‘Following the Law’

Your editorial was perhaps designed to goad deputy district attorneys into dashing off angry rejoinders. Let me add my voice to the chorus.

Before getting down to the main business of singing hymns of praise to the Bird Court, you quickly assured your readers that there was “little likelihood that any of the defendants in these (reversed) cases will go free.” That may or may not be true.

More importantly, whether it is true or not is entirely irrelevant under the present state of the law. The slightest police misstep in gathering evidence, no matter how trivial, leads mechanically and inexorably to suppression of that evidence, no matter how important.

Had Theodore Frank’s case been based solely upon evidence produced by the “overly broad” search warrant, then Theodore Frank would perhaps be on the streets today, in search of fresh 2-year-olds to torture and kill. This seems too high a price to pay to encourage magistrates to tighten up the phraseology in their search warrants.

There is a middle ground, in use in Britain and elsewhere but thus far undetected by the zealots of the Bird Court. It is this: Weigh other things in the balance besides the perceived violation of the defendant’s rights. If the violation is serious, suppress the evidence.

But if the violation is less serious (as it certainly was in the Frank case), then consider the harm to be done to innocent people if the evidence is thrown out.

RICHARD HEALEY

Huntington Beach