Can evidence that 100% proves guilt (but was obtained 100% illegally) sway a jury to convict? Raymond the Rapist raped Dan the Dad's child. Dan takes Raymond to court, but there's 0 evidence, and it's basically a he-said-she-said deal, and there's nothing Dan can do to convict Raymond. So Dan, not caring about what happens to him, takes matters into his own hands, and breaks into Raymond's home, and finds irrefutable evidence of Raymond's crime (e.g. photos on his phone of the incident, etc.). Knowing that it might be inadmissible in court (since there was no warrant or anything), Dan uploads it publicly online and sends it to news media outlets. Now Dan will obviously face some charges I assume. But that aside, regarding the case against Raymond, my main question is: will the evidence be allowed to sway the court? On one hand, evidence that was illegally obtained (such as by a cop without a warrant) is inadmissible in court (if I'm not mistaken). On the other hand, the irrefutable evidence of the crime is out there for the entire public, and the jury can't possibly be asked to ignore it and pretend like Raymond isn't guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. So yeah...what's the answer? Edits: In my example, I used Dan the civilian. But I'd appreciate it if you could address the case that Rob the Rogue Cop also ignores the law to just obtain the evidence and whistleblow it to the public. Imagine the evidence is literally an explicit video of Randy raping the child. Basically, as close to irrefutable as possible. Imagine the case becomes extremely high profile due to widespread media coverage (because it's such a horrible story that was sent to news media outlets, or because Raymond is very famous). Basically, it's impossible to find relevant jurors/judges unless they live under rocks.
The 4th Amendment exclusionary rule applies automatically in cases where law enforcement obtains evidence illegally (subject to exceptions not applicable here). In its 1920 decision in Burdeau vs. McDowell, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the 4th amendment is not applicable to searches by private parties, even when such searches are clearly illegal. This rule doesn't apply, however, if the private citizens was acting as an agent of the government. A more recent case reaffirming and clarifying Burdeau is United States v. Jacobsen 466 U.S. 109 (1984) in which a private courier finds drugs in a package and shows it to police who test the contents (the search was upheld as valid). If the defendant makes that argument, the defendant seeking to exclude the evidence bears the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that the private citizen acted as an agent of the government. U.S. v. Feffer, 831 F.2d 734 (7th Cir. 1987). Another case discussed here notes that: As it relates to computer files, states still differ on how broad the application of the Private Search Doctrine runs, but all seem to agree that if a document or photo has been opened by a private party, an officer can review that file or photo without a warrant. In People v. Wilson, 56 Cal. App. 5th 128 (2020), police opened 4 images they received from NCMEC (the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children) who received the images in a CyberTip from Google. Neither NCMEC nor Google had opened these images in this case, but all 4 images had been reviewed by Google in the past and identified previously as child porn by their matching hash values. So here, the officer’s actions—consisting of opening the electronic files submitted to it by NCMEC and viewing the four images attached to Google’s Cybertip—did not exactly replicate Google’s private actions. The Wilson court set out to determine the degree to which the officer’s additional invasion of Wilson’s privacy exceeded the scope of Google’s private search (the search of his emails against known hash values). Before the officer even received Wilson’s photographs, Google had already reviewed identical images in the past; scanned all of Wilson’s electronic communications to search for content with matching hash values; flagged four of Wilson’s images as matching images Google had previously observed; classified the matching images as depictions of prepubescent minors engaged in sexual acts; forwarded all four images to NCMEC as part of a Cybertip report; and terminated Wilson’s account. The Jacobsen case above explained that, “[t]he Fourth Amendment is implicated only if the authorities use information with respect to which the expectation of privacy has not already been frustrated.” Id. at 117. Because Google’s actions already frustrated any expectation of privacy Wilson possessed in the four photographs at issue, no privacy interest remained in the four images, so no expectation of privacy was violated. Wilson at 219. Because the assigned hash values, or “digital fingerprints,” are representative of the contents depicted in the photographs themselves, the government gained no new material information by viewing the images. The agent merely confirmed Google’s report that Wilson uploaded content constituting apparent child pornography. Id. at 220. When someone who is not law enforcement obtains evidence illegally, the court sometimes engages in a non-constitutional discretionary balancing test to determine if the evidence is admissible. Sometimes it comes in, sometimes it doesn't. I'll find a case setting forth the exact test if I have time. The fact that evidence is &quot;irrefutable&quot; (not that there is any such thing) and widely publicly known is absolutely irrelevant. The fact that a juror knows it would be grounds for excusing the juror for cause and for moving the venue of the trial where they can find enough jurors who aren't familiar with the evidence if they can't manage it in the usual venue.
