EXCLUSIONARY RULE
The principle based on federal CONSTITUTIONAL LAW that evidence illegally seized by law enforcement officers in violation of a suspect’s right to be free from unreasonable SEARCHES AND SEIZURES cannot be used against the suspect in a criminal prosecution.
The exclusionary rule is designed to exclude
evidence obtained in violation of a criminal
defendant’s FOURTH AMENDMENT rights. The
Fourth Amendment protects against unreason-
able searches and seizures by law enforcement
personnel. If the search of a criminal suspect is
unreasonable, the evidence obtained in the
search will be excluded from trial.
The exclusionary rule is a court-made rule.
This means that it was created not in statutes
passed by legislative bodies but rather by the
U.S. Supreme Court. The exclusionary rule
applies in federal courts by virtue of the Fourth
Amendment. The Court has ruled that it applies
in state courts although the DUE PROCESS
CLAUSE of the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT.(The
Bill of Rights—the first ten amendments—
applies to actions by the federal government.
The Fourteenth Amendment, the Court has
held, makes most of the protections in the BILL
OF RIGHTS applicable to actions by the states.)
The exclusionary rule has been in existence
since the early 1900s. Before the rule was fash-
ioned, any evidence was admissible in a criminal
trial if the judge found the evidence to be rele-
vant. The manner in which the evidence had
been seized was not an issue. This began to
change in 1914, when the U.S. Supreme Court
devised a way to enforce the Fourth Amend-
ment. In Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 34
S. Ct. 341, 58 L. Ed. 652 (1914), a federal agent
had conducted a warrantless search for evidence
of gambling at the home of Fremont Weeks. The
evidence seized in the search was used at trial,
and Weeks was convicted. On appeal, the Court
held that the Fourth Amendment barred the use
of evidence secured through a warrantless
search. Weeks’s conviction was reversed, and
thus was born the exclusionary rule.
The exclusionary rule established in Weeks was constitutionally required only in federal
court until MAPP V. OHIO, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S. Ct. 1684, 6 L. Ed. 2d 1081 (1961). In Mapp, Cleveland police officers had gone to the home of
Dollree Mapp to ask her questions regarding a
recent bombing. The officers demanded
entrance into her home. Mapp called her attor-
ney and then refused to allow the officers in
without a warrant. The officers became rough
with Mapp, handcuffed her, and searched her
home. They found allegedly obscene books, pic-
tures, and photographs.
Mapp was charged with violations of OBSCENITY laws, prosecuted, convicted, and
sentenced to seven years in prison. The Ohio
Supreme Court affirmed the conviction, but the
U.S. Supreme Court overturned it.
In Mapp, the Court held that the exclusion-
ary rule applied to state criminal proceedings
through the Due Process Clause of the Four-
teenth Amendment. Before the Mapp ruling, not
all states excluded evidence obtained in viola-
tion of the Fourth Amendment. Since Mapp, a
defendant’s claim of unreasonable SEARCH AND
SEIZURE has become a matter of course in most
criminal prosecutions.
A criminal defendant’s claim of unreasonable search and seizure is usually heard in a sup-
pression hearing before the presiding judge.
This hearing is conducted before trial to deter-
mine what evidence will be suppressed, or
excluded from trial.
The exclusionary rule is still regularly invoked by criminal defendants, but its golden
age may have passed. Since the 1980s, the U.S. Supreme Court has severely limited its application. According to the Court, this rule was not
devised to cure all Fourth Amendment violations. Rather, it was designed primarily to deter POLICE MISCONDUCT. This construction led to
the GOOD FAITH exception to Fourth Amend-
ment violations established in United States v.
Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 104 S. Ct. 3405, 82 L. Ed. 2d
677 (1984).
