For more than 100 years after the Fourth Amendment was ratified, it was of little value to criminal defendants because evidence seized by law enforcement in violation of the warrant or Reasonableness requirements were still admissible during the accused's proceedings. pursuit. The United States Supreme Court radically changed Fourth Amendment jurisprudence when it issued its decision in Weeks v. UNITED STATES. In the landmark case Weeks v. United States In 1914, the United States Supreme Court announced the far-reaching legal doctrine, known today as the exclusionary rule, which generally prohibits the use in court of illegally obtained evidence. . In the Weeks case, federal officers broke down his front door, searched his home without a search warrant and discovered several incriminating documents, which were later used against him during his federal trial. The Supreme Court said such evidence should be rejected because it was obtained illegally. Five decades later, in the Mapp v. Ohio (1961), the Court extended the exclusionary rule to criminal trials held at the state level. The Mapp decision ended this federal-state divide and the courts declared that the fruits of unconstitutional research are now inadmissible in both state and federal courts. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay There are some exceptions to the exclusionary rule, these rules can be for many different reasons but can be used in different ways. A good example is that under the good faith exception, evidence is not excluded if it is obtained by officers who reasonably rely on a search warrant that turns out to be invalid. The independent source doctrine states that evidence initially obtained during an illegal search or seizure may subsequently be admissible if it is subsequently obtained through a constitutionally valid search or seizure. The doctrine of inevitable discovery is related to the doctrine of independent source and allows the admission of evidence that was discovered during an illegal search or seizure if it would have been discovered in the same state, by an independent line of investigation which was already in progress when the illegal search or seizure took place. The doctrine of attenuation is used in cases where the connection between the disputed evidence and the unconstitutional conduct is too remote and attenuated, the evidence may be admissible. The evidence admissible for impeachment is that the exclusionary rule does not prevent the government from introducing illegally collected evidence to doubt or impeach the credibility of defendants' testimony at trial. The Supreme Court recognized this exception in Harris v. New York as a means of verifying the truth to prevent perjury. However, even when the government suspects perjury, it can only use tainted evidence for impeachment and cannot use it to demonstrate guilt. The final example is called qualified immunity. This exclusionary rule is often the defendant's only recourse when police officers conduct an unreasonable search or violate their Miranda rights. Even if officers violate a defendant's constitutional or statutory rights, qualified immunity protects officers from suit unless no reasonable officer believes the officers' conduct was lawful. Keep in mind: this is just a sample...