NCJ Number
80204
Date Published
Unknown
Length
0 pages
Annotation
Charles E. Moylan, Associate Judge of the Maryland Special Court of Appeals, discusses the concept of standing to object as a measure of applicability of the fourth amendment's exclusionary rule of evidence.
Abstract
Standing to object refers to the fourth amendment's inapplicability or applicability as to the person of a particular defendant. It measures what class of persons may invoke the exclusionary rule. Standing does not relate to the fourth amendment protection in general but to the violation of a particular individual's fourth amendment rights. Standing qualifies a case for litigation; this device is used by crowded courts to eliminate litigants. Standing is thus the key to the courtroom and it requires that the person of the defendant also be the owner of the locus of the search and seizure at issue. Only if this is the case, can the merits of the fourth amendment be litigated in the courtroom. The 1973 case of Brown v. the United States illustrates standing to object: of three codefendants, only one was found to have the threshold credential for standing. Standing may be of a possessory, automatic, or derivative nature. Among the cases which defined these concepts are Simmons v. United States and Rakas v. Illinois. In the latter, it was ruled that the automobile provides a lesser expectation of privacy and that passengers are not automatically eligible for the derivative standing they would have if invited to a house.