No. A federal court may not vacate the conviction which the state court declined to vacate under these circumstances. On March 22, 2009, a jury found Luis Villavicencio‐Serna guilty of first‐degree murder of Armando Huerta Jr. Scant physical evidence linked him to the charge. The conviction instead was largely based on testimony from three of his friends, all of whom later recanted. Villavicencio‐Serna exhausted his state‐court appeals and then sought a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). Throughout these proceedings, he consistently has challenged the sufficiency of the evidence to support his conviction. He emphasizes the lack of physical evidence connecting him to the murder, and he suggests that several factors - inconsistencies between the testimonies of his three friends, their subsequent recantations, and the interrogation tactics used by the police—reveal that the police pressured his friends to implicate him. Finally, he offers an alternative theory that links another group to the murder. In the face of these arguments, the Illinois Appellate Court upheld his conviction. The [federal] district court, applying the double‐layered deference required by section 2254(d), concluded that the state court’s decision was not unreasonable, and so it refused to issue the writ. See Villavicencio‐Serna v. Melvin, No. 17 C 5442, 2019 WL 2548688 (N.D. Ill. June 19, 2019). Although we sympathize with the district court’s observation that “the lack of any physical evidence in this case is troubling,” we too conclude that Villavicencio‐Serna has not shown enough to entitle him to issuance of the writ. We therefore affirm.
In the United States, it does not matter how you save any evidence; the other side will essentially always be permitted to question its authenticity. Even if they don't question it, a judge or jury would still be free to do so. That said, the standard means of saving this kind of evidence would be to make a screengrab or print it to PDF, and to attach that to an affidavit in which you swear that the image is an authentic representation of the content of the web page as of whatever date and time. If you want something that is harder to question, you could also ask some independent third party to do so. There are, for instance, archiving services like archive.org and perma.cc that will copy a page and store it indefinitely, largely removing the question of whether you might have manipulated the page in any way.
First off, the concept of &quot;the whole truth&quot; is legally undefined. It cannot possibly mean &quot;everything that you know that is connected to this question&quot;, since otherwise a witness would be required to drone on and on for hours. Second, there is no way to determine what percentage of witnesses are not &quot;telling the whole truth&quot;. We can be fairly certain that when a guilty accused takes the stand, there is a good chance that he is not telling the whole truth, and the oath does not compel you to testify against yourself. Even if there was some clear legal definition of &quot;the whole truth&quot;, there is typically no way to know what the actual facts are, to know if a witness failed to say something that was part of &quot;the whole truth&quot;. The promise part of the oath is irrelevant, that is, the requirement is not to &quot;keep your promise&quot;, it is to not perjure yourself. Every jurisdiction in the US has a statute that makes it a crime to commit perjury. At the federal level, the law is 18 USC 1621, which applies to anyone who has &quot;taken an oath&quot; promising to testify truly, and punishes the witness if he &quot;willfully and contrary to such oath states or subscribes any material matter which he does not believe to be true&quot;. The landmark ruling Bronston v. US, 409 US 352 clarified the obligation of witnesses vs. the duty of interrogators, when it comes to not providing information desired by the interrogator. The court ruled that the perjury statutes does not apply to a witness's answer that is literally true, but unresponsive, even assuming the witness intends to mislead his questioner by the answer, and even assuming the answer is arguably &quot;false by negative implication.&quot; A perjury prosecution is not, in our adversary system, the primary safeguard against errant testimony; given the incongruity of an unresponsive answer, it is the questioner's burden to frame his interrogation acutely to elicit the precise information he seeks. This was a classical &quot;not the whole truth&quot; case. The exchange was as follows, where the accused was testifying in bankruptcy proceedings: Q. Do you have any bank accounts in Swiss banks, Mr. Bronston? A. No, sir. Q. Have you ever? A. The company had an account there for about six months, in Zurich. The fact is that Bronston used to have a personal account in a Swiss Bank, which he did not reveal. His answer could be considered misleading because he only answered part of the question, as it pertained to the company (but not him personally). The crux of the court's ruling is that it is the responsibility of the attorney conducting the interrogation to notice that he did not answer the question asked, and to insist on a response that also covers personal accounts. This established the &quot;literal truth&quot; doctrine for perjury conviction: if what you say is literally true, the testimony is not perjurous. As a later court (DeZarn) commented, because a nonresponsive answer, by its nature, requires speculation by the fact-finder as to what the answer “implies”, there cannot be a finding beyond a reasonable doubt that the answer is untruthful. Clinton successfully relied on this defense with respect to certain of his literally-true testimony. One tweak on this is US v. DeZarn, 157 F3d 1042, where a literal-truth defense was set forth but rejected by the court. The accused was asked about a party that was allegedly a fundraising event. His testimony was that it wasn't a fundraising event for the governor (in fact it was), and his defense came down to the fact that the prosecutor asked about a party in 