Exclusionary Rule Evaluation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Exclusionary Rule Evaluation - Essay Example The Exclusionary rule is applied where a connection between illegal act by police or law enforcement authorities and the obtained evidence is proven. It is also applied when there is an indirect connection between the evidence and an illegal search. If evidence is collected in good faith, considering that the obtained search warrant is legally correct although it is not. Evidence is retained if the police officer is unaware of mistakes in the issued search warrant. There should be no legally significant mistake. However, technical mistakes can save evidence from being destroyed due to an incomplete warrant (Shestokas, 2008). The Exclusionary rule is widely criticized because in some way, it harms criminal trial proceedings. Due to the application of the Exclusionary rule, important evidence can be missed out due to lack of a search warrant or proper knowledge of police officers and the culprit might be unchained due to lack of legal evidence. Exclusionary rule diverts the attention of the court of law from the original case to details of legal and illegal evidence. Police officers have to work for more and more evidence so that if some of them will be considered illegal, others can work. This clearly depicts wastage of precious time. Cost of evidence collection is also a major issue. Although Exclusionary rule has brought more professionalism to the evidence search department of police and law enforcement agencies of society, it has done a lot to save the constitutional privacy of citizens of the state against professional misconduct of police officers, as it was observed in the past, in order to obtain evidence. Due to observance of the Exclusionary rule in criminal trials, society has to bear the greatest cost of this rule in terms of criminals that go unpunished because of excluded evidence (Lungren, 1996). Once freed from court of justice, culprit’s moral increases and this may consequently result in