Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/514/1/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 20:01:26+00:00

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be expected to alter an arresting officer's behavior, since there is no indication that the officer here was not acting reasonably when he relied upon the computer record. pp. 10-16.
177 Ariz. 201, 866 P. 2d 869, reversed and remanded.
REHNQUIST, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which O'CONNOR, SCALIA, KENNEDY, SOUTER, THOMAS, and BREYER, JJ., joined. O'CONNOR, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which SOUTER and BREYER, JJ., joined, post, p. 16. SOUTER, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which BREYER, J., joined, post, p. 18. STEVENS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, post, p. 18. GINSBURG, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which STEVENS, J., joined, post, p. 23.
Gerald R. Grant argued the cause and filed briefs for petitioner.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the American Civil Liberties Union et al. by Steven R. Shapiro; and for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers by Ephraim Margolin and Barry P. Helft.
acted in reliance on a police record indicating the existence of an outstanding arrest warrant-a record that is later determined to be erroneous-must be suppressed by virtue of the exclusionary rule regardless of the source of the error. The Supreme Court of Arizona held that the exclusionary rule required suppression of evidence even if the erroneous information resulted from an error committed by an employee of the office of the Clerk of Court. We disagree.
In January 1991, Phoenix police officer Bryan Sargent observed respondent Isaac Evans driving the wrong way on a one-way street in front of the police station. The officer stopped respondent and asked to see his driver's license. After respondent told him that his license had been suspended, the officer entered respondent's name into a computer data terminal located in his patrol car. The computer inquiry confirmed that respondent's license had been suspended and also indicated that there was an outstanding misdemeanor warrant for his arrest. Based upon the outstanding warrant, Officer Sargent placed respondent under arrest. While being handcuffed, respondent dropped a hand-rolled cigarette that the officers determined smelled of marijuana. Officers proceeded to search his car and discovered a bag of marijuana under the passenger's seat.
The State charged respondent with possession of marijuana. When the police notified the Justice Court that they had arrested him, the Justice Court discovered that the arrest warrant previously had been quashed and so advised the police. Respondent argued that because his arrest was based on a warrant that had been quashed 17 days prior to his arrest, the marijuana seized incident to the arrest should be suppressed as the fruit of an unlawful arrest. Respondent also argued that "[t]he 'good faith' exception to the exclusionary rule [was] inapplicable ... because it was police error, not judicial error, which caused the invalid arrest." App. 5.
arrest warrant on December 13, 1990, because respondent had failed to appear to answer for several traffic violations. On December 19, 1990, respondent appeared before a pro tem Justice of the Peace who entered a notation in respondent's file to "quash warrant." Id., at 13.
The Chief Clerk also testified regarding the standard court procedure for quashing a warrant. Under that procedure a justice court clerk calls and informs the warrant section of the Sheriff's Office when a warrant has been quashed. The Sheriff's Office then removes the warrant from its computer records. After calling the Sheriff's Office, the clerk makes a note in the individual's file indicating the clerk who made the phone call and the person at the Sheriff's Office to whom the clerk spoke. The Chief Clerk testified that there was no indication in respondent's file that a clerk had called and notified the Sheriff's Office that his arrest warrant had been quashed. A records clerk from the Sheriff's Office also testified that the Sheriff's Office had no record of a telephone call informing it that respondent's arrest warrant had been quashed. Id., at 42-43.
At the close of testimony, respondent argued that the evidence obtained as a result of the arrest should be suppressed because "the purposes of the exclusionary rule would be served here by making the clerks for the court, or the clerk for the Sheriff's office, whoever is responsible for this mistake, to be more careful about making sure that warrants are removed from the records." Id., at 47. The trial court granted the motion to suppress because it concluded that the State had been at fault for failing to quash the warrant. Presumably because it could find no "distinction between State action, whether it happens to be the police department or not," id., at 52, the trial court made no factual finding as to whether the Justice Court or Sheriff's Office was responsible for the continued presence of the quashed warrant in the police records.
