Case Title: State v. Bembry

Citation: 2017-Ohio-8114

Docket Number: 2016-0238

State: ohio

Court: Ohio Supreme Court

Date: 2017-10-10T00:00:00Z

Document:
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as State 
v. Bembry, Slip Opinion No. 2017-Ohio-8114.] 
 
 
 
NOTICE 
This slip opinion is subject to formal revision before it is published in an 
advance sheet of the Ohio Official Reports.  Readers are requested to 
promptly notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of Ohio, 65 
South Front Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215, of any typographical or other 
formal errors in the opinion, in order that corrections may be made before 
the opinion is published. 
 
 
SLIP OPINION NO. 2017-OHIO-8114 
THE STATE OF OHIO, APPELLEE, v. BEMBRY ET AL., APPELLANTS. 
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it 
may be cited as State v. Bembry, Slip Opinion No. 2017-Ohio-8114.] 
Criminal law—Once a warrant has been issued, the exclusion of evidence is not the 
appropriate remedy under Article I, Section 14 of the Ohio Constitution for 
a violation of the knock-and-announce statute, R.C. 2935.12. 
(No. 2016-0238—Submitted March 1, 2017—Decided October 10, 2017.) 
APPEAL from the Court of Appeals for Mahoning County, Nos. 14 MA 51 and  
14 MA 52, 2015-Ohio-5598. 
_________________ 
O’NEILL, J. 
{¶ 1} In this appeal, we take up whether the exclusionary rule is the 
appropriate remedy when police executing a valid search warrant violate the 
requirements of the knock-and-announce statute, R.C. 2935.12.  We conclude that 
the exclusion of evidence is not the proper remedy for a violation of the knock-and-
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announce statute.  We therefore affirm the judgment of the Seventh District Court 
of Appeals and remand the cause to the trial court for further proceedings. 
FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY 
{¶ 2} Boardman police supervised two “controlled buys” in October 2012, 
during which a confidential informant purchased heroin from appellant Harsimran 
Singh near the apartment where Singh lived.  Based upon the two incidents during 
which Singh sold heroin and upon his prior arrest for a crime of drug abuse, 
Boardman police sought and acquired a search warrant for Singh’s apartment. 
{¶ 3} Singh lived with his girlfriend, appellant Sherri A. Bembry.  Seven 
Boardman police officers executed the warrant at her apartment at 8:30 a.m. on 
November 2, 2012.  Officers knocked several times.  Thirty seconds after police 
knocked on the door, someone in the apartment asked, “[W]ho is it?”  An officer 
replied, “Police.  Open the door.” 
{¶ 4} After more time went by, police officers forced the door open with a 
battering ram.  Detective Michael Dado claimed that the officers waited 15 seconds 
to enter the apartment after announcing their presence.  Singh claimed that the entry 
was more immediate and that he was not sure that it was the police at his door.  
Detective Dado admitted that the police never stated their purpose, which was to 
execute a search warrant.  Singh was taken from the apartment and thrown on the 
ground. 
{¶ 5} The search turned up contraband in the form of drugs, instruments of 
drug trafficking, and a stolen weapon.  Officers found marijuana, two digital scales 
coated with drug residue in the bedroom, and eight bindles of heroin packaged for 
sale in a dresser.  They found a .38-caliber pistol that was registered in the Law 
Enforcement Automated Data System database as a stolen weapon.  And they found 
a semiautomatic AK-47 and two loaded magazines under the mattress, although the 
state ultimately charged no crimes regarding the rifle.  After the search, officers 
learned that three children under the age of seven lived in a nearby apartment. 
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{¶ 6} A grand jury indicted Singh on one count of trafficking in heroin in 
the vicinity of a juvenile, R.C. 2925.03(A)(2) and (C)(6)(b); one count of 
possession of a controlled substance, R.C. 2925.11(A) and (C)(6)(a); and one count 
of receiving a stolen firearm, R.C. 2913.51(A) and (C).  Bembry was indicted on 
one count of permitting drug abuse, R.C. 2925.13(B) and (C)(1) and (3). 
{¶ 7} Bembry and Singh jointly moved to suppress all evidence obtained 
during the search.  They claimed that “the search itself did not comport with the 
reasonableness requirement” of the Fourth Amendment to the United States 
Constitution and Article I, Section 14 of the Ohio Constitution.  The state responded 
that the suppression of evidence is not the appropriate remedy when police 
executing a search warrant fail to comply with the knock-and-announce statute, 
R.C. 2935.12.  The trial court granted the motion to suppress, finding that the 
Boardman police had violated R.C. 2935.12 without any exigent circumstances 
justifying the violation. 
{¶ 8} The state appealed pursuant to R.C. 2945.67(A), raising the following 
assignment of error: “ ‘The trial court should have denied defendants’ motion to 
suppress, because the law is well-settled that the exclusionary rule does not apply 
to violations of the knock-and-announce rule.’ ”  2015-Ohio-5598, ¶ 7.  The court 
of appeals explained that the facts of Bembry and Singh’s case were “virtually 
identical” to the facts in Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586, 126 S.Ct. 2159, 156 
L.Ed.2d 56 (2006).  2015-Ohio-5598, at ¶ 11.  Applying the logic of Hudson, the 
court of appeals reversed the judgment of the trial court, vacated the suppression 
order, and remanded the matter.  2015-Ohio-5598, at ¶ 11-19. 
{¶ 9} Bembry and Singh appealed, and we accepted jurisdiction over the 
following proposition of law: “The exclusionary rule is the appropriate remedy 
under Article I, Section 14 of the Ohio Constitution for a violation of R.C. 
2935.12.”  See 145 Ohio St.3d 1470, 2016-Ohio-3028, 49 N.E.3d 1313. 
 
