Abstract
Exclusionary rule establishes guidelines for determining the admissibility of evidence in criminal cases. This paper begins by presenting a detailed definition of this rule, which states that all substantiation collected or investigated in direct infringement of any accused person’s civil liberties as dictated in the American Charter is not acceptable in some circumstances.
Secondly, the paper shows how the rule has evolved with time, including its status. The evolution process has involved the setting of judicial precedent. Hence, it considers various court cases that explain the evolution of the exclusionary rule. Before America acquired independence, English courts did not permit the passage of self-incriminating evidence that had been acquired via coercion by various law enforcement instruments.
Thirdly, the paper reveals the various cons and pros concerning the rule. It shows how possessing a set of guidelines for determining the admissibility of evidence allows law enforcement agents to collect proper information that will not be dismissed when charging a person in a court of law. The charged people have an opportunity to ensure that the collected evidence is not manipulated in a manner that can influence negatively the judgment delivered to them.
In the last section, the paper discusses the possible exceptions concerning the application of the rule. Such exceptions may be justified by the US Constitution. For instance, an exception should be made to provide the police with legal backing to conduct searches in people who are suspected of terrorism without warrant of search to enforce a constitutional right that ensures that the US people remain free from danger.
Introduction
The US Constitution provides mechanisms through which people can explore and express their rights. It also sets out various roles that the state plays during evidence admission in a court of law. One of such laws is the exclusionary rule. Laws and regulations limit persons from violating the constitutional rights of other people. States’ laws prevent and/or reduce crime rates. However, such laws need to reflect legal and ethical soundness during their application. As one of the constitutional rights, people have the right to protection of their rights during evidence collection, which can be used against them in a court of law. While different mechanisms ensure that people’s rights are protected, including the privacy law, this paper focuses on the exclusionary law.
Defining the Exclusionary Rule
The exclusionary rule encompasses a principle that is not only adopted in the US legal frameworks but also incorporated into the constitutional law. It holds that all evidence gathered or analyzed in direct violation of any defendant’s rights as provided for in the US Constitution is not admissible in some situations. Hence, it cannot be deployed in any criminal proceedings in any court of law in the US. Nestlerode (2010) asserts that the exclusionary rule is formulated by the US judicial system whose objective entails protecting the constitutional rights of the defendants. Its provisions uphold the language of the US Constitution, specifically the Fifth Amendment, which states that people cannot be compelled in any way to provide witnesses against themselves. The Fifth Amendment continues to stipulate that all US people should not be deprived their life, asset rights, and independence rights without applying the appropriate cause of law. To this extent, any evidence that is collected in violation of the provisions of the Fifth Amendment is not tolerable. Hence, it forms a subject of the exclusionary rule. A fundamental definition presents the exclusionary rule as a set of rules that determine when evidence can be deployed against a defendant, including the degree to which the government can arbitrate in criminal cases.
Evolution and Status of the Exclusionary Rule
The exclusionary rule has undergone a process of evolution since it was first declared an important rule that restricted the use of some evidences in a court law against defendants. Justice Mansfield set out the premises of the exclusionary rule in 1769. He revealed how parties in civil cases played the role of providing the necessary evidence that could even help to prove their wrongdoing. Such parties could also refuse to produce such information without any legal penalty.
As a matter of the rule, in criminal proceedings, the defendant should never provide any evidence that can lead to their self-incrimination (Roger, 2014). In case evidence is acquired from a defendant, it should not attract injustice to the accused. Justice Mansfield also explained that defendants had the legal right to take a legal action to re-obtain any apprehension as a way of providing admissible evidence in a court of law. Nevertheless, at the dawn of 1780s, an English tribunal did not forbid substantiation obtained through compulsion in Ceglinski v. Orr case. In Warickshall ruling, the English judges claimed that substantiation that was acquired through unintentional declaration was acceptable, although the affirmations were not tolerable.
Considering that the US judicial system borrowed widely from the English law, a major point of uncertainty among the constitutional law scholars in the US is whether the Warickshall rule was well known during formulation of the bill of rights for the U.S. in 1789. Indeed, according to Roger (2014), no court in the US has ever endorsed a decision in America based on the Warickshall rule. Hence, the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution forms the genesis of the exclusionary rule, which limits any illegal searches or forced extraction of evidence from suspects.
In the mid-1880s, in the ruling of Boyd v. United States, the American top judges passed that obligatory establishment of commercial documents could not be incorporated into the substantiation based on the Fourth and Fifth Amendment. The case limited its proceedings to factual evidence. However, before the decision was taken, the court ruled that the Fourth Amendment did not include the exclusion of testimonies pertaining to seizures and searches that may be regarded as illegal (Re, 2014). In the late 1890s, in the ruling of Bram v. United States, the American highest judge-bench held a decision that all unintentional affirmations were unacceptable. Nevertheless, in the case, the court never categorically established an exclusionary rule that could be uniformly applicable to all cases in which evidence could be generated in a way that does not violate the bill of rights. In fact, the court only established a weak exclusionary rule that related to forced self-incrimination and in violation of the US Fifth Amendment. Today, a debate also ensues when it comes to differentiating testimonial evidence and self -incrimination substantiation (Berg, 2008).
