United States v. Carlos Varela

WALKER, Circuit Judge,

concurring:

I fully agree with Chief Judge Oakes’ enunciation of the principles and supporting case law that lead to the result that permits the unlawfully obtained statement to be used to prove a subsequent perjury. Unlike my colleague, however, I have no reluctance in applying them; nor do I share his “concern with the repeated weakening of the exclusionary rule through rote application of the ... analysis” prescribed in United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 347-48, 94 S.Ct. 613, 619-20, 38 L.Ed.2d 561 (1974) and its progeny. Society pays a heavy price when relevant probative evidence of a defendant’s guilt is excluded from consideration at trial. In my view, the conclusion that such an exclusion can properly be justified only by its deterrent effect on unlawful future governmental conduct and then only when the deterrence is “substantial and efficient” United States v. Janis, 428 U.S. 433, 453, 96 S.Ct. 3021, 3031-32, 49 L.Ed.2d 1046 (1976) as determined upon an appropriate cost-benefit analysis and not “to enforce ideals of governmental rectitude” in the abstract, see United States v. Payner, 447 U.S. 727, 734, 100 S.Ct. 2439, 2445, 65 L.Ed.2d 468 (1980), is a sound one. In any event, it is the law which we are bound to apply. I do so absent the misgivings expressed by my able colleague.