New Supreme Court Decision

This past June the Supreme Court of the United States handed down a 7-2 decision in Davis v. United States that faded the “exclusionary rule.”  Davis, the petitioner, was a passenger in a vehicle when it was pulled over.  Davis was first arrested for providing the police with a false name, and then found to have violated a federal statute because the police found a gun in his coat pocket.  Davis was a convicted felon. 

Prior to the Eleventh Circuit’s decision of Davis’s appeal, the Court found in Arizona v. Gant that searches like Davis’s were illegal. The court found that while the search did violate Davis’s constitutional rights, it could not however be excluded evidence and could be used at trial.  The Court reasoned that the exclusionary rule is meant to deter officers from illegal activity, and because the police, at the time, were making a good-faith effort to conduct the search within the current law they could not have know they were violating his rights.  Suppression, the court found, would not serve as deterrence.