The state of Lowa has the credit of having first applied the exclusionary law in a way that makes it applicable today in the case of Reifsnyder v. Lee. It applied the rule in the criminal case of Height in 1902. In the case, the defendant was to undergo some psychical examination against his wishes. The court ruled that such examination amounted to violation of the state of Lowa’s constitutional provision for unreasonable searches (Roger, 2014). Later, mid-1910s saw the American highest bench apply the exclusionary statute in its tough adaptation in Weeks v. United States case. It rested its decision on the Fourth Amendment rule that prohibited unreasonable seizures and searches.
In the case of Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, in 1920, the United States’ court held that evidence acquired through unreasonable searches or seizures only made the Fourth Amendment appear like some well-ordered words that did not carry any meaning. The 1949 Wolf v Colorado case revealed various loopholes whereby states were not necessarily obliged to incorporate the exclusionary rule. Nevertheless, states continued to incorporate it in various cases. By 1960, 22 US states had already incorporated the law. However, in Mapp v. Ohio, states were regarded as bonded by the exclusionary rule via the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1980, President Regan incredibly opposed the exclusionary rule.
Antagonists began to reconsider how the clause would be altered, rather than eliminating it. Indeed, in Illinois v. Gates, the bench underlined the need for reviewing the exclusionary statute. The bench also noted the need for permitting exemptions to mistakes that law enforcement officers make in line with their call of duty (Nestlerode, 2010). However, as evidenced by the 2012 case of United States v. Jones 132 S.Ct.945, the exclusionary rule still applies. The court ruled that attaching GPS tracking system to Jones’ wife Jeep, which he was previously driving, amounted to unreasonable searches and seizures. Therefore, the evidence collected by the police was not admissible.
Pros and Cons of the Exclusionary Rule
The exclusionary rule has its pros and cons. One of the pros of the rule is that it prevents people from being searched unnecessarily. The rule has the strength of supporting the doctrine of ‘blameless until confirmed culpable’. The justice system in the United States presumes that all people who are charged for any crime are innocent. Therefore, the prosecution has the responsibility of proving beyond any doubt to a reasonable person that the accused committed the said crime. To this extent, it prohibits the prosecution from using evidence that is acquired from the defendant if it (evidence) can lead to self-incrimination due to falsification because of fear of law enforcement agents.
A principal con of the exclusionary rule is that it only applies to criminal cases. The fact that the rule is not ingrained in the United States’ Constitution implies that it is reduced to a principle that is only useful in cases that are criminal in nature. People who are sued on civil matters do not have any protection tantamount to the one that is offered to criminal cases based on the rule (Roger, 2014). Thus, it is possible for one to sue a neighbor over the disruption of his or her pets where judgment is delivered in case responses to court summons are honored.
Secondly, the exclusionary rule may create loopholes through which people who commit offenses may escape scot-free. In case law enforcement agents make mistakes in the process of evidence collection and/or where mistakes are evident in command chains, the evidence may be considered inadmissible. In such situations, an otherwise guilty person escapes the hand of the law. Thirdly, the rule increases the cost of running the judicial system. Extensive rules that are integrated into the exclusionary rule require the commitment of more public funds to finance their implementation. Such money may be used in other projects to benefit the larger society.
Constitutionally valid possible Exceptions to the Exclusionary Rule
The world, including the US, now operates under the guidance of technology and threats such as terrorism. While the exclusionary rule prevents the use of evidence in direct violation of the defendants’ privacy rights, it is necessary to make exceptions constitutionally valid to deal with crime that has been enhanced by technology, including the likely threat of terrorism. For instance, seeking warrant or authority of a suspect to have his or her premises searched may provide an opportunity for the suspect to hide weapons that may cause mass destruction.
In a democratic government whose policies are informed by the democratic theory of equal participation, people also preserve their right to security from internal and external inversion (Halperin, Siegle, & Weinstein, 2005). Indeed, it is an obligation of any democratic government to control any infringement of people’s rights while exercising other rights such as those advocated for by the exclusionary rule. In this context, the US judicial system should ensure that people who are suspected to cause harms that are criminal in nature do not escape in any way. Therefore, even where the police officers make mistakes during evidence collection process, the judicial system should evaluate the link between the evidence and the alleged crimes while at the same time being lenient on the mistakes that could have been made by the police. However, this plan should be adopted for cases that are of extreme danger such as terrorism.
Conclusion
For effective functioning of any democracy, the rights of the citizen should be made clear. The threshold for intervention of the government should also be stipulated. In criminal cases, the exclusionary rule ensures that the defense is reasonably searched. While this strategy is necessary to promote the principle of blamelessness until proven culpable beyond any reasonable doubt, it creates loopholes through which criminals may escape, especially where police officers make mistakes during evidence collection process.
Reference List
Berg, B. (2008). Criminal investigation. McGraw-Hill, Cincinnati: Anderson Publishing.
Halperin, H., Siegle, J., & Weinstein, M. (2005). The democracy advantage: How democracies promote prosperity and peace. New York, NY: Routledge.
Nestlerode, J. (2010). Handcuffing America’s Fourth Amendment: Endorsing the intent of the exclusionary rule. The Forensic Digest Journal of the Academy of Forensic Nursing Science, 2(1), 22–35.
Re, R. (2014). The due process exclusionary rules: A new textual foundation for rule crisis. Harvard Law Review, 127(3), 1885-1896.
Roger, R. (2014). The framers’ Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule: The mounting evidence. Nevada Law Journal, 15(2), 42-76.