Talk:Exclusionary rule
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[edit] --Perspectives on the Exclusionary rule--
20 Jul 2006
The "disputed" tag has been removed. The exclusionary rule applies in many other contexts besides "knock and announce" issues, e.g. when a defective affidavit premises a search in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Thus, so long as "the dispute" concerns the existence of the Exclusionary Rule, it is settled, regardless of Hudson.
The Hudson decision does, as original commentators suggest below, concern the "knock and announce" rule and not the "exclusionary rule." If every decision applying or not applying a rule were "a decision about that rule," we would have lots of, e.g., "jurisdiction decisions"! Hudson is merely left in the article to demonstrate a limitation on the rule: utility balancing. The discussion is still overly lengthy, a lingering result of "the dispute."
Attempted Accurate Changes To Article (7 Jul 2006)
I have updated this page to reflect (my understanding of) the statements of the law made by the U.S. Supreme Court in Hudson, etc., in my preparation for the bar exam. I hope it clarifies the issues and will assist subsequent users, as my studies have been assisted by other Wiki articles.
The "dispute" on this page is generated by the below commentator, who fails to understand the basic concept of American jurisprudence that a dissent is not the law; the majority opinion is the law. What the dissent thinks, that is their opinion; just as what the below commentator thinks of the dissent (that it is right), that is his/her/its opinion.
The exclusionary rule surely may apply after Hudson. In fact the Court goes to great lengths to say just when it will apply: when the deterrence benefit outweighs the social cost of its application, as determined on a case by case basis. In the Hudson decision, the Court held that violation of a knock and announce requirement does not intone the rule. Thus I put the whole Hudson discussion under "Limitations," because the exclusionary rule is limited to those situations when its deterrence benefit outweighs its cost.
REPLYING TO LOGICIAN AND WHOEVER KEEPS VANDALIZING THIS PAGE:
As Breyer's dissent says, citing Mapp: “[a]ll evidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the Constitution is, by that same authority, inadmissible in a state court.” Mapp, 367 U. S., at 655. “To hold otherwise,” the Court added, would be “to grant the right but in reality to withhold its privilege and enjoyment.” Id., at 656.
In Hudson, the Court is doing just that: A clear case for exclusion yet the evidence isn't excluded. Given that, to say that the exclusionary rule survives is essentially just a false statement; the rule does not "in reality", Id., exist.
If Wikipedia users wish to pretend that the rule survives, great; go write a law review article about it. But using the Wikipedia platform for such an opinion is inappropriate, since encyclopedias discuss what is rather than what you wish were.
FURTHER: If Justice Kennedy proclaims in a concurring opinion that there are now 10 justices on the Court, that doesn't make it so. Similarly, if the exclusionary rule does not exclude illegally obtained evidence, Kennedy's strange proclamation that the rule survives somehow does nothing to change the fact that the exclusionary rule doesn't exclude and is therefore no longer exclusionary.
Whoever wrote this paragraph below truly needs to develop some basic reading skills:
"Hudson v. Michigan has no bearing whatsoever on the exclusionary rule."
Umm, what are you talking about? The evidence is exactly that which the exclusionary rule excludes: illegally obtained evidence. That's why the Court was hearing it in the first place. And that's why the rule no longer exists: because illegally obtained evidence -- as conceded by the state in this case -- that is inculpatory is no longer excluded.
I'm trying to imagine how much more plainly that statement can be stated.
Perhaps there should be note about this "technicality" that is oft criticise by police and prosecuters. The creation of the exclusionary rule was really a compromise that favors the prosecution and police, because alternatively the evidence could have been decided to be admissable, and instead the rememdy could have been punishing the police or prosecuters perhaps with imprisonment.--Silverback 20:54, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The exclusionary rule, on its face, is hardly supportive of police and government work. Its inception does not preclude prosecution against government officials who act unlawfully to violate the rights of others. Rather, it serves as an additional disincentive. What police officer will violate the constitutional rights in order to affectuate a search if the results of the search won't be admissible? In this sense, the E.R. places a tremendous burden on law enforcement, and is chiefly responsible for defendants being released on "technicalites" wherein police failed to follow a particular procedure, and evidence was discounted. Ultimately, the rule is indicative of America's continuing belief in Blackstone's comment that we would rather set 10 guilty men free than see one innocent man suffer imprisonment.
The numerous "exceptions" to the exclusionary rule are in place to prevent the use of the defense in cases where government agents could not have been deterred from their actions. Not all of the rules have been listed, as there are actually quite a few, but it has extended so far as allowing not only the "good faith" excuse, as exemplified in US v. Leon, but also the "honest mistake" exception, as shown in Maryland v. Garrison. 480 U.S. 79 (1987). In Garrsion, police officers had a warrant to search an apartment on the third floor of an apartment building. Expecting to find a drug dealer, then actually raided the apartment across the hall from the one they intended to raid. While they realized their mistake, they also found a bag of marijuana on a dresser in the apartment they accidentally raided. The Supreme Court based its decision in part in the inability to deter such actions. So long as the officers didn't intend to violate the rights of their victims, their findings cannot be precluded from being used as evidence in a criminal trial.