 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO 
 
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DISCUSSION 
{¶ 10} The court of appeals made no mention of the independent protection 
provided by Article I, Section 14 of the Ohio Constitution.  Generally, we will not 
consider any issue “that was not raised in any way in the Court of Appeals and was 
not considered or decided by that court.”  Toledo v. Reasonover, 5 Ohio St.2d 22, 
213 N.E.2d 179 (1965), paragraph two of the syllabus.  We have justified this rule 
in no uncertain terms: 
 
Any other rule would relieve counsel from any duty or 
responsibility to the court, and place the entire responsibility upon 
the trial court to give faultless instructions upon every possible 
feature of the case, thereby disregarding entirely the true relation of 
court and counsel, which enjoins upon counsel the duty to exercise 
diligence and to aid the court, rather than by silence mislead the 
court into commission of error. 
 
State v. Driscoll, 106 Ohio St. 33, 39, 138 N.E. 376 (1922).  It is therefore 
appropriate to address whether the foregoing proposition of law is properly before 
us before reaching the merits. 
{¶ 11} The record before us shows that the issue was raised at the trial level 
and fully briefed at the appellate level.  Bembry and Singh devoted much of their 
brief below to this court’s decisions holding that in some circumstances, Article I, 
Section 14 of the Ohio Constitution affords greater protection than the Fourth 
Amendment; to the decisions of other state courts regarding suppression as a 
remedy for knock-and-announce violations; and to the significance of the General 
Assembly’s knock-and-announce enactment, R.C. 2935.12.  They submitted their 
brief more than a year before the court of appeals issued its judgment.  Although 
the decision of the court of appeals does not offer any discussion regarding Article 
January Term, 2017 
 
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I, Section 14 of the Ohio Constitution, it appears from the record that the court of 
appeals considered and rejected the arguments asserted in Bembry and Singh’s only 
brief below.  For those reasons, we hold that Bembry and Singh adequately 
preserved their proposition of law. 
{¶ 12} We find further support from the Rules of Appellate Procedure, 
which permit an appellee “who does not seek to change the judgment or order” of 
a lower court to defend that judgment, even “on a ground other than that relied on 
by the trial court,” without “[filing] a notice of cross appeal or [raising] a cross-
assignment of error.”  App.R. 3(C)(2).  Bembry and Singh therefore met their duty 
to raise the issue to the court of appeals by briefing it there in detail.  Accordingly, 
we will proceed to the merits of this appeal presuming that the lower court’s 
decision stands for the proposition that the United States Supreme Court’s decision 
in Hudson governs the appropriate remedy for a violation of the knock-and-
announce principle under both the Fourth Amendment to the United States 
Constitution and Article I, Section 14 of the Ohio Constitution. 
{¶ 13} Turning to the proposition at hand, we must answer whether Ohio’s 
independent provision of the “right of the people to be secure * * * against 
unreasonable searches and seizures” in Ohio Constitution, Article I, Section 14 
requires the suppression of evidence when police fail to comply with the knock-
and-announce principle while executing a valid search warrant.  We hold that it 
does not. 
THE EXCLUSIONARY RULE 
{¶ 14} The exclusionary rule is a fairly recent legal development, and its 
rise is inextricably entwined with the incorporation of the Bill of Rights within the 
Fourteenth Amendment.  More than 100 years ago, the United States Supreme 
Court recognized the federal suppression remedy for warrantless searches and 
seizures, in Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 398, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652 
(1914).  The court held that a federal district court in Missouri committed error 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO 
 
