Constitutional Criminal Procedure

3 Credit Hours

This course provides a broad overview of the investigatory criminal justice process. It explores the interaction between the protection of individual constitutional criminal rights and the competing goals of the efficiency and accuracy in the criminal justice system. We will examine the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. Substantive areas covered include: (1) interrogations and confessions; (2) eye-witness identification procedures; (3) arrest, search and seizure; (4) eavesdropping and wiretapping; (5) the right to counsel; and (6) the exclusionary rule. Schedule permitting, we will also examine some of the strains placed on the criminal justice system by various aspects of the war on terror.