Denver criminal defense lawyer / the exclusionary rule

I've already talked some about the standard of proof that law enforcement needs to get further information, probable cause. I've also talked about one powerful weapon in a Denver criminal defense lawyer's pocket: affirmative defenses. In this post, I will talk about what happens when the prosecution cannot prove there was probable cause. I will also talk about why this is another important tool for a Denver criminal defense lawyer.

The Fourth Amendment says that the government is not allowed to use unreasonable searches and seizures to get evidence against the people. Originally, the Fourth Amendment only applied to the federal government. Eventually, a bunch of Supreme Court cases said that the 14th Amendment meant that the entire bill of rights (the first 10 amendments) applied to the states as well as the federal government. So the states were also not allowed to perform unreasonable searches and seizures.

Of course, at the beginning there was no remedy. Basically the evidence from the warrantless and causeless search could be introduced. All your Denver criminal defense lawyer could do is get mad about it. After getting convicted, you could sue the police. Unfortunately, it is notoriously difficult to sue the police, or the government in any capacity for a variety of complicated reasons.

So several states and the federal government made a rule that any evidence from an unreasonable or warrantless search would not be allowed at trial. Eventually, this rule was made mandatory by the Supreme Court of the United States for every single state. This is called the "exclusionary rule." So if the police stop you on the side of the road for no reason at all, and find drugs in your bag, the evidence of the search cannot come in to court. That means the drugs can't be introduced. There are a lot of exceptions, which I may or may not go in to later on this blog, but that's essentially the gist of it.

Additionally, anything that is the direct result of the illegal search is not allowed to be introduced at trial. That means if the police search you illegally and find drugs, then you make statements confessing, those statements can't be used against you. That's because without the illegal search, you never would have made the statements at all.

The exclusionary rule is one of the most important concepts in criminal law. It deters police officers from making illegal stops. It prevents the state from benefiting from its own illegal actions. The exclusionary rule has its critics, but nobody has really figured out a better way to manage it, so essentially it's unlikely to go anywhere.