In Leon, police officers searched the Burbank, California, home of Alberto A. Leon, and
arrested Leon after they found a large quantity of drugs in his possession. The search was executed pursuant to a warrant that was later determined to be invalid. The information provided
by the police in their AFFIDAVIT in support of
the warrant had been stale, which meant that
too much time had passed between the observa-
tions that prompted it and the application for
the warrant. No evidence suggested that a police
officer had lied about facts. Rather, the staleness
of the affidavit had simply been overlooked by
the magistrate.
The drug evidence seized from Leon’s home
was excluded from trial by the U.S. District Court
for the Central District of California, and the
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the rul-
ing. On appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed,
holding that evidence gathered in a search exe-
cuted pursuant to a warrant later found to be
defective should not be excluded from trial.
The majority in Leon opened its analysis by
noting that the Fourth Amendment “contains
no provisions expressly precluding the use of
evidence obtained in violation of its com-
mands.” The exclusionary rule, according to the
majority, was not designed to be a personal
right. It was created by the Court “to deter police
misconduct rather than to punish the errors of
judges and magistrates.” Under this interpreta-
tion, excluding evidence obtained through an
honest mistake would serve no purpose. The
Court’s ruling in Leon meant that evidence
obtained in violation of a person’s Fourth
Amendment rights would not be excluded from
trial if the law enforcement officer, although
mistaken, acted reasonably.
Justice JOHN PAUL STEVENS dissented, argu-
ing that the facts of the case did not warrant
such a sweeping exception to the exclusionary
rule. In a separate dissenting opinion, Justices
WILLIAM J. BRENNAN, Jr and THURGOOD MAR-
SHALL conceded that, “as critics of the exclu-
sionary rule never tire of repeating,” the Fourth
Amendment does not contain an express provi-
sion calling for the exclusion of evidence seized
in violation of its commands. Brennan and Mar-
shall dismissed this argument by noting that the
Constitution is stated in general terms, and that
the U.S. Supreme Court regularly creates doc-
trines designed to enforce its simple terms.
Brennan and Marshall maintained that “the
chief deterrent function of the [exclusionary]
rule is” far beyond the simple prevention of
police misconduct, “the tendency to promote
institutional compliance with Fourth Amend-
ment requirements on the part of law enforce-
ment agencies generally.” In other words, if a
SEARCH WARRANT is found defective at any
point in the prosecution, the evidence should be
excluded, even if the defect is due to an honest
mistake. This, according to Brennan and Mar-
shall, would preserve the integrity of both law
enforcement and the Fourth Amendment. Bren-
nan and Marshall concluded that the majority’s
reliance on the deterrence rationale “robbed the
[exclusionary] rule of legitimacy.”
In 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court revisited
the good faith exception to the exclusionary
rule. In Arizona v. Evans, 514 U.S. 1, 115 S. Ct.
1185, 131 L. Ed. 2d 34 (1995), the error of a
court employee mistakenly listed Isaac Evans as
the subject of a misdemeanor arrest warrant. A
police officer had stopped Evans for a traffic vio-
lation, searched Evans pursuant to the faulty
warrant information, and found marijuana.
On trial for possession of marijuana, Evans
moved to suppress the marijuana evidence.
The Maricopa County Superior Court granted
the motion. The state of Arizona appealed, and
the Arizona Court of Appeals reversed. The
Supreme Court of Arizona then heard the case
and held that the evidence should be excluded.
On appeal by the state of Arizona, the U.S.
Supreme Court reversed, holding that evidence
seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment as
a result of clerical error need not be excluded
from trial. In so holding, the Court emphasized
that the Fourth Amendment exists only to guard
against unreasonable police intrusions. Accord-
ing to the Court, “[The] use of the fruits of a
past unlawful search or seizure ‘works no new
Fourth Amendment wrong’” (Evans, quoting
Leon, quoting United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S.
338, 94 S. Ct. 613, 38 L. Ed. 2d 561 [1974]).
The good faith exception established in Leon
is just one exception that renders the exclusion-
ary rule inoperable. Evidence seized by private
