Complete case brief of Nix v. Williams Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Complete brief of Nix v. Williams - Case Study ExampleDuring the trial of Williams, the court held that, even in the case that Williams had non made the informative statements to the officer the body would have been recovered and used as conclusion against him (Nix). Procedural History The defendant, Mr. Williams was a mental patient on the loose. Williams abducted and murdered Pamela Powers, a ten-year-old girl from a YMCA on the 24th of December 1968 (Nix). After two days, he went to the police, at another county making the condition that he was not to be questioned during the process of moving him back to Urbandale. One of the detectives started a conversation with him, and suggested to him that he needed to reveal the location where he had left the bushed(p) body, before an anticipated snowfall took place (Nix). He agreed to the proposal, and the directions he gave led the detectives to the recovery of the body (McInnis 397-446). After the recovery of the body, Williams was co nvicted for the crime, but based on Brewer v. Williams (1977), the Supreme Court held that there had been a violation of Williams right to counsel, like it was directed during the case of Massiah v. United States (1964). For that cogitate, his conviction was reversed. However, Justice ceramist Stewarts opinion pointed out that the show collected from Williams could be used during a trial, in a constitutional manner (Nix). Following the opinion, Williams was offered another trial, during which the attorneys liable of his case moved a motion suppressing the evidence-bases collected through the interrogation by the detectives. Legal Issues The legal issues to be determined through the case include whether, evidence leading to an arrest could be exempted from case proceedings, based on the grounds that it had been obtained improperly. Decision of the Court The court, based on the requisite discovery doctrine, held that the evidence (body) would have still been recovered within a sh ort span. Therefore, the method through which the information leading to the recovery was collected was not relevant then the evidence was admitted as evidence against the defendant. The dissent to the case, by Justice Brennan, maintained that the inevitable discovery doctrine bases its considerations on a hypothetical case, where the supposed evidence may or may not have been recovered therefore, regarding that it was recovered through illegal direction, it remained unconstitutionally collected (McInnis 397-446). Legal Analysis The main reason as to why the exclusionary rule was extended to the evidence collected through illegal police conduct was that, the channel taken was enough grounds to expose the police from violating statutory and constitutional protections, without allowing guilty people to go unpunished. Based on the rationale, the prosecution was not to be offered more advantages, than its case would have been, in the case that the evidence had not been collected thr ough an illegal course (McInnis 397-446). However, by contrast, the judges resorted to the independent source doctrine, which allows for the admission of evidence, which has been gathered through means that are independent of the constitutional violation. Despite the fact that the independent source rule did not apply to the case, the rationale derived from it was consistent and offered justification to the adoption of the inevitable discovery rule, to the exclusionary doctrine. In the case that