Arizona v. Evans

The Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure is seen by many historians as perhaps the most important item in the Bill of Rights. They theorize that the abuse of power by agents of the British crown in this area was probably the impetus for the American Revolution itself.

The exclusionary rule was a relatively recent development in constitutional law, and the law-enforcement and prosecuting arms of the criminal justice system have found much fault with it. It has been claimed that criminals often go free when their lawyers successfully argue to suppress evidence against them by claiming police misconduct. As Nat Hentoff pointed out in a 1996 Village Voice column, even New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has called the exclusionary rule "a terrible mistake." However, studies had found that less than 1 to 2.35 percent of cases are dismissed as a result of it.

The issue did make for good political maneuvering, since most Americans have a fear of the roaming criminal, and it became part of Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America" legislative package. The bill HR 666 contained the "Exclusionary Rule Reform Act of 1995," sponsored by Florida Republican Bill McCollum. It was designed to tighten what conservatives saw as a "loophole" by expanding the good-faith exception. The bill stated that law-enforcement personnel with "an objectively reasonable belief" that they are abiding by the terms of the Fourth Amendment can search without a warrant. This would technically allow police to simply enter any ordinary citizen's house and argue later that they had probable cause.

HR 666 passed in the House, and was still held up in the Senate Judiciary Committee three years later. Critics of the bill noted that such sweeping police powers were characteristic of fascist or otherwise authoritarian governments, where police or the military had wide range to infringe upon the rights of citizens to be secure in their own homes. "This is the heart of the [Fourth] Amendment--forcing police to convince a neutral magistrate that the totality of the circumstances indicates that evidence of a crime exists," wrote Robert Bauman in the National Review.