Arizona v. Evans - Significance

By the time Arizona v. Evans reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1994, a succession of lower courts had reversed one another's decisions as to whether marijuana found in a search could be admitted as evidence against the suspect. The respondent, however, had been first placed under arrest because of an error by a court clerk. The Court had to consider whether an error in a law-enforcement database be valid reason for declaring an arrest erroneous, and for suppressing evidence obtained against a citizen as a result of that arrest. It was a new twist in search-and-seizure law, and found the High Court deciding for the first time whether the exclusionary rule could be applied in the event of computer error.