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when it denied a criminal defendant’s pretrial application to return seized property 
on the grounds that the property was taken from his home during a warrantless 
search.  Id. 
{¶ 15} Prior to 1936, Ohio courts sometimes excluded evidence resulting 
from search-and-seizure violations in criminal investigations, but application of the 
exclusion remedy was inconsistent.  See State v. Lindway, 131 Ohio St. 166, 172-
180, 2 N.E.2d 490 (1936).  When this court squarely took up whether illegally 
obtained evidence should be barred from trial, it noted that courts in the majority 
of other states had “[held] such evidence admissible on the basis that if it is pertinent 
to the main issue in the case, a court need not concern itself with the collateral issue 
of how it was gotten.”  Id. at 173.  Joining the courts of those states, this court held 
that the Fourth Amendment had “no application to the various states” and that “[i]n 
a criminal case, evidence obtained by an unlawful search is not thereby rendered 
inadmissible.”  Id. at paragraphs one and four of the syllabus.  This court later 
reserved the exclusion remedy in Ohio courts to evidence produced by “ ‘ “brutal” 
or “offensive” ’ physical force” violating the Fourteenth Amendment.  State v. 
Mapp, 170 Ohio St. 427, 430-431, 166 N.E.2d 387 (1960), rev’d sub nom. Mapp v. 
Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961), quoting Breithaupt v. 
Abram, 352 U.S. 432, 436, 77 S.Ct. 408, 1 L.Ed.2d 448 (1957). 
{¶ 16} In deciding State v. Mapp, this court relied on Wolf v. Colorado, 338 
U.S. 25, 69 S.Ct. 1359, 93 L.Ed. 1782 (1949).  Justice Frankfurter wrote for the 
court in Wolf that “[t]he notion that the “due process of law” guaranteed by the 
Fourteenth Amendment is shorthand for the first eight amendments of the 
Constitution and thereby incorporates them has been rejected by this Court again 
and again, after impressive consideration. * * * The issue is closed.”  Id. at 26.  On 
that basis, the United States Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment 
exclusionary rule announced in Weeks required the exclusion of “evidence obtained 
by an unreasonable search and seizure” from a federal court but that the Fourteenth 
January Term, 2017 
 
7
Amendment did not require the same remedy for the same illegally obtained 
evidence in “a prosecution in a State court for a State crime.”  Id. at 34.  On the one 
hand, the court was able to recognize that “one’s privacy against arbitrary intrusion 
by the police—which is at the core of the Fourth Amendment—is basic to a free 
society” and “therefore implicit in ‘the concept of ordered liberty’ and as such 
enforceable against the States through the Due Process Clause.”  Id. at 27-28.  But 
on the other hand, the court was unwilling to choose a remedy on behalf of every 
jurisdiction in our nation because the law in the various states had already 
developed a number of mechanisms besides suppression to protect privacy in the 
home.  Id. at 28-33; id. at 30, fn. 1.  As this court was not bound to impose in a state 
case the specific remedy the Supreme Court determined is required by the Fourth 
Amendment, it chose to retain the rule of Lindway that “evidence obtained by an 
unlawful search and seizure is admissible in a criminal prosecution.”  State v. Mapp 
at 430. 
{¶ 17} That ruling did not stand for long.  In Mapp v. Ohio, the United 
States Supreme Court overruled its decision in Wolf and reversed this court’s 
decision in State v. Mapp.  In overruling Wolf, the court adopted the reasoning of 
the California Supreme Court that the “other remedies” developed by the states for 
protection of the right to privacy “[had] been worthless and futile.”  Mapp v. Ohio 
at 652, citing People v. Cahan, 44 Cal.2d 434, 282 P.2d 905 (1955).  Left with only 
inadequate alternative remedies, the court held that the Fourth Amendment’s 
exclusionary remedy must be “enforceable against the States through the Due 
Process Clause of the Fourteenth [Amendment]” just the same as the Fourth 
Amendment’s right to privacy against arbitrary intrusion by the police.  Id. at 655.  
The court remarked:  
 
