We tend to think of the Prohibition Era in terms that are almost comic. The City of Chicago does Prohibition Gangster Tours, for instance. But of course many of these now colorful criminals were anything but cartoon characters in the 1920s -- and the laws banning alcohol profoundly reshaped American law in ways that we are just now coming to fully understand. As fear of police violence has prompted reforms, almost exactly 100 years ago, concerns about searches for liquor led courts to exclude unlawfully obtained evidence to discourage unlawful searches. And the use of the exclusionary rule to prevent police abuses reshaped the way courts regulated confessions. This presentation will look at the surprising Prohibition Era origins of doctrines and search and seizure and interrogation law.
Recorded at Day 2 of the Criminal Law Symposium in June 2022.