Court Opinion

ID: 9633294
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:42:10.669847+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:16:05.057576
License: Public Domain

Steffen, C. J.,
concurring in result:
I concur in affirming the judgment entered in the district court, but do not agree that the exclusionary rule should be viewed as part of the armamentaria to be used in remedying or resolving violations of the Gerstein/McLaughlin rule. The exclusionary rule penalizes truth and accountability and provides windfalls to criminal defendants. I personally applaud the United States Supreme Court in progressively retrenching the reach of this inefficacious rule.
The plain fact of the matter is that the exclusionary rule is a failure. There is little evidence that it deters police misconduct, and it has extremely limited beneficial aspects to society; it primarily operates to facilitate the avoidance of accountability by criminal defendants.1 To conclude, as the majority apparently does, that the exclusion of the most cogent evidence of guilt should be one of the options for dealing with errors or derelictions performed by clerks, judges, deputy district attorneys, jail administrators or arresting officers is not, in my view, a productive ruling. Human error will continue to occur, but now the *48result may be an added obstacle to criminal convictions, all to the benefit of criminal defendants who are undeserving of such judicial largesse.
There are other methods of dealing with human error that do not penalize society and create windfalls for criminal defendants. One such remedy for a failure to conduct a probable cause hearing within forty-eight hours would be to require the release of the defendant, thus burdening law enforcement authorities with the process of either monitoring the defendant’s whereabouts or relocating him or her after the release in order to effectuate another arrest. This would promote greater vigilance on the part of the police and other responsible officials especially with respect to arrestees suspected of violent criminal conduct. It would appear that release may eventually be required in any event where the defendant’s incarceration is challenged as unlawful under the Gerstein/McLaughlin rule, and in most cases that could prove more friendly to society than the exclusion of evidence that would render prosecution impossible or ineffectual.
In any event, I agree with the majority’s harmless error analysis and perceive no basis for granting Powell relief from his judgment and sentence.
For the reasons briefly mentioned above, I concur only in affirming the judgment of the district court.

 See, e.g., Oaks, Studying the Exclusionary Rule in Search and Seizure, 37 U. Chi. L. Rev. 665 (1970); Schroeder, Deterring Fourth Amendment Violations: Alternatives to the Exclusionary Rule, 69 Geo. L.J. 1361 (1981); Wilkey, The Exclusionary Rule: Why Suppress Valid Evidence?, 62 Judicature 214 (1978); Caldwell & Chase, The Unruly Exclusionary Rule: Heeding Justice Blackmun's Call to Examine the Rule in Light of Changing Judicial Understanding About Its Effects Outside the Courtroom, 78 Marq. L. Rev. 45 (1995); Ranney, The Exclusionary Rule — the Illusion vs. the Reality, 46 Mont. L. Rev. 298 (1985).