Utah v. Strieff and the Future of the Exceptions to the Exclusionary Rule

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects people’s rights against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” To enforce this protection, the Supreme Court created the exclusionary rule, which precludes from trials evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. However, the Court has recognized that the exclusionary rule takes a heavy toll on the judicial system and society, including potentially “setting the guilty free and the dangerous at large.” To alleviate such social cost, the Court has created a series of exceptions to this rule to save certain evidence from exclusion, in spite of the illegality in obtaining the evidence. In the recent case State v. Strieff, the Supreme Court of Utah held that police’s discovery of a lawful outstanding warrant during an unlawful investigatory stop cannot save the evidence obtained during that arrest from suppression under the attenuation doctrine. To reach that decision, the court reasoned that the inevitable discovery doctrine, instead of the attenuation doctrine, is appropriate for this situation. However, the court failed to address whether the inevitable discovery doctrine can ultimately save the evidence from suppression.