CJ 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 32: Handcuffs, Miranda Warning, Burger Court
The Exclusionary Rule
The exclusionary rule is a judge‐made rule that evidence obtained by the government in
violation of a defendant's constitutional rights can't be used against him or her. By filing
a motion to suppressbefore the trial asking the judge to rule the evidence as inadmissible, a
defendant may prevent the prosecution from using illegally obtained evidence. The exclusionary
rule usually applies to suppression of physical evidence (for example, a murder weapon, stolen
property, or illegal drugs) that the police seize in violation of a defendant's Fourth Amendment
right not to be subjected to unreasonable search and seizure.
Weeks v. U.S. (1914)
The exclusionary rule was invented in Weeks v. U.S. Weeks is premised on the idea
that when the police exceed their constitutional authority in conducting a search, then
that search must be null and void. At the time of Weeks, the Bill of Rights was
considered to apply only to the federal government.
Mapp v. Ohio (1961)
In Mapp, the liberal Warren Court extended the Weeks exclusionary rule to state courts.
The Warren Court held that the exclusionary rule is part of a citizen's Fourth
Amendment right and that the rule was needed because the states had not devised any
effective remedies to the problem of arbitrary searches by police. Some police
administrators and politicians denounced Mapp for handcuffing the police.
Erosion of Mapp
Lack of support for the rule among conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices who
succeeded the liberal members of the Warren Court to the bench has limited the rule's
impact. In a series of cases, the Court held that illegally obtained evidence could be
used as the basis for grand jury questions, by the Internal Revenue Service in a civil tax
proceeding, and in deportation hearings. In U.S. v. Leon (1984), the Court carved out
the good faith exception: if the police make an honest mistake in conducting a search
—that is, if the police act on the basis of a search warrant which a court later declares
invalid—the seized evidence is still admissible.
Fifth Amendment: Right to Remain Silent
“ Taking the Fifth” refers to the practice of invoking the right to remain silent rather than
incriminating oneself. It protects guilty as well as innocent persons who find themselves in
incriminating circumstances. This right has important implications for police interrogations, a
method that police use to obtain evidence in the form of confessions from suspects.
The ban on forced confessions
If the accused did not have the right to remain silent, the police could resort to torture,
pain, and threats. Such methods might cause an innocent person to confess to avoid
further punishment. In fact, there have been occasions in American history when the
police have wrung confessions out of suspects. One of the most brutal incidents took
place in 1936 and resulted in the case of Brown v. Mississippi. Police accused three
black men of a murder and whipped them until they confessed. A Mississippi court
sentenced the men to death, but the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the verdict.
Confessions obtained by physical torture cannot serve as the basis of a conviction in
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