Exclusionary Rule Pros and Cons

The reason we have rules in life are simple, to keep order when there is chaos and to guide our behavior in a way that is acceptable by society’s standards. The reason we have laws and procedures to carry out those laws are simple as well, to keep the government from infringing on its citizen’s constitutional rights. If the government was to rid itself of the exclusionary rule, then it has the potential to be infringing on its citizens rights. The government could essentially walk into anyone who is suspected of a crime’s house and seize whatever they feel is evidence. The exclusionary rule is an important constitutional right within U.S. legal system, but just as it is with most of the legal systems the exclusionary rule is not without its flaws. The exclusionary rule mandates courts to ban the introduction of evidence that is either incriminating or not that was obtained illegal. The exclusionary rule prevents evidence that was obtained by bad methods to be used in a court of law, no matter how incriminating the evidence is to the defendant. The bad methods refer to the actions of the investigators and the procedures that the investigators took while obtaining the evidence in question. There are five possible constitutional rights that the investigator could have violated that fall under the exclusionary rule. The first constitutional right is the Fourth amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. The second and third constitutional rights are the Fifth Amendment’s ban on coerced incriminating statements and the Sixth amendments right to counsel. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee due process of law in administering identification procedures. Also most states have their own version of the exclusionary rule worked into their state constitutions or statues, some of which predate the Constitution The exclusionary rule is not mentioned in the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution. The only remedies for constitutional violations up

Bibliography: Estreicher, S., & Weick, D. P. (2010). Opting for a legislative alternative to the Fourth Amendment Exclusionary Rule. UMKC Law Review, 78,949. Gittins, J. R. (2007). Excluding the Exclusionary Rule . Brigham Young University Law Review, 451-481. Josephson, M. A. (2009). To Exclude or not to exclude: The future of the exclusioanry rule after Herring v. United States. Creighton Law Review, 43,175-203. Kamisar, Y. (2003). In the Defense of the Search and Seizure Exclusionary Rule. Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, 119-134. Lafave, W. R. (2009). Recent Developments: The smell of Herring: A critique of the Supreme Court 's latest assault on the Exclusionary Rule. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 757-787. Lynch, T. (2000). In defense of the Exclusionary Rule. Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, 712-750. Samaha, J. (2012). Criminal Procedure Eith Edition. Belmont : Wadsworth.