Were it otherwise, then just as without the Weeks rule the assurance 
against unreasonable federal searches and seizures would be “a form 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO 
 
8
of words”, valueless and undeserving of mention in a perpetual 
charter of inestimable human liberties, so too, without that rule the 
freedom from state invasions of privacy would be so ephemeral and 
so neatly severed from its conceptual nexus with the freedom from 
all brutish means of coercing evidence as not to merit this Court’s 
high regard as a freedom “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.” 
 
Id.  Put most simply, there can be no meaningful right to privacy in the home if the 
right has no meaningful remedy.  And so, through operation of the Fourteenth 
Amendment, the Fourth Amendment applies in Ohio courts, it protects our right to 
privacy, and it may require the suppression of evidence gained in violation of that 
right. 
{¶ 18} Although the exclusionary rule is undoubtedly available to remedy 
a violation of the Fourth Amendment, it is an entirely separate question “[w]hether 
the exclusionary sanction is appropriately imposed in a particular case.”  United 
States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 906, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984).  The 
exclusionary rule is “applicable only where its deterrence benefits outweigh its 
‘substantial social costs.’ ”  Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation & Parole v. Scott, 524 
U.S. 357, 363, 118 S.Ct. 2014, 141 L.Ed.2d 344 (1998), quoting Leon at 907.  Those 
social costs “sometimes include setting the guilty free and the dangerous at large.” 
Hudson, 547 U.S. at 591, 126 S.Ct. 2159, 156 L.Ed.2d 56.  At the very least, 
exclusion prevents “consideration of reliable, probative evidence,” which 
“undeniably detracts from the truthfinding process.”  Scott at 364.  And so, before 
a court sanctions the exclusion of evidence, it must consider whether exclusion will 
actually remedy the wrong and deter future wrongdoing. 
THE KNOCK-AND-ANNOUNCE PRINCIPLE 
{¶ 19} The knock-and-announce principle is much older than the 
exclusionary rule, finding its roots in the ancient common law.  Wilson v. Arkansas, 
January Term, 2017 
 
9
514 U.S. 927, 932, 115 S.Ct. 1914, 131 L.Ed.2d 976 (1995), fn. 2.  The United 
States Supreme Court has explained that by virtue of its place in the common law 
before and during the founding era, the knock-and-announce principle “is an 
element of the reasonableness inquiry under the Fourth Amendment.”  Id. at 934.  
In Ohio, the principle was more recently codified in R.C. 2935.12.  State v. Oliver, 
112 Ohio St.3d 447, 2007-Ohio-372, 860 N.E.2d 1002, ¶ 9.  The principle requires 
“police officers executing a search warrant at a residence to first knock on the door, 
announce their purpose, and identify themselves before they forcibly enter the 
home.”1  Id. at ¶ 9; accord Wilson at 931-932.  Ohio’s codified version of the knock-
and-announce principle provides the same basic rule: police executing a warrant 
must give notice of their presence and purpose and may enter a home only after 
refusal of admission.  R.C. 2935.12(A) (“when executing a search warrant, the 
peace officer * * * executing the warrant * * * may break down an outer or inner 
door or window of a dwelling house or other building, if, after notice of his intention 
to * * * execute the warrant * * * he is refused admittance”).  The knock-and-
announce principle becomes relevant only after a warrant has issued, for if a 
warrant has not issued, a search or seizure inside the home is “presumptively 
unreasonable” whether or not police give notice of their presence and purpose.  
Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 586, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980); 
see also State v. Carr, 2d Dist. Montgomery No. 19121, 2002-Ohio-4201, ¶ 13 
(“The statute sets forth requirements to be followed when police are entering a 
residence to execute a warrant.  The police in this case were not executing a warrant.  
Therefore, we conclude that R.C. 2935.12 is inapplicable to this case”). 
{¶ 20} Despite the fact that the knock-and-announce principle is “an 
element of the reasonableness inquiry under the Fourth Amendment,” Wilson at 
                                                 
