Evolution of the Exclusionary Rule - Research Paper Example

Evolution of the exclusionary rule This paper looks at the development of the exclusionary rule from its origins to the current position. The paper discusses the formulation of the rule from the Fourth Amendment in Weeks v. United States and through to its interpretation in Mapp v. Ohio. The paper also looks at the limitations of the exclusionary rule such as the good faith exception, the knock and announces rule and the inevitable discovery doctrine. Introduction The Fourth Amendment of the United States guarantees a right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizure. Despite this guarantee the Fourth Amendment does not outline how to translate this guarantee to concrete terms. This situation resulted in the admission of evidence acquired in violation of this provision in the courts even after the ratification of the Fourth Amendment. Several methods of enforcing the Fourth Amendment have been suggested, but the court has settled with the use of the exclusionary rule to enforce the right. The jurisprudence of the Fourth Amendment was greatly changed by the courts following the decision in Weeks v. United States. Subsequent court cases further developed the rule over time to its current position (Maclin 2012). Background of the exclusionary clause The exclusionary clause is established by the Fourth Amendment of the U.S constitution. The Fourth Amendment provides; “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 rule permits the court to exclude any evidence that has been obtained illegally. The reason for exclusion of such evidence is that it protects the interest of the public from government intrusion by requiring a warrant before a search is conducted and evidence seized. The Fourth Amendment, which is the basis of the exclusionary clause, was not drafted out of the need to protect against evidence that is wrongly seized, but to counter the use of general warrants and writs of assistance under English law. General warrants were prone to abuse as they did not specify the individuals to be arrested and they were also valid for an indefinite time. Writs were introduced to America to enforce unpopular navigation and trade acts and were similar to general warrants issued in England. These writs gave power to officials to search private property for unaccustomed goods and were not specific to certain case and therefore prone to abuse (Cammack 2013). In response to the abuse of general warrants and writs, the Fourth Amendment was ratified in 1791. The wording of the Fourth Amendment makes clear the intentions of the framers especially on the rejection of general warrants and writs of assistance. The Fourth Amendment was clearly ratified as a response to warrantless searches, although it also prohibits unreasonable searches. Despite its ratification the issues addressed by the Amendment and principles regarding suppression of evidence collected contrary to its provisions were not brought to the courts initially. However, this trend changed in the late 1800s and the early 1900s, which saw the development of the exclusionary rule through court decisions. The first case involving the exclusionary clause was brought to the Supreme Court in 1886 and this marked the start of the exclusionary rule. Boyd v United States was the initial Supreme Court case to address the exclusionary rule. That case involved a subpoena which demanded the production of private papers as evidence. The subpoena explicitly provided that failure to produce the demanded papers would amount to a confession to the allegations in the case. In its decision, the court observed that compulsory production of private papers acted to incriminate the defendant and thus violated his Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. The exclusion of evidence in this case was not as a result of the Fourth Amendment, which the court also noted as violated, but rather as a result of the Fifth Amendment, which guards against self-incrimination (Capers 2013). Adams v New York concerned a man who had been convicted of gambling. The police in this case had executed a warrant for illegal gambling paraphernalia, but the ensuing conviction was based on private papers. It was held that the rule in Boyd could not apply and there was no violation of either the Fourth or the Fifth Amendments. The private papers seized in the current case served to establish the quilt to the offense charged and the weight of authority and reason restricted the review on the competency of evidence in regard to how it was obtained. This decision acted to limit the application of the exclusionary rule even before it was established. Weeks v. United States was the first case that saw the suppression of evidence due to violation of the Fourth Amendment. In this case the court ruled that the Fourth Amendment protected against unreasonable searches and seizure by federal agents in federal courts. This case created the exclusionary rule, but limited its application to the Federal government (Maclin 2012). Expansion of the exclusionary clause The exclusionary rule as established in Weeks, limited its application to the federal government and the exclusion of evidence in Boyd was as a result of the Fifth Amendment. This meant that only testimonial evidence could be excluded from trial and the exclusion did not affect contraband items seized as a result of the search. Additionally the decision in Weeks only mandated the government to return items that were wrongfully seized. From the analysis of these initial cases on exclusionary rules, it is apparent that Adams permitted the inclusion of evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment only if fell within the scope of either Weeks or Boyd (Smith 2011). This situation, however, began to change with Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States where the court ruled that merely returning the illegally seized item while still facing trial based on that evidence was not a practical remedy to the violation of the Fourth