally wore a parachute, intentionally stopped the engine mid-flight and then intentionally jumped out of the airplane while holding a camera on a selfie stick.
None of this can be described as ”failing to correctly fly an aircraft”. What he did required explicit intent.
There is the idea of commensurate punishment. 20 years for destroying evidence for something that while serious didn’t defraud anyone, maim anyone or cause damage I think is unreasonable and unconstitutional.
20 year is the absolute maximum for the worst evidence tampering you can think of. A serial offender, after knowingly and willingly leveling a city block with people in there the second time to hide his street gang’s accounting fraud, and exhibiting open contempt towards the judge while loudly proclaiming he will do it again after they let him out. That person can not get more than 20 years for the specific crime of evidence tampering. That is what the 20 years statutory maximum is.
I don't think that the video alone gets past the reasonable doubt standard.