Admissible Evidence: Relevant, Material, and Competent - Essay Sample

Introduction

For a court to admit evidence for the judge or jury to consider while deliberating on a case, it must be both relevant, material, and competent. Evidence is relevant if it relates to the case under consideration, and it is material if it is significant and could assist in proving a fact in issue (Brandl, 2018). Admissible evidence must also be competent. The rules of admissibility infer incompetent evidence as being of "questionable value" (p. 114), resulting from it being false or invalid (Brandl, 2018).

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Incompetent evidence falls within three classes. These include evidence that the police collected illegally/wrongfully due to unlawful searches or forced confessions; one that statutes have pronounced incompetent such as polygraph results; or one that judge-made rules have recognized as unfit like hearsay (Brandl, 2018). The facts at hand involve police searches and seizures. As such, the case falls under the first category the paper list above - evidence whose collection was illegal, meaning evidence arising from warrantless searched and seizures. The pertinent issue herein is whether the searches and seizures that the police officers conducted contravene the Fourth Amendment, which aims to "protect individuals' privacy and protect against arbitrary intrusions into that privacy by government officials" (Brandl, 2018, p. 149). The Amendment, essentially, prohibits police officers from undertaking searches without a warrant (Deahl, 2018).

According to Katz v. United States (1967), searches are a violation of this privacy by police officers, aiming at discovering evidence the prosecution can use in criminal proceedings. Therefore, for the court to consider this violation reasonable, police officers must first acquire a search warrant upon probable cause. If not, the search is unconstitutional (Deahl, 2018), and the evidence the officers seize is subject to suppression under the exclusionary rule. However, the court might still admit the evidence if the prosecution can prove the searches and seizures qualifies to one or more of the exceptions the exclusionary rule (Kinports, 2017).

This paper discusses whether the various circumstances that surrounded the searches and seizures of the evidence provided in the scenario met the standards set by the fourth amendment as interpreted by the court (Kerr, 2018). It then considers whether the evidence is admissible or inadmissible. If the evidence is unacceptable, the paper further discusses whether the court can still admit the evidence via an exception to the exclusionary rule. It separately addresses each of these items, including the 7-year-old boy, 20 pounds of heroin, $25,000, Hotel receipt, $10,000, and the women victims and other human trafficking evidence below.

The $25,000

The officers found the $25,000 in cash under the mattress when executing a search warrant of the suspects' house, the back shed, and all the area around the house provided there are in the suspect's property. The issue that arises is whether the search under the mattress and the seizure of this cash are legal, which could make the $25,000 admissible as evidence of the suspect dealing in heroin. According to United States v. Leon (1984), which the court affirmed in Maryland v Garrison (1987), a valid search warrant must describe the item(s) the police will seize and what they will search valid. The warrant that the officers were serving identifies the search area as the suspect's house and its environs, aiming at seizing heroin or proceedings from dealing in the drug. Since they find the cash under a mattress, possibly, in one of the house's rooms, the search must be a valid one. The seizure of the $25,000 is also justifiable, given that the warrant identifies not only the drug but the proceedings of peddling drugs. As such, the seizure of this cash is proper because a large sum of money hidden under the mattress raises a reasonable suspicion of his dealing in illicit activities. Thus, the $25,000 is admissible as evidence of proceedings of dealing in heroin.

The Hotel Receipt

The officers recovered the receipt after one of them saw the suspect's car parked on the next to the suspect's neighbor's house. The officers did not have a search warrant to search the vehicle. The issue that arises is whether the police searched the car in contravention to the Fourth Amendment and the subsequent construction of it by case law, which would deem this receipt inadmissible. Per se, any search that the police conduct without a valid and legal search warrant is unconstitutional (Harvard Law Review, 2018). As such, per the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine, any evidence and seizure of it are incompetent. Therefore, the defense can move the court to suppress it. The court must, thus, exclude such evidence under the exclusionary rule.

