Less evil.............

In Olmstead v United States the Supreme Court took up the question of whether the government had the right to use evidence secured via wiretapping without judicial approval.  The year was 1928.  In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that the defendents' constitutional rights were not violated by the government's wiretap.  Justice Holmes dissented:


"There is no body of precedents by which we are bound, and which confines us to logical deduction from established rules.  Therefore we must consider the two objects of desire, both of which we cannot have, and make up our mind which to choose.  It is desirable that criminals should be detected, and to that end that all available evidence should be used.  It is also desirable that the government should not itself foster and pay for other crimes, when they are the means by which the evidence is to be obtained.  We have to choose, and for my part I think it is a less evil that some criminals should escape than that the government should play an ignoble part."
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.