Application Of The Exclusionary Rule - Term Paper Example

Application Of The Exclusionary Rule The Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution states that “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” This Amendment was ratified to protect the US citizens from abuses that could arise from giving the law enforcement a free hand to search and seize property. It lays down that probable cause is necessary before a warrant can be issued, and any evidence that is obtained without a valid warrant, or obtained through a method that is in violation of the Fourth Amendment, will be inadmissible in Court, or excluded in a criminal prosecution. This is known as the exclusionary rule. What is interesting is that in some cases even when a warrant has been issued, if it is found that there was no probable cause, the exclusionary rule is applied. However, many objections have been raised to this application of the rule and the prosecution has, with varying results, often taken exception to this rule with what is termed as the “good-faith” contention, which is to say that if the law enforcing officers acted in good-faith and made a search believing the warrant to be valid, again in good-faith, then the exclusionary rule should not be applied to the evidence thus obtained. Such arguments have been made before the US Supreme Court as well as various State Supreme Courts. Our object here is to discuss and compare three of them: one of them a US Supreme Court case, and the other two presented before State Supreme Courts. United States v. Leon et al. was presented before the United States Supreme Court for adjudication on the question whether the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule would also be applied where there was good faith on the part of the law enforcement officers. An informer, whose reliability was unproven, told an officer of the Burbank Police Department about two men “Armando” and “Patsy” who he said dealt in narcotics, also stating that he had witnessed “Patsy” selling once. He also stated that these two men stored a large quantity of the narcotics elsewhere. This resulted in the Burbank Police Department starting an investigation which focused on the residence of these two men. During surveillance, they spotted the car of Ricardo Del Castillo, a man with a previous drug trafficking conviction, and his identification led them to Alberto Leon who was listed as the employer of Castillo in the probation records. There had been some information given to the Burbank Police Department regarding Leon’s involvement in drug trafficking. The residence of Leon and another house were also kept under surveillance, and a lot of material activity was observed. Finally Officer Rombach of the Burbank Police Department prepared an application for a warrant to search all three of these houses, as well as all automobiles registered to the above-mentioned men. The application was reviewed by several Deputy District Attorneys, and finally a State Superior Court Judge issued a search warrant. This resulted in the discovery of large quantities of narcotics. However, the respondents applied to the District Court for suppression of evidence, which was granted to them in part because the affidavit was insufficient to provide probable cause. The court did agree that Officer Rombach had acted in good-faith, however, they did not agree to the government’s contention that the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule should not apply where the search warrant was relied on in good-faith. The Court of Appeals upheld this decision and also stated that the information provided by the informant was inadequate under both prongs of the two-part test established in Aguilar v. Texas and Spinelli v. United States. The Court of Appeals also refused to recognize a good-faith exception to the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule. The Goverhment then appealed to the Supreme Court, not seeking to reverse the decision of the lower courts regarding the probable cause behind the warrant, but to seek an exception to the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule. The Constitutional issue that the Government raised before the Supreme Court was whether “the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule should be modified so as not to bar the admission of evidence seized in reasonable good-faith reliance on a search warrant that is subsequently held to be defective”. That is to say if evidence is found through a search warrant, which was obtained in good-faith and relied upon on good-faith too, then if the warrant is later on held to be defective, the seized evidence should still be admissible for prosecution. The Supreme Court agreed with the Government in their contention, because according to them the exclusionary rule was placed to prevent the law enforcing officers from over-stepping their authority. They further said that the exclusionary clause protects the rights of the people through its deterrent effect, and not by creating a constitutional right to the aggrieved party. The Supreme Court stated that a rigid application of this rule would result in creating problems for the judge and jury to find the truth, and also in lenient plea bargains or acquittals of guilty defendants. This rule, the Supreme Court stated, was put in place to prevent the prosecution to seek to use evidence found against a victim of police misconduct. The Court said that the respondents did not have enough standing to claim this exclusionary clause, and even if they did, they cannot prevent the evidence to be used elsewhere, for instance, to impeach their direct testimony. The Court also laid down that the exclusionary rule was put in place as a deterrent to police misconduct, and not to punish errors committed by magistrates and judges. Moreover, not only was this a case whereby judges could disagree on probable cause, but also if the exclusionary rule was applied here, it would not cause them to be punished in anyway, in fact it would cause the law enforcing officer to be punished. If the magistrate was misled/misinformed by the police or if the warrant issued was so deficient on the face of it that it was improbable for anyone to believe its validity, only then would the exclusionary rule brought in, in this case. The Court decided that suppression of evidence that is obtained pursuant to a warrant should only be allowed on a case to case basis. In the present case, the Court said that they found no police misconduct, whether willful or negligent; reliance was made on the search warrant in good-faith, hence the decision of the Court of Appeals was reversed. With this decision the “good faith” exception was given credence by the Supreme Court. In the State Supreme Courts, the decisions have been differing; with some of them agreeing with the US Supreme Court, and others taking exception. Two such differing decisions have been discussed here. In Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Louis R. Edmunds, the defendant was found guilty for certain drug charges by the trial court. A search warrant was obtained based on the information given by two anonymous informants. The search warrant was issued to search a certain building, which was the defendant’s property, along with his residence, though the Commonwealth later agreed that they did not have probable cause to search the residence of the defendant. The informants told the police that they saw marijuana near the white building (defendant’s property) in a cleared off area. Even though the warrant obtained included the residence of the defendant, the law enforcing official informed the defendant that they needed to search the white building. The defendant told