1 Although there are exceptions to the knock-and-announce rule, they are not relevant here, because 
the state has admitted that the officers did not comply with the rule while conducting their search.  
See Hudson at 589-590. 
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934, the United States Supreme Court held in Hudson that suppression is 
categorically the wrong remedy when police armed with a valid warrant violate the 
knock-and-announce principle.  Hudson at 594, 599.  The court gave two related 
reasons why “the massive remedy of suppressing evidence of guilt is unjustified.”  
Id. at 599. 
{¶ 21} First, the knock-and-announce principle protects different interests 
than those protected by the warrant requirement and vindicated by the suppression 
remedy.  Id. at 590-594.  The warrant requirement protects the privacy of one’s 
home and its contents, while the suppression of evidence found during a warrantless 
search of the home appropriately restores the private nature of that evidence.  Id. at 
593.  The knock-and-announce principle, however, protects “human life and limb” 
placed in jeopardy by “supposed self-defense by the surprised resident,” assures 
“the protection of property” that may be destroyed during a forced entry, and 
safeguards “elements of privacy and dignity that can be destroyed by a sudden 
entrance.”  Id. at 594.  Suppressing evidence found during a warranted search of a 
home will not heal a physical injury, fix a door, or undo the shock of embarrassment 
when police enter without notice of their presence and purpose. 
{¶ 22} Second, suppression will not effectively deter knock-and-announce 
violations.  Id. at 594-596.  There is minimal incentive to violate the knock-and-
announce principle in the first place, and the rule gives way in the name of safety, 
investigative necessity, or futility.  Id. at 596.  There is a danger that the risk of 
suppression would dissuade police from risking a knock-and-announce violation in 
exigent circumstances, when they would have the benefit of an exception to the rule 
anyway.  Id. at 594-596. 
ARTICLE I, SECTION 14 OF THE OHIO CONSTITUTION 
{¶ 23} Shortly after the United States Supreme Court decided Hudson, we 
heard oral argument in Oliver, 112 Ohio St.3d 447, 2007-Ohio-372, 860 N.E.2d 
1002.  Id. at ¶ 11.  In Oliver, we considered the state’s appeal from an order granting 
January Term, 2017 
 
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a motion to suppress evidence on the basis of a knock-and-announce violation.  Id. 
at ¶ 6-10.  We noted in our decision that “Hudson present[ed] a significant and 
arguably new interpretation of the exclusionary rule,” and we remanded the matter 
for the trial court to consider Hudson in the first instance.  Id. at ¶ 13.  In Oliver, 
we did not comment on the question at issue in this matter: whether Article I, 
Section 14 of the Ohio Constitution provides greater protection from knock-and-
announce violations than the Fourth Amendment as interpreted in Hudson.  See id. 
at ¶ 13. 
{¶ 24} Now that the precise question has percolated through the lower 
courts in the wake of Hudson, we take it up today.  We are, of course, bound to 
treat the exclusionary rule developed in Weeks and Mapp v. Ohio and the knock-
and-announce principle developed in Wilson and Hudson as “a floor below which 
state court decisions may not fall.”  Arnold v. Cleveland, 67 Ohio St.3d 35, 616 
N.E.2d 163 (1993), paragraph one of the syllabus.  We will generally “harmonize 
our interpretation of Section 14, Article I of the Ohio Constitution with the Fourth 
Amendment, unless there are persuasive reasons to find otherwise.”  (Emphasis 
added.)  State v. Robinette, 80 Ohio St.3d 234, 239, 685 N.E.2d 762 (1997).  Given 
“persuasive reasons” to find more expansive constitutional protections within the 
Ohio Constitution, we are entitled to do so.  Id; see also State v. Mole, 149 Ohio 
St.3d 215, 2016-Ohio-5124, 74 N.E.3d 368, ¶ 20 (plurality opinion). 
{¶ 25} Bembry and Singh advance three arguments in support of more 
expansive constitutional protection under Article I, Section 14 of the Ohio 
Constitution than under the Fourth Amendment for those who suffer a knock-and-
announce violation.  First, they offer several trial- and appellate-court decisions that 
sanctioned suppression of evidence as a remedy for violating the knock-and-
announce principle and that predate the United States Supreme Court’s decision in 
Wilson.  See State v. Vuin, 89 Ohio Law Abs. 193, 198-199, 185 N.E.2d 506 
(C.P.1962); State v. Furry, 31 Ohio App.2d 107, 112-113, 117, 286 N.E.2d 301 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO 
 
