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The Exclusionary Rule



             The primary purpose of the exclusionary rule is to prevent law enforcement officers from using illegal means to obtain information that would be considered incriminating to a defendant's case in a court of law. For example, let us suppose the police seize evidence, but during that seizure, they violate one of your guaranteed constitutional rights. Perhaps that evidence was a letter lying on your desk and subsequently taken from your office when a police officer came to question you. Seizure of such evidence without a valid search warrant would deem this evidence inadmissible, at least insofar as it being utilized to provide direct proof of your guilt. It is important, however, to bear in mind that the exclusionary rule applies only where evidence is obtained in violation of the Constitution. It does not apply to evidence gathered for an administrative regulation (i.e., IRS contact). A prime example of this type of issue arose in the case of U.S. v. Caceres . In this case, an IRS agent recorded a conversation between himself and a taxpayer in which the taxpayer offered a bribe to the agent. As this was not a common practice, the IRS required that such surveillance cause the agent to secure preliminary approval from certain IRS officials prior to the actual surveillance taking place. This did not happen in the case of Caceres. Fortunately for the IRS" interests, no constitutional right was violated, and the recorded evidence was permitted as evidence. .
             The problem with the exclusionary rule lies in the inefficiencies caused by such "red-tape" as described in the Caceres case. The application of the exclusionary rule in such a way would result in a significant inhibition of the legal process. The need to inform a person they are being recorded during a telephone conversation is understandable, but an agent having to go to such extremes to obtain not only the callers" permission, but also that of specific supervisors is preposterous.


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