Background: One of the classes I am taking this semester is Criminal Procedure. It’s kind of an interesting class, but not an area of law that particularly fascinates me.

Sad story: Since I left my knitting at home this week (and I’m down at school - still kicking myself for not grabbing my knitting bag on Tuesday morning), I don’t have any way to decompress after 4 hours of class in the evening. When I got home after class tonight (not home-home, but to the place I stay while I’m at school), I sat down to eat and turned on the Tivo. There was an episode of Law & Order on, so I decided to watch it. [this is only the THIRD episode of law & order that I’ve watched in my life… hard to believe, isn’t it?] Anyway, at one point during the show, the detectives had a valid search warrant to search a woman’s house and also to search a gray Mercedes that a parking attendant saw her driving the day of the crime. As it turned out, the car at the woman’s home was actually a silver BMW - not the same kind of car specified on the warrant. One detective (older guy) wanted to search the car immediately anyway, and his partner (younger guy) was on the phone to get the judge to approve a search for the silver BMW instead of the gray Mercedes. I was practically shouting at the TV - “No, don’t do the search without getting the warrant fixed - if you do, the evidence can’t be used in the prosecution’s case in chief under the exclusionary rule!” The detective on the phone was saying basically the same thing to the senior detective, and the response of the senior detective was: “So that’s what they teach you when you go to law school at night?” HA!

Ok, my life is sad. Sad, sad, sad. The upside is that I am actually learning stuff. The downside is that I’m yelling at fictional characters on a fictional TV show trying to explain the exclusionary rule to them. This is not a good way to relax in the evening. I really must remember to bring my knitting next week!