them that it was leased, and when he went to obtain the copy of the lease, a trooper followed him, and observed four bags of, what he presumed to be, marijuana, upon which finding they arrested the defendant. They then went to the white building along with the defendant and found some marijuana plant growing inside. The defense asked the Court to suppress the evidence on the basis of the warrant being constitutaionally defective, and also because it lacked probable cause – it did not lay out exactly when the informants had seen the marijuana. Even though the trial court found that the search warrant failed to establish probable cause that the evidence (marijuana) would be found on the location at the date it was issued, and also failed to lay down the specific date on which the two informants observed the marijuana, the trial court did not allow the evidence to be suppressed, citing the Leon case rationale of good-faith. The trial court also decided that the Leon case enabled them to ignore the Pennsylvania Rules of Criminal Procedure 2003 which prohibits oral testimony to supplement the probable cause; the law reads “(a) No search warrant shall issue but upon probable cause supported by one or more affidavits sworn to before the issuing authority. The issuing authority, in determining whether probable cause has been established, may not consider any evidence outside the affidavits. (b) At any hearing on a motion for the return or suppression of evidence, or for the suppression of the fruits of the evidence obtained pursuant to a search warrant, no evidence shall be admissible to establish probable cause other than the affidavits provided for in paragraph (a).”. The Court decided that the good-faith principle as set out in the Leon case also applied here, and, therefore, the evidence was admissible. The Superior Court also upheld this decision of the trial court, and also went on to state that the Article I Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution which states that “The people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions from unreasonable searches and seizures, and no warrant to search any place or to seize any person or things shall issue without describing them as nearly as may be, nor without probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation subscribed by the affiant.” could not give greater protection to the citizens than the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution The State Supreme Court held that the warrant lacked probable cause, and was invalid on the face of it. The Court also decided that the federal case of Leon did not prevent the suppression of evidence obtained without a valid search warrant. The Court stated that as shown through previous decisions, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is not bound by the US Supreme Court in interpreting state constitution, even if the federal provisions were similar. Moreover, the Court also cited examples whereby the US Supreme Court had encouraged the state courts to interpret their state constitutions on their own. The Court, therefore, decided to interpret their Constitution independent of the US Supreme Court decision. The Court decided that the “good-faith” exception to the exclusionary rule would frustrate the guarantees provided by the above mentioned section of the Pennsylvania Constitution. The Court stated that though the precedents set by the US Supreme Court were useful for a state constitutional analysis, however, they could not be binding authority as they were meant to be taken for guidance. Hence, the Court interpreted the state constitution independently and came to the conclusion that the good-faith principle could not be applied as it infringed the constitutional provision set out in Article I, Section 8, of the Pennsylvania Constitution. The Court used a four-pronged analysis to reach its decision; discussing (1) the text of the state constitution itself, (2) the history of the provision, along with state case law, (3) relevant case law from other states, and finally (4) the policy considerations in present times. The Court’s decision was quite remarkable, in that they chose to interpret the state constitution on their own and not to follow the precedent set by the Supreme Court. As stated above, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decided that the decision of the Supreme Court on a similar issue could be taken into advisement, however, they were not obliged to take it as a legal precedent, being free to interpret the state law themselves. In David Lynn Crayton v. Commonwealth of Kentucky, however, the Kentucky Supreme Court followed in the footsteps of the US Supreme Court regarding the good-faith exception to the exclusion clause. In this case a warrant was obtained to search the residence of the appellant one week after a fire in a building – Club Cabana. Evidence was obtained that was intended to be used against the appellant, whereby he asked the trial court to suppress the evidence because the search warrant lacked probable cause, and the search that resulted in obtaining the evidence was, therefore, not legal. The trial court, though agreeing that the search warrant was defective, ruled against the appellant stating that the officers involved acted in good-faith. The trial court cited the Leon case as an example whereby the aim of the exclusion clause was interpreted to deter law enforcing officers from misconduct, and not to punish them for the errors made by judges. When the case was taken to the Kentucky Supreme Court, the Court decided that they upheld the decision of the trial court and thus affirmed the convictions of the appellant. The Court stated that textually there was little difference between the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution and Section 10 of the Kentucky Constitution, which \ reads “The people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions, from unreasonable search and seizure; and no warrant shall issue to search any place, or seize any person or thing, without describing them as nearly as may be, nor without probable cause supported by oath or affirmation.” The Court further agreed with the Supreme Court decision by stating that the Constitutional provisions are for deterrence only, and are not to be construed as a constitutional right of the aggrieved party. Moreover, they agreed that when the police act on good-faith on a search warrant that does not appear facially defective then the exclusionary clause cannot and should not be applied. The Kentucky Supreme Court thus decided to follow the decision of the Supreme Court, because according to them, the state and federal law was textually almost the same, and, therefore, there was no need to adjudicate differently from the US Supreme Court. The approach of the Supreme Court to the issue of the exclusionary clause was quite good. The exclusion rule was placed in the constitution to protect the citizens from misconduct by the police. It serves as a “deterrent” to the police, and lays down that a warrant, with probable cause, is to be obtained whenever a person or his property is to be searched, otherwise any evidence obtained will be excluded from the trial. However, the framers did not intend this to apply to cases where the police was not guilty of misconduct, but had acted in good-faith. It was expressed really well in United States v. Calandra, quoted by both the US Supreme Court and the Kentucky Supreme Court in their above-mentioned decisions, that the exclusion rule operates as “a judicially created remedy designed to safeguard Fourth Amendment rights generally through its deterrent effect, rather than a personal constitutional right of the party aggrieved.” Read More