The exclusionary rule thus began as a powerful tool in the preservation of constitutional rights. It provided a powerful disincentive for police overzealousness while also offering defendants some recourse if their rights were violated by law enforcement officials. However, the Supreme Court, reflecting both a more conservative membership and a public outcry against "technicality" acquittals, has chipped away at the foundation of the rule's effectiveness by carving away several exceptions to the rule. --JoeKinzel 12:03, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Exclusionary rule is still good law.
Just because you do not agree with a Court ruling-do not post bad information on Wikipedia. Hudson v. Michigan has no bearing whatsoever on the exclusionary rule. It merely states that police do not have to wait 15 seconds before entering. Does it mean police will probably not knock anymore, yes. Does it mean that we are back to the Mapp v. Ohio days of warrantless searches, not by any stretch of your imagination. Illegally obtained evidence is still just that-illegal and inadmissable in court.
- This characterization misrepresents the facts. The statement "police do not have to wait 15 seconds" implies that it was not a violation of law for the police to enter without knocking and announcing, because they "do not have to." But in fact Michigan in its pleading conceded that its officers' failure to knock and announce was a violation. The dissenting opinion specifically criticizes the prosecutor in Hudson for failing to argue that the unannounced entry was justified under existing Constitutional principles. (The police had a reasonable belief that Hudson, a drug trafficker, possessed firearms -- indeed, the search warrant specified guns as well as drugs as objects of the search. A reasonable officer could conclude that if the police had announced themselves, Hudson would fire upon them, and that a no-knock-no-announce entry was therefore warranted.) Had Michigan made this argument, the legality of the search could have been upheld, and the exclusionary rule would not have come into play. The state made no attempt to argue that the entry was valid; instead it conceded the illegality of the entry, but argued that the exclusionary rule should not apply to this violation. This certainly "has bearing on the exclusionary rule." It is of course true that the rule still has the same effect it did before, where it applies, but Hudson v. Michigan has narrowed the rule's range of application.
- The rationale for denying the applicability of the exclusionary rule in Hudson bears mention: it was argued that in cases where the only illegality is the failure to properly announce, no evidence is discovered that would not have been discovered anyway if the police had properly announced, therefore the suppression of evidence is not the proper remedy. (In cases where there is reason to believe that a proper announcement would permit evidence to be destroyed, existing law already held that no announcement is necessary; the purpose of the exclusionary rule never was to give suspects license to destroy evidence. Therefore the requirement to announce, and the failure to do so, is relevant only when there is no reasonable fear of destruction of evidence, and in such a case, no evidence is going to be found in an unannounced search that would not have been found in a properly announced search.) This line of thought stresses the need for a causal connection between the specific nature of the illegality in an illegal search and the specific manner of dicovering evidence in the course of executing that search. In this view, evidence uncovered by a search is tainted only when the search was illegal and the illegality was material to obtaining the evidence. This reasoning downplays the punitive or deterrent effect of the exclusionary rule to incent police officers to comply with statutory and Constitutional requirements. I think I'll add one sentence to the main article to express this connection. -- Logician1989 16:19, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
In view of Justice Kennedy's assertion in his tie-breaking concurrence that the exclusionary rule is "good law", I do not agree with the repeated edits to put the verbs in this article into the past tense. As long as the conservative wing needs Kennedy to get a majority, and Kennedy says that the rule survives, I am not willing to consign it to the dustbin. But the past-tense edits have been applied twice now by (apparently) the same user. Can we please have some civil discussion on this, before we get into an edit war? I am not any happier about the Hudson holding than anyone else, but I do not think that Wikipedia is the place to vent our frustrations. 66.245.212.xxx, I am addressing you. Thanks. -- Logician1989 23:55, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
Followup: rather than change all the "was"s back to "is"s, presumably only to see them changed a third time, I have applied the "NPOV" tag. Note that this does not say that the article has violated the NPOV rule, but only that the neutrality is disputed. Can we agree to leave the tag in place until discussion (on this page) has produced a consensus? I hope so. -- Logician1989 00:08, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Probative value
take a look at probate. I've added some information on canada. --CyclePat 00:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Exclusion of legal non-iimmigrant visa holders?
"The Exclusionary Rule applies to all citizens or aliens (illegal or documented) who reside within the United States."
So this wouldn't apply to a person on a non-immigrant visa who commits a crime in the United States while visiting? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 219.77.2.219 (talk) 13:44, 8 March 2007 (UTC).
There are over 10 exceptions to the exclusionary rule, many being procedural that someone should include.
