In common law legal systems, a motion to suppress is a formal, written request to a judge for an order that certain evidence be excluded from consideration by the judge or jury at trial. In the United States, the term "motion to suppress" typically encompasses motions in criminal cases where the proposed basis for exclusion arises from the United States Constitution, a state constitution, or a specific statute permitting the exclusion of certain types of evidence (for instance, a complaint that police procedures in a given case violated the defendant's Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures).
A motion to exclude evidence where the proposed basis for exclusion arises from the rules of evidence is more commonly termed a motion in limine.
Famous quotes containing the words motion and/or suppress:
“A movement is only composed of people moving. To feel its warmth and motion around us is the end as well as the means.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)
“I want to celebrate these elms which have been spared by the plague, these survivors of a once flourishing tribe commemorated by all the Elm Streets in America. But to celebrate them is to be silent about the people who sit and sleep underneath them, the homeless poor who are hauled away by the city like trash, except it has no place to dump them. To speak of one thing is to suppress another.”
—Lisel Mueller (b. 1924)