Читать книгу Keeping the Republic - Christine Barbour - Страница 161

By far the most controversial part of the Fourth Amendment rulings has been the exclusionary rule. In a 1914 case, Weeks v. United States, the Court confronted the question of what to do with evidence that had been obtained illegally. It decided that such evidence should be excluded from use in the defendant’s trial.⁷⁶ This exclusionary rule, as it came to be known, meant that even though the police might have concrete evidence of criminal activity, if obtained unlawfully, the evidence could not be used to gain a conviction of the culprit.

exclusionary rule the rule created by the Supreme Court that evidence seized illegally may not be used to obtain a conviction

The exclusionary rule has been controversial from the start. In some countries, including England, illegally obtained evidence can be used at trial, but the defendant is allowed to sue the police in a civil suit or to bring criminal charges against them. The object is clearly to deter misbehavior on the part of the police, while not allowing guilty people to go free. But the exclusionary rule, while it does serve as a deterrent to police, helps criminals avoid punishment. The Court itself has occasionally seemed uneasy about the rule.⁷⁷ Not until the 1961 case of Mapp v. Ohio was the exclusionary rule finally incorporated into state as well as federal practice.⁷⁸ But extending the reach of the exclusionary rule did not end the controversy. Although the Warren Court continued to uphold it, the Burger and Rehnquist Courts cut back on the protections it offered. In 1974 they ruled that the exclusionary rule was to be a deterrent to abuse by the police, not a constitutional right of the accused.⁷⁹ The Court subsequently ruled that illegally seized evidence could be used in civil trials⁸⁰ and came to carve out what it called a good faith exception, whereby evidence is admitted to a criminal trial, even if obtained illegally, if the police are relying on a warrant that appears to be valid at the time or on a law that appears to be constitutional (though either may turn out to be defective),⁸¹ or on a warrant that is obtained in error. In 2009 the Roberts Court ruled that to trigger the exclusionary rule, the police conduct must be deliberate.⁸² The Court’s more conservative turn on this issue has not silenced the debate, however. Some observers are appalled at the reduction in the protection of individual rights, whereas others do not believe that the Court has gone far enough in protecting society against criminals.