POL200 With respect to interests of the victim and the alleged criminal, does the Exclusionary Rule serve the interests of justice?

Query

With respect to interests of the victim and the alleged criminal, does the Exclusionary Rule serve the interests of justice?

Essay

"It was one thing to condone an occasional constable's blunder, to accept his illegally obtained evidence so that the guilty would not go free.
It was quite another to condone a steady course of illegal police procedures that deliberately and flagrantly violated the Constitution of the United States, as well as the state constitution"
~ Roger Traynor Chief Justice in California 1962

What is the exclusionary rule

In 1914 the Exclusionary Rule was “devised to deter police from violating people’s rights.” [Patterson] In the 1960’s the rules were condemned to be pampering criminals. Decades later, 1980’s and 1990’s, under a more conservative court, three exceptions were made to the Exclusionary Rule.

Brief history

The landmark Mapp vs. Ohio case of 1961 brought illegal searches to the Supreme Court. Officers used questionable tactics in order to gain access to the home of one Dollree Mapp. The officers were searching for a suspected hiding criminal. The suspect was after all determined not to be in the house - and was later cleared of wrongdoing. However during the search officers found material that was illegal under Ohio law: a pencil sketch of a nude and four books then considered obscene. The officers charged Ms. Mapp for the materials. It was later determined that the Officers had never obtained a warrant to to enter the house. The piece of paper that they refused to allow Ms. Mapp to read, was not a search warrant at all. Ms. Mapp would recount in later interviews that she suspected it was a blank piece of paper.

The case was groundbreaking. At that time, many states allowed evidence to be used, even evidence that had been obtained using illegal methods; like the Mapp evidence.

Pros and Cons

The benefits of exclusionary rule are many. It requires a commitment to the rule of the law; no conviction can be made by evidence that was attained before the alleged criminal was convicted of anything. In the United States, probable cause means there must be must be a rational of doubt; is  criminal conduct occurring? – prior to a warrant being issued to collect evidence. It is the primary behind the adage “innocent until proven guilty.” A chain of evidence must be documented and therefore the exclusionary rule helps prevent creating false evidence. It protects against unnecessary search and seizure.

The risks involved in the exclusionary rule are equal. Officials and law enforcement conduct are scrutinized and emphasis is placed on their conduct instead of on the actual crime. There are more regulations to be followed therefore some may feel there are higher costs to taxpayers to follow the laborious protections allowed by the exclusionary rule. If law enforcement make some mistake in evidence collection, the evidence may be rejected from being submitted; an otherwise guilty person could then go free.

Less than 1%

Thomas Y. Davies studied the effects of the “costs” of the Exclusionary Rule: the percentage of otherwise guilty criminals that go free due to faulty evidence collection methods. Davies writes that there is an exaggeration of the impact. In actuality, less than 1% (0.8%) of felony arrests in drug related cases are rejected due to illegal searches. Moreover, that statistic is even lower for violent crimes, which itself is less than 0.3%

Even so, Harvard Law Review Richard Re opines that the “The exclusionary rule has entered a new period of crisis”.. some courts see “the exclusionary rule was a product of a bygone era, when police were unprofessional and egregious Fourth Amendment violations were routine.”

This writer is not certain that the families of Tamir Rice, Cameron Tillman, Laquan McDonald or the other eleven teenagers killed by police officers or any of the families of the 1,004 persons shot and killed by police in 2019 [Post] would agree that our current criminal justice system is not still a “bygone era”, rather entirely akin to the justice metered out in the streets during the American Frontier era.

Closing

If what the esteemed scholar Davies says is true, less than 1% of cases are thrown out under the Exclusionary Rule, then this country’s judicial system is doing its true service, which is that the majority of criminals are convicted in lieu of violating the fourth amendment’s protection from unreasonable search and seizures. It is believed that Thomas Clark, Supreme Court Justice of the Mapp verdict, was a proponent of the Exclusionary Rule his entire judicial life as well as his retired life. It is a safeguard for citizens from overzealous and flagrant conduct of law enforcement.

Bibliography

Davies, Thomas Y. "A Hard Look at What We Know (and Still Need to Learn) About the “Costs” of the Exclusionary Rule: The NIJ Study and Other Studies of “Lost” Arrests." American Bar Foundation Research Journal volume 8 issue 3 (1983). 16 Apr 2020. <https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-bar-foundation-research-journal/article/hard-look-at-what-we-know-and-still-need-to-learn-about-the-costs-of-the-exclusionary-rule-the-nij-study-and-other-studies-of-lost-arrests/088350BBA1CFA84689FF0714FD9>.

Patterson, Thomas. We The People. 13th. New York: McGraw, 2019. page 122-123.

Re, Richard M. "“The Due Process Exclusionary Rule.”." Harvard Law Review vol. 127, no. 7, (May 2014): pp. 1887–1966. 16 Apr 2020. <http://web.a.ebscohost.com.mendocino.idm.oclc.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=10&sid=6f3c1d31-342b-4e0e-b5f5-300055d5ea25%40sessionmgr4008>.

Washington Post. "Fatal Force." (n.d.). 16 Apr 2020. <https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/police-shootings-2019/>.

 695 words, not including biblio, opening quote and restatement of query.
POL200 Mendocino College Liljeblad Spring 2020