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A cop that planted evidence on you would then, usually, find that evidence to announce that you had it.
That finding action would likely excuse any fingerprints on the evidence unless they were extremely careless and left a fingerprint inside the baggie.
Cops don't collect evidence to prove your innocence. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. Never for you. You and your lawyer provide your own evidence. The cops won't be collecting it for you.
Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. Never for you.
What shitty country is that?
Every country on Earth? Is there someplace police accuse people of crimes and then argue why they're wrong?
Police have to collect proof, whether it works for or against a suspect. Other suspects are possible, too. That follows directly from the general presumption of innocence. Only the judge can end that presumption, with his verdict.
Btw police don't argue in court.
(Germany here)
Police aren't prosecutors in the US. But they work closely with the district attorneys who do prosecute. As in they provide the evidence to them and provide their recount of the situation and circumstances to the prosecutor and if it goes to trial can be called to testify against you.
Additionally, many police programs incentivize or measure an officers efficiency based on the number of arrests or tickets they produce.
Often since the prosecutors and police work towards the same goal of securing a conviction, we lump them together even though they are different agencies.
Even that "prosecutor" name is bad.
The State is there to find and punish the right people, not to go after a random person they selected.
On most countries, the equivalent to a prosecutor will insist that the police works correctly, and will throw away cases if some evidence appear that the suspect is innocent.
many police programs incentivize or measure an officers efficiency based on the number of arrests or tickets they produce.
I call that very unethical.
Me too.
This site says:
One of the most critical measures in the preliminary proceedings is questioning the alleged crime participants and witnesses to what happened. No statement should be made without legal counsel at this stage (especially when the police open up to the suspect to interrogate them as an “accused”). Investigators are trained to ask questions that could put the suspect in a bind and are increasingly success-oriented. This often results in hasty, ill-considered and incriminating statements, which can be used against the accused in the main proceedings.
Which sounds an awful lot like German police can and will use your words against you in court.
This site
Some random lawyer.
like German police can and will use your words against you in court.
Again: police records and collects stuff. They do not argue in court.
What the accused has told the police will be usable by all sides equally in court.
What the accused has told the police will be usable by all sides equally in court.
And the side arguing against you will use your words to assist you?
German courts aren't special. All courts work the same. You are innocent until proven guilty. You do not need evidence of innocence. All evidence is to prove guilt. The prosecution is attempting to prove guilt. Police collect evidence to prove guilt because proving innocence is not required. Both sides can use evidence collected, yes, that's the same everywhere, but it's not collected to prove innocence. You are assumed innocent. No evidence required. If evidence is being collected it's specifically to be used against you to prove guilt.
It makes zero sense for police to collect evidence of your innocence, the state to charge you with a crime, and then argue you are innocent of that charge. You are assumed innocent. Arguments that you are innocent are not required. Evidence that you are innocent are not required. Statements that you make can't be used to prove you are innocent. You are innocent by default. Statements that you make can therefore only be used prove guilt.
All courts work the same.
They don't. And the way the US courts work is almost exclusive to them.
If the cop planted drugs and didn’t have the foresight to put on a latex glove, do you think they’ll forget to wipe their prints before dusting for their own prints?
Besides all the other arguments, fingerprints aren't like the movies. You need a reasonably flat surface to get a fingerprint from.
Getting a fingerprint from a house or a car to prove that someone was there at some point, any time in the past, is possible. Getting a fingerprint from a plastic baggy to prove someone held it would be much harder.
The distortions would make it extremely hard to match against a database. If they compare it to you then it might show a match, so if you're a suspect they might make a direct comparison. If they compare it to the cop? Remember the cop is innocent until proven guilty, so they can't compel them to give fingerprints for comparison. Yes, they could be in a database, but remember the distortion makes it hard to automatically find this.
Any lab work has a cost, and police are lazy. They aren't going to spend time or money trying to solve a case. They go with best effort.
Uhm, cops are already fingerprinted. It’s on file as part of the background check. Any defense attorney would be able to file the necessary subpoena for that record. (It’s kept for all sorts of reasons.)
Further, fingerprints are considered “evidence”, and can just be collected, even if they weren’t on file, a simple subpoena would compel it- and again, any defense attorney can file and get it.
The cop-legally- enjoys exactly the same protections of due process you do. And that includes access to any potentially exculpatory evidence.
It’s going to be much harder to prove that the cop planted it, though, for one thing fingerprints on the outside are easily explained away, even if they exist or aren’t so damaged as to be useless. And cops normally aren’t stupid enough to live prints in hard to explain places.
For another, the deck is stacked in the cop’s favor- the court trusts them. Frequently, in the face of overwhelming evidence they can’t be trusted.
Yeah no one is fingerprinting a possession case.
Because fuck you, the whole system is rigged.
why don't they ask for a finger print test?
STOP RESISTING!
I think the point OP is making is less about the cop's fingerprints and more that your fingerprints would be missing. Might at least introduce reasonable doubt if you are claiming they were planted.
Fingerprints aren't a magical marker that remains visible on a surface for a set period of time. If you handle an object thoroughly and then hand it to your buddy there's a good chance that only your buddy's fingerprints will be detectable (and it's also pretty likely that no ones' would be clear enough for a match).
Cops wear gloves when "searching"
And even if they don't it doesn't really matter. I saw a recent bodycam video of a cop planting drugs in someone's car in Philly, NYC, or somewhere nearby and they didn't do shit to him.
because the cops give their fingerprints to rile them out, because they touched it while searching
You don't get to make requests lol
It’s because ACAB
The problem is that the container is evidence.
Even if planted, what does a cop do with evidence? They take it from the person. They'll usually do so with their hands.
If they're not wearing gloves, they can still explain away those prints by dint of touching them while taking them as evidence. If they're wearing gloves, the only way they'd leave prints is if they weren't while they were getting the container ready, but then they can still claim to have handled it without gloves at some point
It's an impossible to prove claim unless there's other evidence supporting the claim.
Since most court systems default to a cop being a credible witness instead of them having to back up their claims with other evidence, you're fucked.
So it's a bad defense. To make it stick, you have such a barrier to break down just to try to gain supporting evidence that you ain't gonna be doing it from jail unless you're rich.
Not that nobody tries. They do. It's essentially a waste of time, but people will claim that evidence is planted. It's just extremely rare for it to work, even when there is supporting evidence. It's also a trope, so getting a jury to believe the claim is hard. You see it in movies and shows so often where the hero cop arrests someone with drugs and they say that it isn't theirs, it's planted.
Copaganda is a thing, and it works. Because it's such a common trope, people have the idea that it's something only claimed by people that are obviously lying. It doesn't help that if you're the kind of person to take the claim seriously, and take the other evidence into account, there's a lower chance of you being on the jury. Jury selection, any prosecutor is going to ask questions that will find folks predisposed to a bias against their case. Same with defense lawyers wanting to exclude those against their defense
That's not exclusive to drug cases, but drug cases are such that it's easier for fake evidence do be planted. It's very hard to fake a weapon in a murder case because testing can be used to exclude things. But a bag of drugs? Much easier to fake things. Hell, a cop wanting to do it, all they have to do is wear gloves, then push the baggie against the hands of the person, and now the planting claim is harder to prove