Weeks v. United States - Significance, Great Principles Must Not Be Sacrificed, A Personal Right Of The Defendant?, Impact

Weeks v. United States - Further Readings

Weeks v. United States - Significance

Weeks v. United States marked the creation of the exclusionary rule, which originally stated that evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure could not be used against a person in federal court. Before the decision in Weeks v. United States, the courts admitted illegally seized material as evidence to avoid allowing guilty parties to …

Weeks v. United States - Great Principles Must Not Be Sacrificed

Justice Day wrote the unanimous opinion of the Court. Day reviewed the history of the Fourth Amendment, noting that it was based on the premise that a man's house was his castle and thus should not be invaded. This feature of the Constitution was written to prevent the kind of general warrants issued by the government in colonial times. Based on the case, Ex parte Jackson, the prohibition against …

Weeks v. United States - A Personal Right Of The Defendant?

The Court's opinion in this case left some points unclarified. Was the exclusionary rule required by the Constitution? Or was the rule the product of the Court's power to supervise the lower federal courts? Was it subject to negation by Congress? The Weeks opinion seemed to endorse the belief that the exclusionary rule was a personal right of the defendant. More recent decisions dealing with the e…

Weeks v. United States - Impact

The Weeks case attracted little notice until Prohibition, when issues surrounding federal government searches and seizures often arose. In 1961, the Supreme Court applied the exclusionary rule to the states, in Mapp v. Ohio. This application became one of the Court's most controversial rulings. It formed part of the "Warren Revolution," lead by Chief Justice Warren. With Warren as its leader, the …

Weeks v. United States - The Silver Platter Doctrine

Weeks in 1914 established not only the exclusionary rule, but also an exception to the exclusionary rule called the "Silver Platter Doctrine." This exception covered situations in which federal law-enforcement officers had evidence "handed to them on a silver platter"--Justice Felix Frankfurter's phrase--by state authorities. The key idea here was the participation of state law-enforcement personn…