GOOD FAITH EXCEPTION This exception to the exclusionary rule provides that illegally gathered evidence can be admitted at trial if police officers have reason to believe their actions are legal. One way to look at this is the substitution of mens rea for strict liability. Under the original exclusionary rule police were strictly responsible for their violations of Constitutional law. The Good Faith rule permits the courts to consider the mental state of the police officer. So far the new rule has been confined to errors made by judges or legislatures. If the judge, for example, makes a mistake in issuing a warrant, the police officer is not responsible if she had good reason to believe that the warrant was valid. The rationale for this change is that the exclusionary rule is designed, as a last resort, to punish police for misconduct. When judges and legislatures make mistakes, the higher courts have methods of correcting them, so there is no reason to apply the exclusionary rule

GOOD TIME - Early release mechanism under determinate sentencing regimes: prison inmates get an automatic reduction in sentence for every day they spend without being written up for a violation of prison rules. They may also earn reduced time by participating in educational programs, community service projects, or medical experiments.

(On November 26, 1996 Florida released 446 inmates, including 200 sex offenders and 91 murderers. Florida law had allowed 30-day sentence reductions for every month of good time served. Reform legislation in 1995 required inmates to serve 85% of their sentences. The November 26 release made headlines because the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the legislature could not enact an ex post facto laws applying the reform to prisoners who were eligible for early release under the old rules. In reality by the time the case wound through the appeals court, most of 446 were being released only three months earlier than the expiration date on their sentences.)

GREGG V. GEORGIA 428 U. S. 153 (1976) - Following Furman, state legislatures reformed capital punishment laws to meet the new Constitutional criterion of "guided discretion." In a related decision (Woodson v. North Carolina), the Court held that a mandatory death penalty for a subset of crimes was cruel and unusual. Georgia’s law passed the test because it required the jury to produce a written verdict that outlined which of ten specific aggravating circumstances justified the death penalty.

Vote 7-2

In 1994 Justice Blackmun in a dissenting opinion (Callins v. Collins) argued that the experience since Gregg had convinced him that no principle of guided discretion could resolve the dilemma between individualized evaluation and general rules; this inherent failure of human judgment makes punishment by death cruel and unusual. Blackmun has since retired and his views are not shared by his replacement.

Guided Discretion A set of standards written by state legislatures to limit the discretion of juries making decisions about death penalty sentences. Furman v. Georgia (1972) held that states must provide explicit guidelines outlining the aggravating and mitigating circumstances that jurors must consider. Without such standards, the Court argued, administration of the death penalty was arbitrary and capricious, "like being hit by lightening."