Court Opinion

ID: 9462519
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:42:50.447332+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:37.624713
License: Public Domain

OAKES, Circuit Judge
tconcurring):
I agree with everything that Judge Mansfield has said in his opinion and join therein. I would add only that, as Professor Amsterdam has so aptly pointed out, criticism of the exclusionary rule has been directed, as was the Government’s argument in this case, at the rule as if it were a means to “deter” specific episodes of past unconstitutional police behavior. In fact, the exclusionary rule should be looked at as *36the principal means for ensuring governmental performance of the obligations imposed by the Fourth Amendment upon the system of criminal justice as a whole. See Amsterdam, Perspectives on the Fourth Amendment, 58 U.Minn.L.Rev. 349, 432 (1974). The misdirected criticism of the exclusionary rule stems from an unduly narrow view of the Fourth Amendment which conceives of it as a collection of protections of individual spheres of interest, rather than as a broad regulatory canon of Government pertaining to law enforcement procedures which keeps us all secure against the conduct it condemns. See Amsterdam, supra, 58 U.Minn.L.Rev. at 367; United States v. Barbera, 514 F.2d 294, 299 n.12 (2d Cir. 1975).