The criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered: Challenges of law enforcement in the face of the exclusionary

Abstract

The criminal justice system is in a quagmire; known criminals are easily let off the hook by suppression of the truth in pursuit of the truth. A survey of all state and local law enforcement officers in a large midwestern county revealed the enormity of the challenges that law enforcement officers grapple with against the technicalities and intricacies of the exclusionary rule. This reality, coupled with the outcome of an indepth literature review inform the twin arguments of this article, that individual rights, which form the basis of the exclusionary rule, should be construed in a manner that does not impede the process of seeking the truth; and when the wider common good is jeopardized by the methods employed by law enforcement officials in safeguarding the same common good, the difference between the ends and the means may become blurred.