Criminal Procedure and the Constitution

One of the greatest things about this book is the selective inclusion of case studies. Rather than have a book full of opinions, the authors stick to leading court cases where the opinions are the rule. It is these ruling of the high courts that shape the practices of criminal law, because they set the standard for how we interpret the US Constitution.

The Constitution of the USA includes rules governing criminal procedure, such as the 5^th and 6^th amendments, all the way to more recent ones regarding the salaries of Senators. This book specifically shows how the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution’s effects on criminal trials. In the third chapter, on the subject of arrest, search, and seizure, we use the case of Herring v. United States (2009). The majority opinion was that the Exclusionary Rule (again, an interpretation of the law) didn’t bar evidence found during an arrest, even if the arrest was based on an invalid warrant. Any high school student who recently took US Government will probably say “but hang on, in Mapp v. Ohio, didn’t the court say that…..?” Given, the case of Mapp set up rules for searching houses, but Judge Roberts wrote that an arrest of a known criminal (Herring was well-known to the police) based on a mistaken warrant wasn’t “unreasonable.” Some examples are rather humorous, such as California v. Greenwood, which ruled that bags of garbage can be taken by the police and searched without a warrant. According to Judge Byron White, trash bags on the curb aren’t protected by privacy.

Further chapters include Supreme Court cases regarding pretrial confinement, confessions, interrogations, and even conflicts of interest in criminal defense attorneys. The book contains carefully selected Supreme Court cases, each one specific to the interpretation of part of the Bill of Rights. Anyone studying criminal law must use this book, because it goes to great lengths to explain how the courts interpret the law.