The Originalist Case for the Fourth Amendment Exclusionary Rule

A fascinating article in the Gonzaga Law Review. From the conclusion:

Early American criminal evidentiary remedies went for the most part unrecorded and unreviewed. What we do know of such remedies supports, rather than undermines, the notion that early American judges applied exclusion where evidence was taken illegally by state actors. The very first U.S. Supreme Court decisions to consider the meaning of the Fourth Amendment ordered criminal defendants discharged before trial on Fourth Amendment grounds. The earliest Supreme Court decision to construe the Fourth Amendment’s applicability to physical evidence applied an exclusionary rule. Pre-Founding statements by judges and commentators indicating that illegal seizure of evidence merited exclusion, or the vitiation of subsequent criminal prosecutions, brought no recorded challenge. By contrast, there was no known opposition to this position during the Founding period.