A New Exclusionary Rule to Protect Bodily Integrity and Discourage Pretext Stops

The author proposes a novel state-level exclusionary rule to reduce racial profiling and protect bodily autonomy during police encounters. The current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence fails to deter pretextual stops and frisks because the exclusionary rule often turns on officer fault and "good faith," allowing racially motivated practices to go unchecked. As federal rollbacks on diversity and data collection hinder efforts to track racial bias, the author argues for a statutory evidentiary rule that automatically excludes drug evidence found during (1) traffic stops, (2) pat-downs for weapons, and (3) consent searches, regardless of an officer’s intent or the legality of the search. By decoupling exclusion from police culpability, the proposal creates a colorblind, no-fault framework that incentivizes less invasive policing.

It is modeled as a legislative analogue to the Supreme Court’s immunity doctrine in Trump v. United States and aims to deter unnecessary and humiliating frisks while reducing the harms of racially disparate enforcement without relying on contested claims of discriminatory intent.