The Balance Between Deterring Unlawful Police Conduct and Having Juries Receive All Probative Evidence of Crime

In Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431, 81 L. Ed. 2d 377, 104 S. Ct. 2501 (1984), the Supreme Court determined that the proper balance between society's interest in deterring unlawful police conduct and the public interest in having juries receive all probative evidence of a crime would be to place police in the same position they would have been in absent the police misconduct. See Nix, 467 U.S. at 443-44. Forever excluding illegally obtained evidence would be a drastic and socially costly course of action. Id.