Abstract

This article offers a review of Fourth Amendment interpretive law, with a focus on evolving exemptions to the exclusionary law as well as how social media had impacted interpretations of unreasonable searches and seizures and citizens privacy rights.

Criminal Justice Investigations: The Fourth Amendment

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, by protecting them against unreasonable searches and seizures, with the additional caveat that no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized (Freidman & Kerr, 2022, par.1). Although the wording of the document seems fairly straightforward, it has proved contentious determining what constitutes reasonable and unreasonable searches under the law, and what constitutes private and public spaces, including areas such as ones car, workplace, and even online.

One watershed moment in the history of the Fourth Amendment was the notion of the exclusionary rule, or the idea that evidence which was seized improperly could not be used in a court of law. There are many exceptions to the exclusionary rule, but the purpose of the restriction is widely considered that it is to disincentivize illegal police behavior, if the police are convinced a suspect is guilty, but lack adequate grounds to engage in a search or to obtain a warrant. Exceptions to the exclusionary rule include the good faith exception, independent sources, inevitable discovery, attenuation, impeachment, and qualified immunity (Jurkowski, 2017). In the case of the good faith exception, for example the courts may allow evidence, even if the evidence was obtained illegally, so long as it was gathered in evident good faith by the police, with the belief that the police were acting lawfully (Jurkowski, 2017).

In the case of an independent source, if an independent source legally obtained evidence, the illegal searchs fruits can still be used in court, and it is no longer the so-called fruit of the poisonous tree. Inevitable discovery alleges that the police would have found the evidence regardless, even if they had not conducted the illegal search (Jurkowski, 2017). Attenuation suggests that if there is sufficient distance between the discovery of the evidence and the illegal act, it may be allowed. Illegally obtained evidence can also be used to impeach witness testimony and also cannot be used against the police to convict an officer of the crime of violating a subjects rights (Jurkowski, 2017).

The 1961 U.S. Supreme Court decision Mapp v. Ohio was the first decision that applied the exclusionary rule universally to the states. In this instance, Mapp was convicted for possessing obscene materials after being subjected to illegal police search unrelated to such obscene materials. The police had no...…to know or identify the individual in advance, because the range of communication use is so vast) (Hecht-Felella, 2021).

To return to the example of Mapp v. Ohio, the obscene communications found within Mapps home which even in an illegal search took some effort to find might be very easily accessible on a Facebook post. Or, such a post on a private account might be screenshotted and posted by a users friend on a public account, giving a slightly deeper level of expected privacy, but still accessible without the users knowledge on the very public and easily searchable site of Facebook. Technologys ease and accessibility, its ever-changing nature, and even the fact that law enforcement may not, because of generational divides, fully understand the extent to which certain methods generate expectations of privacy, continue to complicate Fourth Amendment rulings.

A final question which arises is privacy. The Fourth Amendment fundamentally exists to protect citizen privacy within the confines of the citizens own home. But what constitutes home is increasingly spilling over into digital space. The ubiquity of the Internet for finding jobs, communicating at work, and establishing a searchable public presence (much like an old-fashioned phone book) also calls into question whether social media constitutes totally voluntary engagement. Regardless, this aspect of law is yet another component of the legal system which the Founding Fathers or even justices twenty years ago could not have…