What Is A Motion to Suppress?

Let’s talk about what a Motion to Suppress is in a criminal case. Well, first off, what we’re talking about here is a Constitutional violation. Normally or maybe most commonly, this is a Fourth Amendment violation, and the section of the Fourth Amendment we’re talking about is your right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. This can be a very important, and even a crucial weapon for the criminal defense attorney in defending a defendant in a criminal case.

What happens is, after the criminal defense attorney reviews all of the discovery, and the discovery, of course, can include police reports, witness statements, pictures of the scene, and things like that. Then generally does interviews with police officers and other people. If the criminal defense attorney, after doing some research about the current state of the law (because remember the law changes fairly frequently in this area) if the lawyer determines that what’s occurred is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, then what the lawyer does is bring a Motion to Suppress.

What this is in essence, is a remedy, a judicially created remedy, for a Constitutional violation. What’s the remedy? Suppression! It means that the government can’t use the “fruit” of the illegal search. So, what we’re talking about here by way of example, the police officer makes a traffic stop, and during the traffic stop the officer searches the vehicle and opens the trunk and inside the trunk is…oh my God, green leafy substance…marijuana, and the defendant is now charged with marijuana.

Well, if the traffic stop was bad, an invalid traffic stop or the search was invalid, a violation of the Fourth Amendment, if either of those is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, then it’s likely that a trial judge, upon making such a finding, would then suppress, meaning that the State can’t use the fruit of that search…which in my example would be the green leafy substance.

So, the defendant could very well, walk right off the case. It’s very important in a criminal case to have a competent lawyer who understands Fourth Amendment Law, who stays current on Fourth Amendment Law, and who’s very clear and creative sometimes, outside the box. Because the issue here is, was it reasonable? If the defense attorney is, in essence, arguing, what the police officer did wasn't reasonable, and keep in mind, it has to be state action; it has to be a police officer here or someone else with a badge. It’s a very good weapon if you have a criminal case and you think you may have suffered a bad search or a bad stop.

It’s really important for you to put that in front of a competent criminal defense attorney, to see if you have at least a good argument to file a Motion to Suppress because that can be a huge break in your criminal case.