I liked the characterization someone on ars technica made: “the idiot cop framed a guilty person.” In all likelihood, the cops testimony of what he found plus the physical evidence would have easily been enough to get a conviction, but he went and made up a video and misrepresented it to the courts.
[quote=“Shirly_LeGitte”]
Seems to me, the cop did the right thing, in this case…he realized the chain of evidence was bad, and reported it, rather than letting the case proceed.[/quote]
Only, after the “evidence” was questioned. As near as I can piece together, the guy probably didn’t even realize that what he was doing was wrong or tampering with evidence – he just knew he was supposed to get searches on camera, so he did. Then, at some point during the legal process, the question was brought up why parts of the video seemed inconsistent, and he said “well, yeah, I had to re-enact it to get it on film”. The prosecutor, upon hearing this, says “oh shit”, makes the mother of all facepalms, and drops the case.
