Excluding evidence for integrity’s sake

In recent years, the concept of “integrity” has been frequently discussed by scholars, and deployed by courts, in the domain of criminal procedure. In this chapter, the authors are concerned with how the concept has been employed in relation to the problem of the admissibility of evidence obtained improperly. In conceptualizing and addressing this problem, the advocates of integrity rely on it as a standard of conduct for the criminal justice authorities and as a necessary condition for the state authority to condemn and punish. The authors raise a series of challenges that need answering before integrity can perform these roles. Their aim is not to show that integrity is useless in normative theorizing about the admissibility of evidence, and about the criminal process in general. Rather, it is to give guidance for the elaboration of a theory of integrity that is cogent, coherent, and has useful implications for the process of proof.