Amendment. In that case the federal agent had illegally seized evidence and returned the items after taking photographs. The agents were acting within the parameters of Boyd, Adams, and Weeks which only required them to return seized items. In its decision, the court observed that the principle or provisions prohibiting acquisition of evidence in a specified manner do not require that such evidence shall not be used in court but that such evidence should not be used at all. This principle created the Fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine which prohibits the admission of evidence acquired as a result of an illegal seizure (Capers 2013). The exclusionary rule was further expanded in Gouled v. United States where the court ruled that illegally acquired evidence must be suppressed even without a motion to suppress. In that case government agents seized several of the defendant’s papers without his knowledge and as such the defendant could not move to suppress the evidence before the trial commenced. The requirement to suppress such evidence before the trial commenced was established in Adam. The motion to suppress such evidence as provided for in Adams’ was impossible, but the court held that the evidence must be suppressed. The court in its decision overruled Adams and stated that the suppression was not too late because the defendant moved to suppress the evidence as soon as he learned that the prosecution was in possession of the evidence. The court also argued that evidence acquired in violation of the Fourth Amendment also violated the provisions of the Fifth Amendment (Cammack 2013). Although Silverthorne and Gouled greatly expanded the exclusionary rule the expansion was fully developed by Agnello v. United States. In that case, federal agents had unlawfully seized cocaine from the defendant’s home. Under the principle established by Adams the court could only suppress testimonial evidence, but the court used this opportunity to completely overrule Adams. The court did not give significance to the distinction between papers and drugs. In its decision, the court noted that because the defendant claimed the drugs were not his, he could not bring a motion to suppress the admission of the evidence without forfeiting his right against self-incrimination recognized by the Fifth Amendment. The court thus held that because the right against self-incrimination must always override the principle established in Adams the evidence must be excluded from the trial. The decision of the court overruled Adams by establishing that the defendant does not have to move to suppress illegally acquired evidence prior to a trial. Despite this expansion in the application of the exclusionary rule it is noteworthy that at this point the rule was only applicable to federal matters (Warnick 2014). Application of the rule to State trials The application of the exclusionary rule to state trials was brought to court in 1949 by Wolf v Colorado. The issue presented in this case was whether a conviction by a state court for an offense denied the defendant the due process requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment because the evidence used in the trial would have been inadmissible in the prosecution in a federal court. The court reasoned that the prohibition against unreasonable searches established by the Fourth Amendment is founded in the notion of ordered liberty and as such it is enforceable against states through the Fourteenth Amendment. The court, however, did not outline this application, but noted that there were other remedies apart from the Fourth Amendment that could be used by state courts to exclude illegally acquired evidence. In its decision the court made it clear that while the provision against unreasonable search and seizure was applicable to states by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment the remedy established by the exclusionary rule did not extend to the states (Smith 2011). Another case that had an effect on the development of the exclusionary rule to the states was Elkins v. United States, which overruled the Silver platter doctrine which permitted the use of evidence which was illegally acquired by state officers in federal trials. The court found that the limitations of the Fourth Amendment were extended to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment. This therefore meant that searches undertaken by state agents that would have violated the Fourth Amendment if they were conducted by federal agents violated the Fourteenth Amendment. This case in important as it equated the Fourth Amendment to the Fourteenth Amendment, which allowed the full application of the exclusionary rule to state cases despite the precedence set by Wolf. The court further observed that if both the Fourth and the Fourteenth Amendments established similar prohibitions and if federal cases required the exclusion of evidence, then the exclusion should also form an essential part of the Fourteenth Amendment. The exclusionary rule was fully applied to state trials in Mapp v Ohio, where the court ruled that illegally acquired evidence could not be used to secure a conviction under the rule established in Weeks. The court reasoned that the violation of the rule against unreasonable searches and seizure was so obvious and thus the court could not tolerate the use of such evidence at a trial. The court in essence expanded the use of the rule established in Weeks to state cases and overruled the principle established in Wolf. Following the decision in Mapp the exclusionary rule became applicable to both state and federal cases (Warnick 2014). Limitations of the exclusionary rule There are calls by conservatives to limit and even abolish the exclusionary rule. A court decision that reflects this trend is Herring v. United States. In that case the court took the good faith exception to the rule and noted that the preventive effects of suppressing illegally acquired evidenced does not outweigh the social costs of admitting such evidence. The underlying