The Exclusionary Rule In order for the rights listed in the Constitution to have substance, there must be enforceable remedies imposed on the government for violations of those rights. In 1914, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the landmark case of Weeks v. United States,2 introduced the exclusionary rule as a remedy for violations of the Fourth Amendment.3 The Weeks Court felt that the only effective way to enforce the Fourth Amendment right to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures was to adopt a rule that evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment could not be used by the government against a defendant at trial. The Weeks Court further stated that a court should not sanction illegal government conduct by admitting into evidence the fruits of that illegal conduct. Later, in Silverthorne Lumber v. United States,4 the Supreme Court not only prohibited introducing into evidence those items directly seized during an illegal government search but also any evidence indirectly derived from that search.Originally, the exclusionary rule announced in Weeks did not apply to the states because at that time the Supreme Court limited the application of the Fourth Amendment to the Federal Government. Then, in 1949, the Supreme Court decided Wolf v. Colorado,5 wherein the Court applied the Fourth Amendment to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment due process clause. The Court considered the prohibition against unreasonable searches or seizures to be a right basic to a free society and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. The Wolf Court, however, did not view the exclusionary rule as a necessary component of due process and refused to apply the exclusionary rule to the states as a remedy for a violation of the Fourth Amendment.6In 1961, the Supreme Court decided Mapp v. Ohio,7 which in part overruled Wolf and applied the exclusionary rule to the states. The Mapp Court viewed other remedies, such as criminal sanctio...
