-Police and the Law - Case Study Example

For this reason, the Exclusionary Rule that is recognized by the United States Supreme Court comes to primary importance. For purposes of this brief analysis, this author will utilize the fundamental precepts of the Exclusionary Rule alongside three specific cases, Weeks v. United States, Rochin v. California, and Mapp v. Ohio, to illustrate the progressions that the judicial system has made with reference to realizing, appreciating, and categorizing the means by which evidence can be legally and rightfully obtained as well as recognized within a court of law.

For purposes of clarity, the Exclusionary Rule will be defined within this analysis as a legal principle under constitutional law which states that any evidence that is collected which violates the rights of the defendant is non-admissible for criminal prosecution in a court of law. The importance of such a constraint is massive due to the fact that it helps to place much needed limits on the powers that the prosecuting entity, almost invariably that of law enforcement, can legally impose on an individual that is suspected of transgressing the law.

For purposes of explanation, one can directly link the development and historical significance of the Exclusionary Rule to the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. In such a way, the Exclusionary Rule can be understood as an expansion of the power that protects citizens from unlawful searches and seizures. As will be seen in the proceeding analysis, this prohibition against unlawful search and seizure can even extend into cases which police and the requisite authorities have all necessary search warrants necessary to perform a standard search (Fettig 2010).

In this way, the unique level to which the exclusionary rule works within the judicial system helps to ensure that even if law enforcement representatives have requisite documentation, they are not allowed to deviate from a proscribed role in seeking to gain such evidence. As the following cases will show, a great deal of development has taken place within the Exclusionary Rule and the means by which the rights of the individual have been championed in place of granting greater and more expansive powers to law enforcement.

With respect to the first of these cases, that of Weeks v. United States (1914), this was a case that set a level of precedent with relation to the Fourth Amendment and the application thereof to ensure that evidence gained during a warrantless seizure was inadmissible in a federal court of law. The prohibition against allowing evidence procured in such a manner being admissible in a federal court of law was beyond merely disallowing federal agents to gather such evidence and present it within a federal court, it also prohibited federal agents from receiving evidence received in such a manner from being retrieved by their state or local counterparts.

However, noticeably missing from this case was a prohibition against any evidence whatsoever being gathered or utilized in such a way (Campbell 2011). The case itself was concentric upon Weeks having his own possessions rifled and taken during a police search that did not have the power of a search warrant. As such, Weeks protests were eventually heard by the Supreme Court and the case itself was thrown out due to the majority opinion that such a search violated the soon to be elaborated upon Exclusionary Rule