The Origin of the Exclusionary Rule - Literature review Example

Topic: The Exclusionary Rule Introduction The origin of the exclusionary rule One of most controversial responses to illegal government action is the Exclusionary Rule as it provides that the prosecution may not introduce evidence obtained through the violation of a defendant’s constitutional rights, at least for the purposes of providing direct proof of the defendant’s guilt. The rule forbids the use of physical evidence gathered through unreasonable searches and seizures in violation of Fourth Amendment protections that require the need for authorized entries into private property by use of a warrant from a court of law. The Exclusionary Rule has seen its growth from the various rights enshrined in the United States constitution and included the idea that the rule is a natural outgrowth from the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures, the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, (Davis, 1983). This concept stems from the view that the government cannot provide individual rights without protecting those rights, and the Exclusionary Rule is inherently necessary to safeguard those constitutional rights. Another philosophy for enforcing the Exclusionary Rule is that the integrity of the court demands that the court not further unlawful activity by allowing illegally seized evidence to be used in the Mapp v. Ohio, 1961 case. However, in the 1970s, the US Supreme Court began to deny any purpose behind the Exclusionary Rule other than the notion that the rule was designed to deter police misconduct. The Exclusionary Rule and state action Pursuant to Article III of the United States Constitution in 1789, the Supreme Court of the United States was established as the highest federal court in the United States with ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all the other federal courts and the state courts. It is the only court that was created by the constitution as all the other courts were created by the congress which also gave its members the term justice instead of the normal judge. The Supreme Court is the final interpreter of federal constitutional law in the United States, although it works only in the context of cases that it has jurisdiction over and other small ranges of cases, (Del Carmen, 1995) The members of the court include a Chief Justice and eight associate judges who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the senate and have life tenure unless they retire, resign or are removed through impeachment; each of the judges in the court has one vote and in many cases this brings out their ideological beliefs when they have to vote. For more than a century, the Fourth Amendment was of very little importance to criminal defendants since evidence that was seized the police while violating the law of the warrant was still admissible during the defendant’s prosecution. This was changed by the Supreme Court when it gave its decision in Weeks v United States, 232 U.S. 383 (1914) where weeks involved the appeal of a defendant who was convicted based on the evidence that was seized by a federal agent who did not have a warrant. The defendant’s conviction was reversed by the Supreme Court and this happened again in 1961 and the Supreme Court made the exclusionary rule applicable to the states. This rule was tailored to stop the law enforcer’s misconduct by enabling the courts to exclude incriminating evidence that was acquired unconstitutionally from being brought into the trial and also allows a pretrial motion to suppress evidence by the defendant. Another complimentary to the exclusionary rule is the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine where under this doctrine, a court may exclude from trial not only evidence that itself was seized in violation of the Constitution but also any other evidence that is derived from an illegal search. According to Samaha, (1996), the Exclusionary Rule is a court-created remedy and deterrent, not an independent constitutional right and Courts will not apply the rule to exclude illegally gathered evidence where the costs of exclusion outweigh its deterrent or remedial benefits; this is to say that the rule is not initiated when courthouse inaccuracies lead police officers to inaccurately believe that they have a legal search warrant, because eliminating the substantiation would not daunt police officers from violating the law in the future. The rule does not prevent the government from introducing illegally gathered evidence to “impeach,” or attack the credibility of, defendants’ testimony at trial, the Supreme Court recognized this exception to prevent perjury and even when the government suspects perjury, however, it may only use tainted evidence for impeachment, and may not use it to show guilt The Exclusionary Rule, as applied to Fourth Amendment search and seizure law, originated with the US Supreme Court’s 1914 decision in Weeks v. US (1914). The Weeks court noted that the framers of the Constitution intended through the passage of the Bill of Rights to protect the American people from those general warrants issued under the authority of the British government. The court then had to take the decision detailing that the tendency of those who execute the criminal laws of the country to obtain conviction by means of unlawful seizure should find no sanction in the judgments of the courts, hence have to seek the necessary support in the constitution and hence find a favorable ground; the possibility of letters and private documents can be seized illegally, i.e. without the necessary approval from the court and used in evidence against a citizen accused of an offense goes against the established protection of the Fourth Amendment declaring his right to be secure against searches and seizures, is of no value, and, so far as those thus placed are concerned, might as well be stricken from the Constitution. This newly minted rule pertained exclusively to federal law enforcement and federal trials, however. Even though the Supreme Court eventually agreed that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment also prohibited illegal state governmental searches and seizures, the court initially maintained that the