12 
(6th Dist.1971); State v. DeFiore, 64 Ohio App.2d 115, 119, 411 N.E.2d 837 (1st 
Dist.1979); State v. Valentine, 74 Ohio App.3d 110, 113, 118, 598 N.E.2d 82 (4th 
Dist.1991).  Singh and Bembry argue that these decisions prove that Article I, 
Section 14 of the Ohio Constitution required suppression as a remedy for a knock-
and-announce violation because the United States Supreme Court had not yet 
formally recognized in Wilson that the knock-and-announce principle comprised 
part of the Fourth Amendment reasonableness inquiry. 
{¶ 26} We are never bound by prior decisions of inferior courts.  But these 
decisions fail even as persuasive authority for the argument advanced by Bembry 
and Singh.  Each of the decisions offered by Bembry and Singh expressly rely upon 
the Fourth Amendment as the constitutional authority for suppressing evidence or 
affirming an order suppressing evidence.  Vuin at 195, 200; Furry at 111-112; 
Defiore at 119-120; Valentine at 113-114.  To the extent that any of these decisions 
mention Article I, Section 14 of the Ohio Constitution, the courts said nothing about 
whether that provision offers any greater protection than the Fourth Amendment.  
Vuin at 195, 200. 
{¶ 27} Second, Bembry and Singh point to our decisions that have extended 
the protections of Article I, Section 14 of the Ohio Constitution beyond the 
protections of the Fourth Amendment in cases where police have stopped or 
arrested an individual for a minor misdemeanor without a warrant.  State v. Jones, 
88 Ohio St.3d 430, 727 N.E.2d 886 (2000); State v. Brown, 99 Ohio St.3d 323, 
2003-Ohio-3931, 792 N.E.2d 175 (“Brown I”); State v. Brown, 143 Ohio St.3d 444, 
2015-Ohio-2438, 39 N.E.3d 496 (“Brown II”).  They argue that there is no reason 
not to apply the reasoning used in those cases to the question presented in this one. 
{¶ 28} We are not convinced.  Jones, Brown I, and Brown II are all 
distinguishable in an important way from the present case because they all turned 
in part on the lack of a valid warrant.  When police stop or arrest an individual 
without a warrant, the individual has liberty and privacy interests in his or her 
January Term, 2017 
 
13 
person and property prior to the arrest.  See Jones at 438-439.  We held that the 
arrests in Jones and Brown I were unreasonable in light of the less serious minor-
misdemeanor violations at issue, and we restored the privacy the police violated 
during the arrests of the individuals in those cases by affirming orders to suppress 
evidence.  Jones at 440-441; Brown I at ¶ 25.  In Brown II, we held that the state’s 
interest in conducting a traffic stop for a minor misdemeanor outside of a police 
officer’s territorial jurisdiction was “outweighed by the intrusion upon the 
individual’s liberty and privacy that necessarily arises out of the stop.”  (Emphasis 
added.)  Id. at ¶ 25.  Accordingly we affirmed the order of the court of appeals 
holding that suppression was required.  Id. at ¶ 8, 26-27.  In Jones, Brown I, and 
Brown II, suppression was the appropriate remedy because there was a privacy 
interest to vindicate.  In the present case, a magistrate decided to subject the 
contents of Bembry and Singh’s home to state scrutiny by issuing a warrant before 
the search occurred.  Because the warrant issued, Bembry and Singh’s privacy 
interest in their apartment abated within the scope of the search warrant.  It makes 
no sense then to restore the privacy interest that existed prior to the issuance of the 
warrant by suppressing evidence merely because police executed the valid warrant 
in an unlawful manner. 
{¶ 29} Finally, Bembry and Singh argue that pursuant to the discussion of 
the “new federalism” in Mole, 149 Ohio St.3d 215, 2016-Ohio-5124, 74 N.E.3d 
368, at ¶ 14-22, we should take the decisions of other state courts as persuasive 
authority on the question at hand.  The authorities Bembry and Singh offer are 
simply not persuasive.  Several of these decisions provide for suppression as a 
remedy for a violation of another state’s knock-and-announce statute or a criminal 
rule rather than a constitutional provision.  State v. Cable, 51 So.3d 434, 441-443 
(Fla.2010); Berumen v. State, 182 P.3d 635, 641-642 (Alaska 2008); 
Commonwealth v. Chambers, 528 Pa. 403, 410, 598 A.2d 539 (1991).  The plain 
language of R.C. 2935.12 provides no remedy for its violation, and we cannot 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO 
 
