When Judges Ignore Police Mistakes, Taxpayers Pay the Price
How often do the police get it wrong? Stop a car without reasonable suspicion? Make an arrest without probable cause? 5% of the time? 10%? More? It depends on the police agency and officer involved, but clearly, it’s not 0% of the time, and when judges don’t hold officers accountable for their mistakes, we all pay the price.
Someone charged with a crime who believes they have been stopped, searched, or arrested illegally can file a motion to suppress evidence or dismiss the charges. An evidentiary hearing is then held. The judge’s job is to listen to the testimony, apply the law, and either grant or deny the motion. Unfortunately, some judges seem to default to denying defense motions and letting the jury decide every issue, regardless of the merits of the motion. No one wants to be told they have made a mistake and some judges view being reversed by a higher court as a black mark on their record. In this sense it is far “safer” to deny defense motions. But our whole system breaks down when judges don’t suppress illegally-seized evidence or fail to dismiss charges not based on probable cause. Allowing such cases to proceed to trial has real costs in terms of wasted taxpayer time and money.
When prosecutors lose a motion, they can dismiss the case and appeal. A higher court must decide if the trial court ruled correctly and will reverse the ruling when they find the judge erred. But when the defense loses, they are limited to asking an appellate court to review the decision through a pretrial appeal known as a “special action.” Appellate courts can wait to see if the defendant is convicted without ruling, and they typically decline jurisdiction and let the case proceed. However, when this occurs, police officers aren’t held accountable for their mistakes.
The late Hon. George Dunscomb understood this. When he found police officers had acted improperly, he always issued a written order explaining why he had ruled for the defense. He wanted the officers to understand what they had done wrong and avoid repeating the same mistake in the future. That is what we expect judges to do. But our system breaks down when judges don’t suppress illegally-seized evidence or dismiss cases based on arrests where the officers lacked probable cause.
When a defendant is found not guilty because a jury found an officer’s actions unreasonable, the case is over. Improper trial court rulings are never reviewed or reversed. The arresting officers don’t learn from their mistakes, since no court told them they erred. In addition, when cases that should have been dismissed proceed to trial, it wastes taxpayer time and money.
Jury trials shut down a courtroom for at least two days, during which time other cases can’t be adjudicated. Twenty plus potential jurors are typically summoned to court. Depending on the case, somewhere between six and fourteen jurors are selected. Every potential juror takes the day off from work or school, arranges childcare, and otherwise puts their life on hold to be in court. For those selected to the jury, this goes on for days.
As taxpayers, we pay the judge, court clerk, prosecutor, and trial jurors to be there. When there is a court-appointed defense attorney, we pay them too. Law enforcement officers and state laboratory personnel often receive overtime to sit and watch the trial for multiple days (An article published last year discussed Scottsdale City Council members investigating millions of dollars the city paid in overtime, including to one officer who received over $120,000.00 in one year).
It’s one thing for a judge to admit evidence or deny a motion to dismiss in a close case, but some courts seem to never grant motions to suppress evidence or dismiss charges, no matter how meritorious. In thirty-eight years of practicing law, I’ve never heard of a pretrial motion to dismiss a DUI case granted in the Scottsdale City Court – and that’s certainly not because Scottsdale police officers don’t ever make bad stops or arrests.
When defendants lose heart and plead guilty because motions to dismiss that should have been granted were denied, courts collect the fines and fees that they pay. But we all pay the price in terms of time, money, and accountability – when judges deny meritorious motions and leave it to the jury to decide those cases.
