IEJS > Law > Procedure > Remedies for Rights Violations

Leading Cases in Remedies for Violations of Constitutional Rights

  • WEEKS v. U.S., 232 U.S. 383 (1914)
    Established the exclusionary rule; the court held that evidence obtained by federal officials in violation of the Fourth Amendment would be inadmissible in federal criminal trials.
     
  • MAPP v. OHIO, 367 U.S. 643 (1961)
    The court held that evidence obtained by illegal searches and seizures should not be admitted in criminal trails against the person whose rights were violated.
     
  • RAWLINGS v. KENTUCKY, 448 U.S. 98 (1980)
    "Nor was petitioner entitled to challenge the search, regardless of his expectation of privacy, merely because he claimed ownership of the drugs in the purse."
     
  • MINNESOTA v. OLSON, 495 U.S. 91 (1990)
    In cases involving guests, standing depends on whether the guests have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the third person's home.
     
  • UNITED STATES v. LEON, 468 U.S. 897 (1984)
    "The Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule should not be applied so as to bar the use in the prosecution's case in chief of evidence obtained by officers acting in reasonable reliance on a search warrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate but ultimately found to be invalid."
     
  • WONG SUN v. UNITED STATES, 371 U.S. 471 (1963)
    "In view of the fact that, after his unlawful arrest, petitioner Wong Sun had been lawfully arraigned and released on his own recognizance and had returned voluntarily several days later when he made his unsigned statement, the connection between his unlawful arrest and the making of that statement was so attenuated that the unsigned statement was not the fruit of the unlawful arrest and, therefore, it was properly admitted in evidence."
     
  • UNITED STATES v. CREWS, 445 U.S. 463 (1980)
    "The in-court identification need not be suppressed as the fruit of respondent's concededly unlawful arrest but is admissible because the police's knowledge of respondent's identity and the victim's independent recollections of him both antedated the unlawful arrest and were thus untainted by the constitutional violation."
     
  • NIX v. WILLIAMS, 467 U.S. 431 (1984)
    "The evidence pertaining to the discovery and condition of the victim's body was properly admitted at respondent's second trial on the ground that it would ultimately or inevitably have been discovered even if no violation of any constitutional provision had taken place."
     
  • HARRIS v. NEW YORK, 401 U.S. 222 (1971)
    "Statement inadmissible against a defendant in the prosecution's case in chief because of lack of the procedural safeguards required by Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 , may, if its trustworthiness satisfies legal standards, be used for impeachment purposes to attack the credibility of defendant's trial testimony."
     
  • ILLINOIS v. KRULL, 480 U.S. 340 (1987)
    "The Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule does not apply to evidence obtained by police who acted in objectively reasonable reliance upon a statute authorizing warrantless administrative searches, but which is subsequently found to violate the Fourth Amendment."
     
  • BROWN v. ILLINOIS, 422 U.S. 590 (1975)
    "The question whether a confession is voluntary under Wong Sun must be answered on the facts of each case. Though the Miranda warnings are an important factor in resolving the issue, other factors must be considered; and the burden of showing admissibility of in-custody statements of persons who have been illegally arrested rests on the prosecutor."
     
  • DUNAWAY v. NEW YORK, 442 U.S. 200 (1979)
    Merely issuing Miranda warnings does not remove the taint of an illegal arrest.
     
  • MURRAY v. UNITED STATES, 487 U.S. 533 (1988)
    "The Fourth Amendment does not require the suppression of evidence initially discovered during police officers' illegal entry of private premises, if that evidence is also discovered during a later search pursuant to a valid warrant that is wholly independent of the initial illegal entry."
     
  • SEGURA v. UNITED STATES, 468 U.S. 796 (1984)
    "Here, there was an independent source for the challenged evidence; the evidence was discovered during a search of petitioners' apartment pursuant to a valid warrant. The information on which the warrant was secured came from sources wholly unconnected with the initial entry and was known to the agents well before that entry. Hence, whether the initial entry was illegal or not is irrelevant to the admissibility of the evidence, and exclusion of the evidence is not warranted as derivative or as fruit of the poisonous tree."
     
  • GILBERT v. CALIFORNIA, 388 U.S. 263 (1967)
    "The Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination reaches compulsory communications, but a mere handwriting exemplar, in contrast with the content of what is written, is an identifying physical characteristic outside its protection."
     
  • MAINE v. MOULTON, 474 U.S. 159 (1985)
    Statements made without benefit of counsel once the right to counsel has attached under the Sixth Amendment are not admissible.
     
  •  UNITED STATES v. CALANDRA, 414 U.S. 338 (1974)
    "The exclusionary rule, under which evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment or the fruits of such evidence cannot be used in a criminal proceeding against the victim of the illegal search and seizure, is a judicially created remedy designed to safeguard Fourth Amendment rights generally through its deterrent effect on future unlawful police conduct, rather than a personal constitutional right of the party aggrieved."
     
  • UNITED STATES v. JANIS, 428 U.S. 433 (1976)
    "The judicially created exclusionary rule should not be extended to forbid the use in the civil proceeding of one sovereign (here the Federal Government) of evidence illegally seized by a criminal law enforcement agent of another sovereign (here the state government), since the likelihood of deterring law enforcement conduct through such a rule is not sufficient to outweigh the societal costs imposed by the exclusion."
     
  • INS v. LOPEZ-MENDOZA, 468 U.S. 1032 (1984)
    "The exclusionary rule does not apply in a deportation proceeding."

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