Howard Berman: “Mr. Chairman, when the court originally came down with the exclusionary rule, it recognized that this is not a good rule…”

“Mr. Chairman, when the court originally came down with the exclusionary rule, it recognized that this is not a good rule in some abstract sense. It is forcing the exclusion of evidence which was seized which could show that an individual may have committed a crime. But they went through a whole process of pointing out that without this kind of rule, there was no other effective deterrent to unlawful searches and seizures, there was no other effective way of protecting an individual's fourth and fourteenth amendment rights to privacy and against unlawful searches and seizures. If the proponents of this bill and the opponents of the Conyers amendment would propose a series or any remedy which was effective in protecting an individual and giving him some recourse against unlawful searches and seizures which would provide the kind of deterrent that would make those fourth amendment rights meaningful, I think everybody in this House would agree in a second to get rid of the exclusionary rule because of the problems with the exclusionary rule.”