Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole v. Scott, 524 U.S. 357, 10 (1998)

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366

PENNSYLVANIA BD. OF PROBATION AND PAROLE v. SCOTT

Opinion of the Court

States, including Pennsylvania, see 548 Pa., at 427-428, 698 A. 2d, at 36; Rivenbark v. Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole, 509 Pa. 248, 501 A. 2d 1110 (1985), have adopted informal, administrative parole revocation procedures in order to accommodate the large number of parole proceedings. These proceedings generally are not conducted by judges, but instead by parole boards, "members of which need not be judicial officers or lawyers." Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U. S., at 489. And traditional rules of evidence generally do not apply. Ibid. ("[T]he process should be flexible enough to consider evidence including letters, affidavits, and other material that would not be admissible in an adversary criminal trial"). Nor are these proceedings entirely adversarial, as they are designed to be " 'predictive and discretionary' as well as factfinding." Gagnon v. Scar-pelli, 411 U. S. 778, 787 (1973) (quoting Morrissey v. Brewer, supra, at 480).

Application of the exclusionary rule would significantly alter this process. The exclusionary rule frequently requires extensive litigation to determine whether particular evidence must be excluded. Cf. United States v. Calandra, 414 U. S., at 349 (noting that application of the exclusionary rule "would delay and disrupt grand jury proceedings" because "[s]uppression hearings would halt the orderly process of an investigation and might necessitate extended litigation of issues only tangentially related to the grand jury's primary objective"); INS v. Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U. S., at 1048 (noting that "[t]he prospect of even occasional invocation of the exclusionary rule might significantly change and complicate the character of" the deportation system). Such litigation is inconsistent with the nonadversarial, administrative processes established by the States. Although States could adapt their parole revocation proceedings to accommodate

does not attach to such proceedings because the introduction of counsel would "alter significantly the nature of the proceeding," Gagnon v. Scar-pelli, 411 U. S. 778, 787 (1973).

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