Parallel construction is actually quite difficult; it requires an independent chain of evidence not built upon the illegally-acquired evidence.

We hear about the cases where parallel construction worked because those cases are rare, and thus are news. We don't hear about the vast majority of cases where the police couldn't parallel construct their way around 4th Amendment violations.

If the parallel construction worked then we wouldn't know it had occurred. There are multiple officials on record saying parallel construction is a widespread practice and "used every day".

> The two senior DEA officials, who spoke on behalf of the agency but only on condition of anonymity, said the process is kept secret to protect sources and investigative methods. "Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day," one official said. "It's decades old, a bedrock concept."

https://web.archive.org/web/20130809014315/https://www.reute...

Yes, I don't doubt at the federal level that parallel construction works better than it does at the local level, because the feds have jurisdiction over bigger crimes. Drug crimes, involving multinational criminal organizations, generally involve many participants and transactions, and you only need to break 1 participant in a conspiracy to unravel the whole thing. (And more importantly, due to the many overlapping crimes being committed toward the common end, there are simply more options for pursuing parallel construction or even just pursuing different crimes.)

But at the local level where most crimes occur, parallel construction is a fantasy for the overwhelming majority of cases. Cops would absolutely love if they could just parallel their way around tainted evidence, but in most cases, there's only one crime, and only one trail of evidence, and there's no way to parallel around that.

(And I speak from experience; I was a public defender before I went into tax. I've seen many more failed attempts at parallel construction than successful attempts.)

I am continually amazed at HN's ability to reject reality in favor of some imaginary world that doesn't actually exist.

In the real world parallel construction is not common. The cops simply don't have the resources to pursue it in the vast majority of cases at the local level, and many cases get tossed because of tainted evidence. Hell, plenty of manslaughter and gang cases get tossed because of tainted evidence.

At the federal level, parallel construction is more common, because the feds (a) have more resources to pursue alternative avenues of investigation, and (b) have jurisdiction over the types of crimes which lend themselves to having multiple avenues of investigation, like organized crime.

But on an absolute basis, even at the federal level parallel construction is still rare, because it is invariable easier to just pursue different charges. Al Capone, for example, was brought down by tax fraud. More recently, many federal charges against El Chapo were dropped because the evidence was tainted...but it was irrelevant because they just pursued a dozen different crimes instead.

>I am continually amazed at HN's ability to reject reality in favor of some imaginary world that doesn't actually exist

Your claim is just absurd. In a successful use of parallel construction, the defendant and possibly even the prosecution should be unaware that it even occurred. Your experience as a lawyer is not a good reason to expect it isn't happening.

And though I agree that local use alone is likely rare, one of the common methods is for a federal agency to pass information to a smaller law enforcement agency. Additionally, using illegally collected evidence as a justification to pursue someone for an unrelated crime would still be parallel construction.

While the government probably can't do a parallel construction in these cases it gives them the identity of the bad guys even if they have nothing to take to court. Thus they know who to target.