Court Opinion

ID: 9429773
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:27:50.622654+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:21.514788
License: Public Domain

Justice Brennan,
dissenting.
I fully agree with Justice White that under the analysis developed by the Court in such cases as United States v. Janis, 428 U. S. 433 (1976), and United States v. Calandra, 414 U. S. 338 (1974), the exclusionary rule must apply in civil deportation proceedings. However, for the reasons set forth today in my dissenting opinion in United States v. Leon, ante, p. 897, I believe the basis for the exclúsionary rule does not derive from its effectiveness as a deterrent, but is instead found in the requirements of the Fourth Amendment itself. My view of the exclusionary rule would, of course, require affirmance of the Court of Appeals. In this case, federal law enforcement officers arrested respondents Sandoval-Sanchez and Lopez-Mendoza in violation of their Fourth Amendment rights. The subsequent admission of any evidence secured pursuant to these unlawful arrests *1052in civil deportation proceedings would, in my view, also infringe those rights. The Government of the United States bears an obligation to obey the Fourth Amendment; that obligation is not lifted simply because the law enforcement officers were agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, nor because the evidence obtained by those officers was to be used in civil deportation proceedings.