NCJ Number
115782
Journal
Suffolk University Law Review Volume: 21 Issue: 1 Dated: (Spring 1987) Pages: 278-287
Date Published
1987
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This article examines the First Circuit Court of Appeals' decision in United States v. Silvestri (1986), which considered whether evidence discovered pursuant to a warrantless and unlawful search is admissible when police officers subsequently obtain a valid warrant issued on facts independent of the search.
Abstract
Reasoning that the inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule applies when the facts indicate that, despite the presence of police misconduct, a search warrant would have inevitably been issued, the court concluded that the fourth amendment does not require the suppression of evidence first observed during a warrantless search. This ruling ignores a purpose of the search warrant requirement, which is to lessen the incidence of unreasonable searches by having a neutral and detached magistrate determine probable cause before a search occurs. The court should not have applied the balancing test of 'Nix' to a warrantless search case. Instead, it should have followed the Second Circuit in United States v. Segura, which excluded evidence first observed during an illegal entry but admitted evidence first observed during the subsequent legal search. Under the 'Segura' standard, a police officer's knowledge that evidence observed during an illegal entry is inadmissible deters them from entering illegally. 66 footnotes.