A US judge on Wednesday blocked federal prosecutors from searching data on a Washington Post reporter’s electronic devices seized during what one press freedom group called an “unconstitutional and illegal” raid last week.
US Magistrate Judge William B. Porter in Alexandria, Virginia—who also authorized the January 14 raid of Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s home—ruled that “the government must preserve but must not review any of the materials that law enforcement seized pursuant to search warrants the court issued.”
The government has until January 28 to respond to the Post’s initial legal filings against the agent’s actions. Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for February 6.
You seem to be under the impression that the prosecution would admit they got the data from there in the first place. They wouldn’t. Police and prosecutors lie and judges let them, no longer the neutral arbiters of dispute but the hammer of (in)justice.
They do this all the time, as others reminded me the term for it is parallel construction, and they almost always get away with it. This information is classified so it’s not like even if you suspected they found the information there you could subpoena it and prove it. If you could prove they had access to it there they would claim they didn’t notice it and there case came about in another way.
And if both of those arguments failed, judges might just let it through anyway on a decades old (unconstitutional) scotus precedent that says if authorities acted in good faith fruit from the poisoned tree can be used. ;
You really don’t know how bad the courts are, most people don’t. No one makes a big deal out of it so how would you know, unless you were sensitized to it first seeing firsthand them abuse their power.
Because they would have to. Any lie or failure to establish where they got the data makes it inadmissible evidence.
Yes this parallel construction was brought up but given how rather public this story is it’s going to raise brows and be asked about its origins
But as I said you wouldn’t be able to prove they got it in that raid. You wouldn’t be able to subpoena the information from that raid to prove they found it then at all. And even if you could, that precedent allows them to use it anyway.
I know it’s supposed to work the way you are talking about, but it doesn’t anymore. For a very small number of people does it work the way it’s supposed to, and that was before this administration went mask off.
Indeed but at the same time the DOJ needs to show that the source was indeed not the raid.
“The origin is the department records office.”
“How did it get in the records office.”
“We stored it after a different raid that was found illegal.”
And even mask off it’s still “works for the small number of people.”
The masks are off but the system is still the system