Importance Of The Fourth Amendment

The Constitution of the United States provides for a system of checks and balance among the legislative, judicial and executive branches of the government. There are 33 amendments to the United States Constitution that Congress proposed as ratification since the Constitution was in effect since 1789. The fourth amendment to the United States Constitution declares that people must be secure in their homes and their persons against unreasonable searches and seizures. Additionally, the fourth amendment is part of the Bill of Rights was adopted by Congress and became effective in 1791. The relationship the fourth amendment has to constitutional rights is having probable cause and any evidence obtained without a warrant, cannot be used in the justice system. The Fourth amendment was evident during a landmark case of Weeks vs. the United States in 1914.
Freemont Weeks was convicted based on the evidence obtained and he was sentenced to prison. Consequently, the Weeks case forms the basis of what is now called the exclusionary rule, which states that evidence illegally seized cannot be used in a trial. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution protects an offender against answering to a crime that could potentially incriminate them unless the jury is present. Also, the Fifth Amendment pertains to the due process and protects offenders from double jeopardy. An example of the Fifth Amendment is the Breed v. Jones case in 1975 when a 17-year-old Gary Jones was charged with an armed robbery in a juvenile court. When the court reconvened for the disposition hearing, the judge waived the jurisdiction to adult criminal court. The attorney representing Jones argued that the waiver to criminal court violated the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment (Siegel, Schmalleger, Worrall,