Crayton v. Commonwealth

LAMBERT, Justice.

Cardozo defined the issue here as whether “[t]he criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered.”1 Controlling decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States generally answered “yes” until United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984), in which the Court held that the United States Constitution did not, per se, require suppression of evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. For many years, this and other state courts have had little occasion to confront the search and seizure provisions of state constitutions…