principle of the decision in this case is that where the officer has reasonable good faith to believe that such a seizure is consistent with proper searches under the Fourth Amendment, then the evidence should be admitted. The court observed that the exclusionary rule should only be applicable to deliberate and flagrant violations of the Fourth Amendment (Clancy 2010). The good faith exception had been established prior to Herring by United States v. Leon. In Leon the court found that the exclusionary rule was not applicable in cases where the search warrant used to seize the items is later found to be invalid. The good faith rule was subsequently expanded in Massachusetts v. Sheppard to cover homicide evidence recovered by a narcotics warrant. As compared to Herring the computer error that led to a search and seizure in Arizona v. Evans was not deliberate or flagrant and therefore the evidence seized in the search was admissible in court. In the current case a warrant that was generated as a result of a computer error, as used in making an arrest. The court observed that the exclusionary rule functions to discourage reckless, deliberate or negligent conduct or systematic negligence and in this case such conduct could not be established therefore the evidence was admissible in court. Apart from the good faith exception in Herring, there is also the knock and announce rule established in Hudson v. Michigan. The knock and announce rule as outlined in Wilson v. Arkansas where the court held that an officer should announce his presence before accessing a private residence to enforce a warrant. In its decision, the court noted that the Fourth Amendment recognizes the authority of a police officer to break into a dwelling, but the officer must first announce his presence and authority. In that regard the knock and announce principle forms part of the inquiry as to reasonableness established by the Fourth Amendment. The court, however, pointed out that the knock and announce rule as not an absolute rule, but a factor to be taken into consideration when assessing the reasonableness of the search. This position was reaffirmed in Richards v. Wisconsin, where the court held that the knock and announce rule was applicable in instances where there was a threat of physical harm or there was a reason to believe that the evidence could be destroyed if a notice was given in advance (Clancy 2010). In Hudson the validity of then knock and announce rule was reexamined and the court argued that a violation of the rule by police does not require the suppression of evidence found in the search. In this case the officer had announced his presence before entering the defendant’s house. The question before the court as whether the exclusionary rule could be used as a remedy to a knock and announce violation. In its decision, the court observed that suppression of evidence was a last resort and since the interests of the knock and announce requirement were not violated then the exclusionary rule could not be invoked. Another limitation is the inevitable discovery doctrine established in Nix v. Williams where the court held that evidence acquired in violation of the defendants’ rights under the constitution can still be admissible if it can be established that such evidence would have been inevitably discovered through an ordinary police investigation. The basis of this rule is that misconduct by the police is deterrent and societal interests are better served by holding the police in a similar situation they would have been if the rights were not violated (Dripps 2010). Conclusion The exclusionary rule has undergone radical changes over time. The basis of the rule is the Fourth Amendment, which was not drafted to exclude evidence, but rather protect against general warrants and writs. With the evolution from Weeks v. United States through to Mapp v Ohio has greatly influenced criminal trials. However the rule has been attacked in several other cases such as Hudson v. Michigan and Herring v. United States which have raised questions as to the future of the rule. Cases Adams v. New York, 192 U.S. 585 (1904) Agnello v. United States, 269 U.S. 20 (1925) Arizona v. Evans, 514 U.S. 1 (1995) Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616 (1886) Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206 (1960) Gouled v. United States, 255 U. S. 298 (1921) Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135 (2009). Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586 (2006) Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961) Massachusetts v. Sheppard, 468 U.S. 981 (1984) Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431 (1984) Richards v. Wisconsin, 520 U.S. 385 (1997) Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385 (1920) United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984) Weeks v. United States232 U.S 383 (1914) Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U.S. 927 (1995) Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25 (1949) Reference list Cammack, M. E. (2013). The United States: The Rise and Fall of the Constitutional Exclusionary Rule. In Exclusionary Rules in Comparative Law (pp. 3-32). Springer Netherlands. Capers, I. B. (2013). US CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS AND CONSTITUTIONAL THEORY: THE FOURTH PROBLEM. Tulsa L. Rev., 49, 431-583. Clancy, T. K. (2010). Irrelevancy of the Fourth Amendment in the Roberts Court, The. Chi.-Kent L. Rev., 85, 191. Dripps, D. (2010). Fourth Amendment, the Exclusionary Rule, and the Roberts Court: Normative and Empirical Dimensions of the Over-Deterrence Hypothesis, The. Chi.-Kent L. Rev., 85, 209. Maclin, T. (2012). The Supreme Court and the Fourth Amendments Exclusionary Rule. Oxford University Press. Smith, J. M. (2011). Evolution of the Exclusionary Rule: From Weeks v. United States and Mapp v. Ohio to Herring v. United States and Hudson v. Michigan, The. Grove City CJL Pub Poly, 2, 215. Warnick, J. A. (2014). Exclusionary Rule. The Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Read More