states did not necessarily have to use the Exclusionary Rule as a method of enforcing that right: the states could come up with other safeguards Consequently, the incorporation of the Fourth Amendment into the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment “amounted to little more than the incorporation of rhetoric, since no mechanism was identified to secure compliance by state law enforcement officers. In fact, since there was no real means of regulating unlawful state law enforcement behavior, state law enforcement agents cooperated with federal law enforcement agents by providing them with illegally seized evidence, which would then be admissible in federal court (as with evidence illegally seized by private citizens), because federal officers had not themselves been involved in the illegality. The Rochin v. California (1952) was another landmark case in the development of the exclusionary rule where the police entered Rochin’s home without a warrant and upon seeing him place what they believed to be narcotics into his mouth, they forcefully attempted to extract the narcotics from him. This attempt failed and they further brought him to the hospital for his stomach to be pumped and produced two capsules as evidence of the illegal drugs and hence Rochin was further convicted in court and sentenced to 60 days imprisonment where the chief evidence against him was the two capsules. The Supreme Court overturned the conviction considering the forcible seizure of evidence as this violated the fourth amendment’s due process clause. The judge came to a conslusion that the conduct of the police breaking into the privacy of an individual, the struggle to open his mouth and remove what was there, the forcible extraction of the contents of his stomach was a massive violation on the part of the government, too close to the rack and screw to permit of constitutional difference. In this case, the court did not make the exclusionary rule applicable in all state cases, but only in the cases of extremely serious police misconduct as this type of misconduct, in the words of the judge, shocks the conscience. The court further argued the state to enact laws that prohibit the use of illegally seized evidence in courts and threaten that if the state did not enact the laws, it might impose the exclusionary rule upon the states. Morrissey, (1994) argues that the impact of the exclusionary rule on the police makes them feel that the rule is unfair and that it is pro-criminal and anti-police; they feel that the rule allows the hardened criminals the chance to escape justice and be released on a technicality. Ever since the enactment of these type of rulings, decisions such as the Miranda may have claims that the Supreme Court has handcuffed the police and that the police no longer have the tools to fight crime effectively. Conclusion HR 666 was a poorly drafted expansion of the Exclusionary Rule; the bill would have allowed the admission of evidence not now admissible under the currently recognized exceptions to the Exclusionary Rule, as long as an officer acting in objective good faith thinks his actions were constitutional. While it is a politically popular theme to “get tough on crime,” the Exclusionary Rule was not created to single out a class of criminals who should go free; it was fashioned to protect the Fourth Amendment rights of everyone The more uncomplicated we make it for the government to ransack with impunity persons, houses, paper and effects, the more innocent persons will be caught in the net Currently, there is evidence that officers do intentionally violate the warrant rule in ambiguous situations, relying on their abilities to convince the court that, for example, an emergency situation existed at the time. Presently, it is the court’s role to determine whether there were enough facts leading to the officer’s conclusion that an exigent circumstance existed, thus justifying an exception to the warrant requirement. Too often the courts have displayed an alarming willingness to blur the separation between objective good intent and subjective good intent; of course, officers will always claim subjective good intent, and the courts frequently accept dubious claims of pure intent as being objectively reasonable, thus allowing law enforcement officers to conduct warrantless searches and seizures on rather thin evidence of an emergency situation, (Nardulli, 1987). The Fourth Amendment was not appended to the Constitution to make it easy for the government to crack down on crime, of course. It was meant to provide individuals with protection from the state, and to make sure that political minorities would not be the object of majority-engineered general searches. Currently, it is a strong barrier to letting the ends justify the means, as it should be. Even if the warrant requirement does inconvenience the police to some extent, it is merely a part of the price that our society must pay in order to preserve its freedom; the mere fact that law enforcement may be made more efficient can never by itself justify disregard of the Fourth Amendment. To weaken further the protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment would indeed relegate this constitutional right to insignificant, empty words that are just a political play for the use of aspiring law office holders. References Dempsey, J. S., & Frost, L. S. (2007). An introduction to policing. Princeton, N.J: Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic. Davis, T.Y. (1983). A hard look at what we know (and still need to learn) about the ‘costs’ of the Exclusionary Rule: the NIJ Study and other studies of ‘lost’ arrests. American Bar Foundation Research Journal. 1983(3), pp. 611-92 Del Carmen, R.V. (1995), Criminal Procedure: Law and Practice, 3d ed., Wadsworth Publishing Co, Belmont, CA. Ducat, C. (1996), Constitutional Interpretation, West Publishing Co., St Paul, MN Morrissey, L.A. (1994). State courts reject Leonon state constitutional grounds: a defense of reactive rulings. Vanderbilt Law Review. 47(7), 917-18. Nardulli, P.F. (1987). The societal costs of the Exclusionary Rule revisited. University of Illinois Law Review. 223(7). Samaha, J. (1996), Criminal Procedure, West Publishing Co., St. Paul, MN Read More