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Should the exclusionary rule be abolished?

"The exclusionary rule is a legal principle in the United States, under constitutional law, which holds that evidence collected or analyzed in violation of the defendant's constitutional rights is sometimes inadmissible for a criminal prosecution in a court of law." (Wikipedia) This rule is intended is intended to enforce the 4th and 5th Amendments, which require warrants for searches and due process of law. Many argue that the rule unfairly punishes past and future crime victims by excluding facts from trial due to wrongs done by police and prosecutors. Should the rule be abolished? If so, how should the right of suspects against illegal searches be protected?

c andrew , 15.04.2012, 09:50
Response from the site administrator
DianaHsieh, 20.06.2012
I've moved this question into the Rapid Fire Queue, as I'm trying to avoid complex questions on legal and political theory.
Idea status: rejected

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DianaHsieh, 16.04.2012, 10:57
C Andrew asked this question, but he didn't really ask a question... but instead posted the following (which I think is interesting as a comment, but not a question). Anyway, I rewrote the question, and here's his comment:

I understand that using the Exclusionary Rule to punish prosecutors and police is sub-optimal. My question has an epistemological thrust. The requirement in the 4th Amendment of the US Constitution that "No warrants shall issue, but upon probably cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized" is not merely a mechanism to protect against "unreasonable searches and seizures" on the political level. It is also to enforce epistemological hygiene on the state actors by requiring them to place the evidence they have so gathered in a broader and provable context. Violation of the requirement of Probable Cause is an epistemological violation as well as a legal one and is a culpable error on a greater order than the common police practice of subverting witness identification by showing a photograph of the "suspect" to the witness prior to viewing the lineup.

The exclusionary rule works against including the epistemologically arbitrary in a criminal case. Correctly enforced it would eliminate such bad premises as false Confidential Informant testimony, planted evidence (such as drugs or drop guns), inadvertent or unknowing possession, etc., by requiring context (aka probable cause and specificity) before the state can act to violate a citizen's right to be secure in his person, possessions and papers. The exclusionary rule is a requirement of epistemological hygiene not a subversion of it.
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