Opinion ID: 1249167
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Majority's Holding is Bad Judicial Policy

Text: Finally, in making the officers' bad faith the litmus test to determine whether a defendant received what due process requires, the majority requires our trial courts to do exactly what they should not do. Instead of deciding the objective question of whether the loss of the evidence deprived a defendant of a fair trial, trial courts will, henceforth, concentrate on the subjective intent of the officers. No benefit and much mischief will result from these mini-trials on the motives of the police and prosecutors. See Pool, 139 Ariz. at 105-07, 677 P.2d at 268-70; Lolly, 611 A.2d at 960. The majority's new rule has other significant policy ramifications. Regardless of whether important evidence is exculpatory or inculpatory, good public policy requires that the police use care in preserving it. Instead of requiring a defendant to prove something as nebulous and subjective as a police officer's bad faith, we should encourage due care. Today's holding invites bad police work, so long as the government does not act in bad faith, whatever that is. Is it bad faith when the police collect valuable evidence, know that it should be preserved, but carelessly fail to do so? Is it bad faith when the government fails to provide the law enforcement agency with the proper equipment to preserve the evidence? Properly, the majority does not define bad faith at this time; no doubt, we must await a procession of cases over the coming years to define this amorphous term. The new bad faith jurisprudence created by the present case is possible, again, only because the majority ignores the presumption of innocence. The basis of our previous cases was that because a defendant is presumed innocent, we must at least indulge the idea that evidence that could have significant exculpatory value would have rebutted guilt. Therefore, in cases in which the other evidence is inconclusive, the loss may well have prejudiced the defendant and deprived him of a fair trial, thus requiring dismissal. I would rest on our previous cases and, in applying our constitution, follow the holdings of other state courts. I agree with the Massachusetts Supreme Court that when the government loses potentially exculpatory evidence, the trial court must balance the degree of culpability of the government, the materiality of the evidence, and the potential prejudice to the defendant in order to protect the defendant's constitutional due process right to a fair trial... . If the loss of the evidence threatened the defendant's right to a fair trial, the judge has discretion concerning the manner in which to protect the defendant's rights. Henderson, 582 N.E.2d at 496-97.