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Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
Also, if you don't exclude evidence obtained by illegal means, does that include torturing suspects? How about denying them their lawyer and intimidating them into submission? Threatening their families? I mean, why stop at just invading peoples' homes without cause? There are lots of other ways to get evidence if the situation seems to warrant extreme measures.
Plus, you have to wonder if just as a matter of human nature, there's an inclination to go easy on the officer who commits an illegal search and turns out to be right, as opposed to the one who doesn't find anything. Which is just moral luck.
It's an unequivocally utilitarian approach - the greater good justifies doing bad things in some cases. We have it to some extent (section 1), but we only allow legislation that violates the Charter.
But we don't let police officers play that role, because they're police officers. That system is downright scary and primed for abuse. And hell, it's not like s.8 of the Charter requires Police to comply with some onerous burden in order to undertake a search. Asking for reasonable and probable grounds that an offence has been committed before barging into someone's house or sorting through their car's trunk is not asking for the moon.
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A confession is not evidence, so first of all, of course you can throw out a confession given under stress.
Second, you know which industrialized country has a huge problem with police forcing confessions with various threats? The US. Whicy has the same system as you do. They also have a major issue with the police outright planting evidence.
You know which countries don't have that problem? None of the European countries that have our system.
You keep claiming that we "let" the police do something for utilitarian reasons, but it's actually the exact opposite.
You seemed to miss out on the part where we take policemen to court for gaining evidence illegally. That's a career ender, and the consequences don't even necessarily stop there.
You don't do anything to the individual police. If they gather illegal evidence in an illegal way, all that's done is the evidence gets thrown out, and maybe taxpayers fork out some money to a possible criminal. Your system actively encourages the police to try this stuff, because there isn't individual responsibility.
That's why cases like these where the police have broken the law while gathering evidence are common in common in common law countries such as yours, and extremely rare in civil law countries such a ours.
(We have the exact same problems with wiretapping though, and in general it's not like our system is perfect. It's just better that yours in this one way.)
I mean, that's what "evidence/case thrown out over a technicality" means : someone I the law enforcement broke the law. Your system encourages it, because there's little individual responsibility. Our system very strongly discourages it because even if the police person does find evidence, proving them right, they still go to court over it and it's again a likely career ender.
And really nobody thinks it makes sense to sacrifice your career for one bad guy.