| Abstract: | After months of focusing attention on the troubles of the Middle East, the U.S. has turned its eyes back home to domestic policy. President Bush's newly proposed domestic policy, not surprisingly, includes proposals dealing with the immense problem of drug trafficking. Included in his bill is a proposal to make evidence admissible in federal criminal court procedings if and only if a firearm is involved and where the evidence would otherwise be suppressed due to violation of the U. S. Supreme Court's so-called exclusionary rule.1 The exclusionary rule makes evidence which has been gathered during an illegal search or seizure inadmissible in both federal and state court proceedings. Bush's so-called inclusionary rule, at present simply a narrow exception, could open up a huge hole if the constitutionality of the exclusionary rule were tested again. For thirty years now the main punishment for police who have blundered has been to render the evidence which they have collected against the accused inadmissible in court proceedings. Since the 1914 introduction of the exclusionary rule by the Supreme Court in 2 Weeks v. U.S., supporters have argued that this privilege, the protection against illegal search and seizure, is a natural extension of the fourth amendment right to "be secure ... against unreasonable search and seizures." However, proponents feel that this right may be better protected in other ways. For example, Canada does not exercise an exclusionary rule; instead it relies upon the tort system to correct overzealous searches. In a landmark Supreme Court case of 1961, Mapp v Ohio, the court ruled that the federal exclusionary rule, which holds that evidence obtained during an illegal search may be suppressed in federal court proceedings, also applied to all state court proceedings as well as federal. In evaluating this controversy, it is useful to investigate the history of the exclusionary rule and its intended purpose, before presenting the statistical analysis |
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