Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wants to abolish the most important legal rule that protects Americans from illegal searches by police. Writing only for himself in a decision last week [May 21], Thomas argued in a nine-page concurring opinion that the oft-criticized exclusionary rule for suppressing illegally obtained evidence has no historical basis and the Supreme Court no authority to require states to adopt it.
Thomas prefaced his opinion in Collins v. Virginia by agreeing that Charlottesville, Va., police officers had violated Ryan Collins' Fourth Amendment rights by conducting a warrantless search in the driveway of his girlfriend's home that uncovered a stolen motorcycle. But in Thomas's telling, the Framers of the Constitution "would not have understood the logic of the exclusionary rule" — the century-old rule that bars the use of illegally obtained evidence in federal courts.
The Supreme Court used its supervisory power over federal courts to adopt the exclusionary rule in Weeks v. United States (1914), Thomas recites the subsequent developments. Three decades later, the pre-Warren Court refused on a 6-3 vote to impose the exclusionary rule on states in Wolf v. Colorado (1949). Twelve years later, however, the Warren Court launched the criminal procedure revolution by overruling Wolf with its 5-3 ruling in Mapp v. Ohio (1961). to require states to rule any evidence obtained in violation of the federal Constitution inadmissible in state criminal trials.
Thomas relates these developments as though in answer to a legal history exam, with only a single footnote about the potential impact of abolishing the exclusionary rule. Without that rule, Ryan Collins would still stand convicted of receiving stolen property despite the constitutional violation. He would have no recourse except a civil suit against the police officers who conducted the illegal search or perhaps a disciplinary proceeding against the officers.
As to civil suits, the Court's recent decisions on qualified immunity protect police from liability for all but the most clear-cut constitutional violations, In Collins' case, for example, the dissenting justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. argued that the two Charlottesville officers were "entirely reasonable" in going on to the driveway to pull off the tarpaulin that shielded Collins' motorcycle from public view.
Writ large, abolition of the exclusionary rule would surely encourage police officers to give less regard to the sometimes difficult-to-discern Fourth Amendment rules as to what amounts to an "unreasonable" search. The recent history of police practices — think about the continuing toll of unarmed civilians killed in police encounters or the uncounted number of innocent pedestrians subjected to "stop and frisk" pat-downs — argues strongly against loosening rules aimed at controlling police conduct.
Thomas blithely suggests in a last-page footnote, however, that state tort law, state criminal law, federal civil rights suits, and police discipline are all "effective deterrents" against Fourth Amendment violations by police. "The problem before Mapp was there weren't any remedies," says Orin Kerr, a Fourth Amendment expert at George Washington University Law School.
Thomas's originalist critique breaks no new ground. "I didn't see anything new," says Kerr. It would draw no more interest than the most recent Twitter exchange among original meaning cultists but for the likelihood that Thomas has at least another 10 years to try to find five votes for his view and the supposition that Thomas now thinks that a realistic possibility.
For now, none of the other justices is ready to abolish the exclusionary rule, not even Thomas's newfound pal, Neil Gorsuch. "I don't see it as something likely to happen any time soon," says Kerr. Among the many other lone-wolf opinions that Thomas has written in 27 years on the Court, however, one stands out as having helped get the ball rolling on a major change in constitutional law.
When the Court struck down part of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act in in Printz v. United States (1997), Thomas called in a short concurring opinion for reconsidering the 60-year-old precedent that the Second Amendment did not establish a personal right to possession of firearms. A decade later, Thomas was part of the five-justice majority that adopted that view in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and then, two years later, enforced the same gun-rights protective view to state and local governments in McDonald v. Chicgo (2010).
In his new opinion, Thomas acknowledges that the Mapp Court described the exclusionary rule as "an essential part of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments." But he cites a string of subsequent decisions as contradicting what he calls the Court itself has called Mapp's "expansive dicta
." Thus, through the years, the Court has carved out exceptions to the exclusionary rule, including several from the Roberts Court. In Roberts' first term, for example, the Court issued a 5-4 ruling in Hudson v. Michigan (2006) that an acknowledged violation of the Fourth Amendment-derived "knock and announce" rule did not require suppression of the evidence police found after barging in to a private home without warning.
For now, the Roberts Court has been "strong on the right," according to Kerr, but "weak on remedies." Thus, in Collins' case, Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke for eight justices in declaring a driveway entitled to the same protection that the Fourth Amendment extends to the home. But Thomas's shot-across-the-bow concurrence underscores the risks to individual rights that could materialize with future changes in the Court's personnel.
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