1991, had earlier referred to it as a &quot;Preakness Party&quot; (which the governor had held previously), and asked about fundraising &quot;at that activity&quot;. DeZarn's claim was that he thought the prosecutor was asking about a party in 1990 (which was a &quot;Preakness Party&quot;, with no fundraising). The prosecutor was in error in previously calling it a &quot;Preakness Party&quot;, but was correct in identifying that there was a party (with fundraising) at the governor's house, in 1991 time. The wording of DeZarn's testimony was, simply &quot;I don't know... No... No&quot;: these are responses that have no literal truth value taken on their own, and can be judged only in relation to what question was asked (whereas Bronston's testimony was literally true on its own). DeZarn's conviction was upheld because he could not have been confused about which party was being referred to, and what the actual question was; moreover, in saying just &quot;No&quot;, he gave no sign that his response was a partial answer to the question. The DeZarn court did not clarify matters, leaving it at the conclusion that a perjury inquiry which focuses only upon the precision of the question and ignores what the Defendant knew about the subject matter of the question at the time it was asked, misses the very point of perjury: that is, the Defendant's intent to testify falsely and, thereby, mislead his interrogators. This does not clearly distinguish DeZarn from Bronston, but that could be remedied by a more precise theory of the linguistic relationship between the question(s) asked and the literal answer – Bronston said enough that a reasonable person could detect that only part of the question was answered, whereas the testimony &quot;No&quot; gives no overt sign that the testifier had privately re-written the question to be something like &quot;Was there fundraising at a Preakness Party in 1991&quot;, as opposed to &quot;at that activity&quot;. The court relied on a subjective &quot;sniff test&quot; for distinguishing responsive from non-responsive testimony, so I would say that they simply did not draw the bright lines that could have been drawn (which would be based on better distinguishing &quot;implies&quot; versus &quot;asserts&quot;).
The question actually asked, "what legal theories would support or harm...", is somewhat unclear. But what the questioner seems to be asking is, basically, what would happen if you tried it? The answer, it seems to me, is pretty straightforward. In the hypothetical case, you have been publishing a notice for years, saying "I have not been served with a subpoena." You then get served with a subpoena that includes a gag order. The gag order, presumably, includes wording prohibiting you from revealing the existence of the subpoena. You then cease publication of the warrant canary. By doing so, you have revealed the existence of the subpoena, and you are in violation of the gag order. You will be subject to whatever penalties you would be subject to if you violated it in some other way; for example, by publishing a notice that said, "Hey! We got a subpoena! It's a secret!" The distinction between revealing the existence of the subpoena by action, rather than by inaction, is a false one. It's exactly the kind of cutesy legal formality that non-lawyers love to rely on, but real judges ignore. If you tell someone: "Hey, you know John Smith's three sons, Joe, Ted, and Bill? Joe and Ted are good people; they have never molested any children. As for Bill--well, I don't have anything to say about Bill." If Bill is not a child molester, you have defamed him, and you are not going to convince a judge otherwise. The EFF link you link to tries to claim it'll "work" because courts are reluctant to enforce speech. Even if that were true, that might mean your canary would be effective in the sense of giving the public notice of the subpoena. That doesn't mean you wouldn't be liable for giving the public notice. For example: I put up a billboard saying "Bill Smith is a pedophile." Even if the court can't force me to add the word "not", that doesn't mean the billboard isn't defamatory. Realistically, though, courts compel speech all the time. Court-ordered apologies, disclosures, and notices are not unusual. And if ever a court would be inclined to compel speech, it would be in a situation like this one, where a company intentionally set out to get around a gag order with this kind of convoluted sea-lawyering.
In the US this is generally governed by state law: RCW 4.24.350 in Washington state. The criminal jury is not empowered to make such a decision, but a separate civil trial for malicious prosecution would be possible. Plaintif (ex defedant) would have to prove that the action was instituted with knowledge that the same was false, and unfounded, malicious and without probable cause in the filing of such action, or that the same was filed as a part of a conspiracy to misuse judicial process by filing an action known to be false and unfounded The basis for the lawsuit would be the objective facts that prove that the prosecution was false and malicious, and not the fact of acquittal or the subjective opinion of a juror.
I think you're referring to this image: This is the prosecutor pointing the AR-15 at the jury. Evidence, including guns, is allowed in the courtroom, but the prosecutor was widely criticized for his dramatic antics: pointing it directly at the jury, with his finger on the trigger (the rifle should have been checked for being empty, but not having your finger on the trigger unless you intend to shoot, no matter what, is elementary gun safety).
Truth is a defense to defamation Bob must prove the truth of his statement if Rob sues - there is a reverse onus for this defense. Because this is a civil trial the burden is balance of probabilities. Provided Bob can prove Rob stole his bike he will win. A conviction for doing so is pretty good (but not necessarily conclusive) evidence. Absent that, Bob would need other evidence. Of course, if Bob has said that Rob was convicted of stealing the bike, he’s going to lose.