Criminology

Exclusionary rule stems from the Fourth Amendment of United States constitutional laws that aim at protecting individuals from illegal evidence seizure by law enforcement officers. The rule was created in court thus it was not passed by legislature but by United States Supreme Court. It is a defense mechanism for citizens who are falsely accused of possessing illegal goods. The rule also protects the constitutional rights of offenders who think the method used to search for evidence was very much unreasonable and illegal. Some times police or law enforcers tend to have false evidence that they claim to have obtained from a particular suspect. Exclusionary law is used in such cases to protect individuals rights from seizure.

The rule states that no object that has been obtained illegally from an offender can be provided as evidence in criminal prosecution. It stipulates that a person cannot be his or her witness in any criminal case. Exclusionary law has been in use since 1900 and it was developed to eliminate loopholes that were present in the past rulings. Courts used to consider any evidence as much as it was relevant to criminal offence without considering the manner in which evidence was seized. This resulted to infringement of personal rights that was restored by exclusionary law. The law applies to all citizens and immigrants in United States.

Exclusionary rule is applied in evidence that is deemed to have been collected through search methods that are not authorized. A law enforcement officer is only allowed to search for evidence from a defendant once a court warrant has been issued.  Fourth Amendment interpretation states that a search without court warrant is considered to be unreasonable and in such a case exclusionary rule is applied. Judges are the only legal officers who have the capacity to issue warrants but only if they think evidence for wrong doing can be found easily.

A valid warrant must have date, time of search, location, reasons to prove that such evidence will be obtained in the indicated place and expectations of the search. Civil liberties of American citizens are very important and needs to be protected through exclusionary rule. The rule provides that evidence given by witnesses who used shocking processes cannot be admitted in court. The rule prevents laws enforcers from using their positions to harass innocent citizens or to violate their constitutional rights.

The rule does not apply in a parole revocation, civil case and grand jury hearing and this may be considered as one of the major limitation of exclusionary rule. It does not protect privacy rights of a third party and evidenced are suppressed only when the search is considered to have violated individuals constitutional rights.  The rule provides good policies that guards private life of an individual through court warrants issued by judges.

The use of technology to seizure evidence such as such as tape recording is not recognized in American legal systems. This is considered as infringement of individuals constitutional rights that is protected by exclusionary rule. The provisions  of the  rule  are friendly  to  human  life and  especially  for  those  individuals who treasure private life. It provides that a police should not use his or her capacity to search for evidence without court warrant. These provisions protect individual rights from unlawful search for evidence and thus the major reasons why I support the rule.