The Exclusionary Rule and Privacy

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A better alternative to the exclusionary rule would be one where officers and police departments can be sued for damages or for violating private property in improperly conducted raids. If a policeman stumbles across unexpected evidence of a crime during a raid, why should that criminal get off? The key is that the warrant must be specific and reasonable. If the warrant is later found to be a sham, then the police officer should be dealt with accordingly (fired, fined, disciplined, etc.). The error should be in the wrongful warrant rather than in accidentally discovering evidence of another crime. ------- "Hampering criminal prosecution. In Mapp v. Ohio (1961), the Supreme Court began a revolution in criminal procedure by requiring state courts to exclude from criminal cases any evidence found during an "unreasonable" search or seizure. In so holding, the Court overruled a previous case, Wolf v. Colorado (1949), which had allowed each state to devise its own methods for deterring unreasonable searches and seizures. The Supreme Court in effect acted like a legislature rather than a judicial body. As a dissenting justice noted, the Mapp decision unjustifiably infringed upon the states' sovereign judicial systems and forced them to adopt a uniform, federal procedural remedy ill-suited to serve states with "their own peculiar problems in criminal law enforcement." "In fact, nothing in the Fourth Amendment or any other provision of the Constitution mentions the exclusion of evidence, nor does the legislative history of the Constitution indicate that the Framers intended to require such exclusion. Instead we ought to explore other means of deterring police misconduct without acquitting criminals, such as permitting civil lawsuits against reckless government officials and enforcing internal police sanctions against offending officers with fines and demotions. Since Mapp v. Ohio, the exclusionary rule has had a devastating impact on law enforcement in America. One recent study estimated that 150,000 criminal cases, including 30,000 cases of violence, are dropped or dismissed every year because the exclusionary rule excluded valid, probative evidence needed for prosecution." --------- Source: The Imperial Judiciary. . . And What Congress Can Do About It By Edwin Meese III & Rhett DeHart Policy Review, January-February 1997, Number 81 Link: http://www.policyreview.com/jan97/meese.html See also an article on the exclusionary rule on the NCPA web site: http://www.ncpa.org/pi/crime/pdcrm/pdcrm55.html