Illegal Police Actions. Fourth Amendments. Essay

There are many loopholes used to evade the jurisdiction of the fourth amendment thus it can be argued that it does not provide sufficient protection to U.S. citizens. The amendment states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the person or things to be seized. (Worrall, 2010, p. 5)

Many loopholes detected have been used to go around the amendment. To start with, the conjunction ‘and’ used between “reasonableness clause and warrant clause” (Worrall, 2010, p. 68) has resulted in a hot debate about its implication. This was seen in the United States v. Rabinowitz (339 U.S. 56 [1950]) (Worrall, 2010). The reasonableness clause does not clarify what should be considered as reasonable and as such the interpretation of such is left to the parties involved. There are things not covered by the amendment, for instance, open fields have been claimed to be excluded from the protection offered by the amendment (Worrall, 2010; Blackburn et al., 1995). Searches carried out by private security are also not subjected to the amendment (Worrall, 2010). The term “effects” is so general that at times it has been said to even include criminal weapons along with “the fruits of criminal activity”(Worrall, 2010, p. 69). In general, many issues have come to light that the fourth amendment does not address.

Crime committed by police officers is a problem. Though the judiciary has continuously tried to ensure that police officers are acting within the law, there are possibilities of some of the unlawful acts they commit going undetected as Worrall (2010) had argued (p. 43). It should be noted that when police officers collect vital evidence in a wrong way, for instance by illegally trespassing, such evidence is not considered in a court of law to be valid (Dervort & Vandervolt, 1999). What this implies is criminals will get away because of mistakes committed by the police. Though there are exceptions, “the good-faith exception and the impeachment exception” (Worrall, 2010, p. 44), as it happened in the case “The United States v. Leon (468 U.S. 897)” (Worrall, 2010, p. 44), police officers making mistakes in the line of duty is a big problem because it nullifies all the collected evidence. When vital evidence is nullified, law offenders are not held accountable for crimes even when it is very clear that a crime has been committed as was in the case of “Dunaway v. New York (442 U.S. 200 [1979])” (Worrall, 2010, p. 47) where the court ruled those police officers interfered “so severely on interests protected by the Fourth Amendment as necessary to trigger the traditional safeguards against illegal arrest” (Worrall, 2010, p. 47). Another good example of vital evidence thrashed on the ground of police officers’ mistakes is that which involved Cleveland police officers who broke into Dolly Mapp’s home without a warrant (Hartman, 2004).

The fourth amendment has continuously been found to have some loopholes which have made the amendment not provide sufficient protection to U.S. citizens. It is a big problem when police officers make mistakes in the course of their work. This is because such mistakes committed lead to evidence collected not being admitted in court rulings thus letting law offenders have their freedom without accounting for mistakes they committed.

References

Blackburn, R., & Gilbert, D. (1995). Photographic Enforcement of Traffic Laws. New York, NY: Transportation Research Board.

Hartman, G., Mersky, R., & Tate, C. (2004). Landmark Supreme Court cases: the most influential decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. New York, NY: Infobase Publishing.

Van Dervort, R., & Vandervort, T. (1999). American Law and the Legal System: Equal Justice under the Law. New York, NY: Cengage Learning.

Worrall, J. (2010). Criminal Procedure: From first contact to appeal (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River: Pearson.