Lawyer Listings Add, Update, or Remove Listings

Motion to Suppress (Exclusionary Rule)

The pretrial request to keep evidence out of a criminal trial because it was obtained in violation of the Constitution - an unlawful search, an involuntary or un-warned confession, a suggestive identification - the hearing it triggers, the "fruit of the poisonous tree" rule, and the exceptions that let evidence in anyway.

Informational only - this is not legal advice. These definitions explain general legal vocabulary in plain English. They are not advice about your situation, reading them creates no attorney-client relationship, and the law differs from state to state and changes over time. For advice you can rely on, speak to a lawyer licensed in your state.

What it means

The exclusionary rule is the remedy the courts created for constitutional violations by police: evidence obtained through an unreasonable search or seizure, a confession taken in violation of the right against self-incrimination or the right to counsel, or an identification procedure so suggestive that it is unreliable may not be used against the defendant at trial. A motion to suppress is the defendant's request, made before trial by a deadline the rules set, that the court exclude specific evidence on that ground. It is the principal vehicle by which the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments are enforced in an ordinary case, and in a case built on a search - drugs, weapons, digital evidence - it is often the whole defence.

The motion produces an evidentiary hearing at which the officers testify and are cross-examined, the burden generally resting on the prosecution to justify a warrantless search or the voluntariness of a statement and on the defendant to show a warrant was defective. If the evidence is suppressed, evidence derived from it - the "fruit of the poisonous tree" - falls with it unless the prosecution shows an independent source, that it would inevitably have been discovered, or that the connection has become attenuated. A suppression order does not end the case, but where the excluded evidence was the case, the prosecution often dismisses or offers a plea it would not otherwise have offered; the prosecution may also appeal the order before trial.

The rule has grown exceptions that limit it. Evidence seized in objectively reasonable reliance on a warrant later found invalid, on a statute later held unconstitutional, or on binding precedent later overruled is admitted under the good-faith exception; a defendant may only challenge a search of a place or thing in which they personally had a reasonable expectation of privacy; and suppressed evidence may still be used to impeach a defendant who testifies inconsistently with it. Violations of the Miranda warning rule exclude the statement but not, in most circumstances, the physical evidence it led to. Each state may give its own constitution a broader exclusionary rule, and several do.

Where this comes from

The exclusionary rule is Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383 (1914), applied to the states in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961); the derivative-evidence rule is Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963), with independent source (Murray v. United States, 487 U.S. 533 (1988)), inevitable discovery (Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431 (1984)) and attenuation (Utah v. Strieff, 579 U.S. 232 (2016)). Good faith is United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984), Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135 (2009), and Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. 229 (2011); standing is Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128 (1978); impeachment use is United States v. Havens, 446 U.S. 620 (1980); physical fruits of a Miranda violation are United States v. Patane, 542 U.S. 630 (2004). Federal procedure is Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 12(b)(3)(C) and 41(h), and the government's pretrial appeal is 18 U.S.C. § 3731. Each state's rules set the motion deadline, which is not stated here.

When people hire a lawyer for this

The suppression motion is the reason to hire a lawyer who tries cases rather than one who only negotiates them: the issues are found in the police reports, body-camera footage, warrant application and dispatch records, and are lost if not raised by the deadline - a plea entered before the motion is filed usually waives it. A defendant should tell the lawyer exactly how the police came to search, question or identify them, including anything that seems unimportant, because the sequence of events is where the violation lives.

Find a lawyer for this in your state

Choose your state. Each link opens the directory page for the city in that state with the most currently published law firms in this practice area; a +n beside the city is how many other cities in the state also have one. The list is generated when this page loads, so a state whose listings have lapsed drops out rather than becoming a dead link.

« All glossary terms

Part of the LawyerLand plain-English legal glossary. Definitions are written from primary sources - statutes and court rules - and each entry states the authority it rests on, or says plainly when the doctrine is state law with no national rule.

If you cannot afford a lawyer, civil legal aid programmes provide free help with many of these problems: civil legal aid programmes by state.

Related free reference tools: statute of limitations for a personal-injury claim, by state, quoted from each state's official text - part of LawyerLand's legal reference tools.