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Other preFounding sources for the exclusionary rule |
Sir William Meredith's Reply to the Defence of the Majority U.S. Library holdings of this 1764 pamphlet In the wake of the British Wilkes affair, Sir William Meredith introduced a series of bills intended to severely restrict royal searches and seizures. In a contemporaneous pamphlet, he called for exclusion of illegally seized evidence. |
Entick v. Carrington, English Court of Common Pleas, 1765 Published in Hargrave's State Trials, 4th ed. One of the most famous cases in Anglo-American history, which America's Founding Fathers knew well, called for the exclusion of illegally seized evidence. |
Lord Temple's Letter on the Seizure of Papers U.S. library holdings of this 1763 pamphlet This pamphlet, purportedly written by a prominent member of the House of Lords, stated exclusion was required to remedy search and seizure violations. Any court precedents holding otherwise, wrote Temple, were rendered during the despotic Stuart regimes. |
Table 2 lists approximately 100 original copies of a pseudonomous English pamphlet entitled "A Letter Concerning Libels, Warrants, [etc.]." The pamphlet circulated widely in Britain and her colonies in the wake of the John Wilkes affair in London. It has popularly become known as the "Father of Candor" pamphlet. At least seven editions were printed by London printer John Almon during the 1760s, and the title of the pamphlet and number of pages changed slightly. We know the Father of Candor pamphlet circulated widely in the American colonies prior to the Constitution's ratification in 1789. The Father of Candor pamphlet discussed search and seizure law in great detail and clearly discussed exclusion as a proper remedy for search-and-seizure violations. See the second edition, pages 44-45 (1764): The laws of England are to tender to every man accused, even of capital crimes, that they do not permit him to be put to torture to extort a confession, nor oblige him to answer a question that will tend to accuse himself. How then can it be supposed, that . . . any common fellows under a general warrant . . . [may] seize and carry off all his papers; and then at his trial produce these papers . . . in evidence against himself . . . . This would be making a man give evidence against and accuse himself, with a vengeance. And this is to be endured, because the prosecutor wants other sufficient proof, and might be traduced for acting groundlessly, if he could not get it; and because he does it truly for the sake of collecting evidence. (emphasis in original). I have personally examined dozens of these original pamphlets. One of the seven editions at the New York Public Library was previously owned by Robert R. Livingston, a Founding Father who was on the five-man committee that drafted the U.S. Declaration of Independence, along with Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Roger Sherman. There are three copies of Father of Candor pamphlets (one of the 2nd edition, two original copies of Father of Candor's "Postscript" pamphlet) at the New York Historical Society library that were owned by Rufus King, a true "Framer" who was not only a delegate (from Massachusetts) at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia but was also a member of the "Committee on Style" that had a direct role in the authorship and/or editorship of the text of the original Constitution. Later, Rufus King was a state delegate at his Massachusetts ratifying convention, where he again signed the Constitution or documents ratifying it. Finally, King was a member of the First U.S. Senate, which adopted and ratified the Fourth Amendment along with the other amendments in the Bill of Rights. Yale University holds at least 9 of these pamphlets, one of which is in Yale's Benjamin Franklin Collection. TABLE 2. U.S. LIBRARIES HOLDING FATHER OF CANDOR'S "A LETTER CONCERNING, LIBELS, WARRANTS, . . ." [OR OTHER FATHER OF CANDOR PAMPHLETS (ALL EDITIONS)(1764-71) |
Father of Candor's "Letter Concerning Libels, Warrants [etc.] |
Father of Candor's pamphlets calling for the exclusionary rule (1764-1770) |
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