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“brazenly ignore the unambiguous language of a statute” simply because another 
state would do so under its own law.  Jacobson v. Kaforey, 149 Ohio St.3d 398, 
2016-Ohio-8434, 75 N.E.3d 203, ¶ 8.  In still other states, the law in this area is as 
undeveloped as it is in Ohio.  E.g., State v. Jean-Paul, 2013-NMCA-032, 295 P.3d 
1072, 1077 (“Our Supreme Court has not had the occasion since Hudson to 
reconsider [State v. Attaway, 117 N.M. 141, 1994-NMSC-011, 870 P.2d 103] or 
the application of the exclusionary rule for knock-and-announce violations under 
the state constitution. * * * Therefore, Attaway controls, and the remedy for any 
violation of [the New Mexico Constitution’s] knock-and-announce requirement 
continues to be suppression of the evidence”). 
{¶ 30} We find the United States Supreme Court’s reasoning in Hudson to 
be far more persuasive than the arguments made by Bembry and Singh.  The knock-
and-announce principle applies only when police execute a valid warrant.  To 
acquire a valid warrant, police must first convince a neutral magistrate that there is 
probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed, sufficient to justify 
pulling aside the veil of privacy from the contents of a home.  It makes fundamental 
sense that we would not restore privacy to the contents of a home to remedy the 
violation of a rule that applies only after the interest in privacy in the home has been 
overridden.  To do so would be to make an end run around the authority of the 
magistrate that issued the warrant.  There is a basic conceptual disconnect between 
the interests protected by the knock-and-announce principle and those vindicated 
by the suppression remedy.  For the foregoing reasons, we are persuaded to 
“harmonize our interpretation of Section 14, Article I of the Ohio Constitution with 
the Fourth Amendment,” Robinette, 80 Ohio St.3d at 239, 685 N.E.2d 762, with 
regard to the appropriate remedy for a violation of the knock-and-announce 
principle as codified in R.C. 2935.12. 
 
 
January Term, 2017 
 
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CONCLUSION 
{¶ 31} Accordingly, we hold that once a warrant has been issued, the 
exclusionary rule is not the appropriate remedy under Article I, Section 14 of the 
Ohio Constitution for a violation of R.C. 2935.12. 
Judgment affirmed 
and cause remanded. 
O’CONNOR, C.J., and KENNEDY and DEWINE, JJ., concur. 
O’DONNELL and FISCHER, JJ., concur in judgment only. 
FRENCH, J., dissents and would dismiss the cause as improvidently granted. 
_________________ 
Paul J. Gains, Mahoning County Prosecuting Attorney, and Ralph M. 
Rivera, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for appellee. 
Louis M. Defabio, for appellants. 
Michael DeWine, Attorney General, Eric E. Murphy, State Solicitor, and 
Peter T. Reed and Hannah C. Wilson, Deputy Solicitors, urging affirmance for 
amicus curiae Ohio Attorney General Michael DeWine. 
Ron O’Brien, Franklin County Prosecuting Attorney, and Steven L. Taylor, 
Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, urging affirmance for amicus curiae Franklin 
County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien. 
 
Timothy Young, Ohio Public Defender, and Katherine Ross-Kinzie, 
Assistant Public Defender, urging reversal for amicus curiae Ohio Public Defender. 
_________________