Consequently, the Hotel receipt the police recovered is inadmissible. However, this is subject to some exceptions. In this case, the most applicable one is the automobile exception, which provides that police may search a vehicle without a warrant if they have "reasonable suspicion (for weapons) or probable cause (for evidence)" (Brandl, 2018, p. 815). The reason for holding vehicles to a lower standard of the right to privacy than homes and other locations is because people typically have low expectations of privacy in their auto (Brandl, 2018). The US Supreme Court (USSC) formulated this exception and its applicable conditions in Chambers v. Maroney (1970), holding that if the police have probable cause an automobile has evidence, they can search it without a warrant either at the scene or in the station. Also, vehicles are mobile, which makes it hard for police to gather evidence that they might contain (Brandl, 2018). The issue of the mobility of automobiles creates an emergency, which necessitates warrantless searches provided the police have a probable cause (Brandl, 2018; Kerr, 2018).

In the case at hand, the police officers have just served a search warrant that covering the suspect's house and its environs. The search has uncovered a large sum of money under the mattress. As a result, when one of the officers sees the suspect had left the car unlocked and has parked it across the neighbor's house, not his, it is only reasonable for her to harbor a probable cause that the suspects also keeps some from his illicit dealings in heroin in the automobile. In the recent case of Collins v Arizona (2018), the USSC retaliated that the motor vehicle exception is particularly useful if the automobile is in a public location, but not when the search requires an officer to get "into the curtilage of a home to search a vehicle" (as cited in Harvard Law Review, 2018, p. 360). This search, thus, qualifies to the exception, and the receipt is, therefore, appropriate.

The $10,000, the 20 Pounds of Heroin, and the Women and other Human Trafficking Evidence

The discovery of this evidence directly results from the finding of the hotel receipt in the suspect's vehicle that the officers might have searched illegally. Thus, the admissibility of all the evidence the police recovered from the hotel depends on whether the hotel receipt is itself appropriate to admit. If the court finds the officers legally searched the suspect's automobile to seize it, then the subsequent evidence that the receipt leads the officer to recover will be admissible. Otherwise, the evidence is not inadmissible due to the "fruits of a poisonous tree" doctrine; which allows courts to exclude evidence that the police recover upon a tainted search (Wong Sun v. United States, 1963).

If the court deems the receipt inadmissible, the prosecution may argue that since the police were meticulously investigating the suspects, they would have soon discovered the hotel in the course of their investigation. This argument derives from the doctrine of the "inevitable discovery," which the USSC first used in Nix v. Williams (1982). According to this principle, the court will allow the prosecution to adduce evidence of improperly collected evidence, if the police could show that the police would have eventually come by the evidence soon via a lawful mean (Deahl, 2018).

In the case under consideration, it is highly likely that the police would put the suspect under surveillance after recovering the large sum of money in his home. Also, it is almost inevitable that someone would make a police report regarding the missing women. Therefore, it is likely the police will discover the suspect is holding them in the hotel. It is also reasonably possible the people who work at the hotel would notice the unusual activities occurring in the room the suspect was using, and call the police. Therefore, whether the evidence was recovered in a tainted manner or not does matter because the police would have somehow been led to the hotel indeed.

The Seven-Year Boy

The police came about this evidence after searching the hotel, which relied on the recovery of the hotel receipt in the suspect car, which they searched without a warrant. If the chain of the evidence recovery that led them to the seizure of the boy is tainted, the prosecution could apply the exigent circumstances, which are "emergency situations that allow a search to occur without a warrant, exception (Brandl, 2018, p. 151). The argument would be that had the police not acted immediately, the suspect or his cohorts posed a danger to the boy, including psychological harm due to false imprisonment (Brandl, 2018). Therefore, regardless of whether the court applies the exclusionary rule on the other items this paper list above. The court is more likely to allow the prosecution to adduce this evidence as proof for human trafficking or kidnapping against the defendant.

References

Brandl, S. G. (2018). Criminal investigation (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Deahl, J. (2018). Debunking pre-arrest incident searches. Calif. L. Rev., 106, 1061. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15779/Z387659F87

Harvard Law Review. (2018). Collins v. Virginia. Harv. L. Rev., 132(357), 357-366. Retrieved from https://harvardlawreview.org/2018/11/collins-v-virginia

Kerr, O. S. (2018). Cross-enforcement of the fourth amendment. Harv. L. Rev., 132, 471. https://harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/471-535_Online.pdf.

Kinports, K. (2017). Illegal predicate searches and tainted warrants after Heien and Strieff. Tul. L. Rev., 92, 837.