| Our court system is set up so that illegally collected evidence (physical evidence collected without a warrant or agreement of the individual possessing the evidence, and coerced confessions) is assumed to be suspect.
The reason for this is simple: In the case of the physical evidence, it's way too easy to falsify the evidence without the paper trail. The paper train makes it harder to fake (or at least easier to detect): You know who was performing the search, where, and when. The case of coerced confessions is even more obvious: With enough coercion, you can get almost anyone to confess to almost anything.
It all ties into that whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing. |