A divided panel of the Arizona Court of Appeals reversed because it "believe[d] that the exclusionary rule [was] not intended to deter justice court employees or Sheriff's Office employees who are not directly associated with the arresting officers or the arresting officers' police department." 172 Ariz. 314, 317, 836 P. 2d 1024, 1027 (1992). Therefore, it concluded, "the purpose of the exclusionary rule would not be served by excluding the evidence obtained in this case." Ibid.
The Arizona Supreme Court reversed. 177 Ariz. 201, 866 P. 2d 869 (1994). The court rejected the "distinction drawn by the court of appeals ... between clerical errors committed by law enforcement personnel and similar mistakes by court employees." Id., at 203, 866 P. 2d, at 871. The court predicted that application of the exclusionary rule would "hopefully serve to improve the efficiency of those who keep records in our criminal justice system." Id., at 204, 866 P. 2d, at 872. Finally, the court concluded that "[e]ven assuming that deterrence is the principal reason for application of the exclusionary rule, we disagree with the court of appeals that such a purpose would not be served where carelessness by a court clerk results in an unlawful arrest." Ibid.
We granted certiorari to determine whether the exclusionary rule requires suppression of evidence seized incident to an arrest resulting from an inaccurate computer record, regardless of whether police personnel or court personnel were responsible for the record's continued presence in the police computer. 511 U. S. 1126 (1994).1 We now reverse.
1 Petitioner has conceded that respondent's arrest violated the Fourth Amendment. Brieffor Petitioner 10. We decline to review that determination. Cf. United States v. Leon, 468 U. S. 897, 905 (1984); Illinois v. Krull, 480 U. S. 340, 357, n. 13 (1987).
Fourth Amendment issue and instead based its decision on the Arizona good-faith statute, Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 133925 (1993), an adequate and independent state ground. In the alternative, respondent asks that we remand to the Arizona Supreme Court for clarification.
ion in Long describes the 60-year history of the Court's differing approaches to the determination whether the judgment of the highest court of a State rested on federal or nonfederal grounds. 463 U. S., at 1038-1040. When we were in doubt, on some occasions we dismissed the writ of certiorari; on other occasions we vacated the judgment of the state court and remanded so that it might clarify the basis for its decision. See ibid. The latter approach did not always achieve the desired result and burdened the state courts with additional work. Ibid.
We believe that Michigan v. Long properly serves its purpose and should not be disturbed. Under it, state courts are absolutely free to interpret state constitutional provisions to accord greater protection to individual rights than do similar provisions of the United States Constitution. They also are free to serve as experimental laboratories, in the sense that Justice Brandeis used that term in his dissenting opinion in New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U. S. 262, 311 (1932) (urging that the Court not impose federal constitutional restraints on the efforts of a State to "serve as a laboratory"). Under our decision today, the State of Arizona remains free to seek whatever solutions it chooses to problems of law enforcement posed by the advent of computerization.3 Indeed, it is freer to do so because it is disabused of its erroneous view of what the United States Constitution requires.
v. Thompson, 501 U. S. 722, 740 (1991) (opinion of O'CONNOR, J.) (declining to expand the Long and Harris presumption to instances "where the relevant state court decision does not fairly appear to rest primarily on federal law or to be interwoven with such law").
3 JUSTICE GINSBURG acknowledges as much when she states that since Long, "state courts, on remand, have reinstated their prior judgments after clarifying their reliance on state grounds." Post, at 32 (citing statistics).
"It is fundamental that state courts be left free and unfettered by us in interpreting their state constitutions. But it is equally important that ambiguous or obscure adjudications by state courts do not stand as barriers to a determination by this Court of the validity under the federal constitution of state action. Intelligent exercise of our appellate powers compels us to ask for the elimination of the obscurities and ambiguities from the opinions in such cases .... For no other course assures that important federal issues, such as have been argued here, will reach this Court for adjudication; that state courts will not be the final arbiters of important issues under the federal constitution; and that we will not encroach on the constitutional jurisdiction of the states." Id., at 557.
The Fourth Amendment states that "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." We have recognized, however, that the Fourth Amendment contains no provision expressly precluding the use of evidence obtained in violation of its commands. See United States v. Leon, 468 U. S. 897, 906 (1984). "The wrong condemned by the [Fourth] Amendment is 'fully accomplished' by the unlawful search or seizure itself," ibid. (quoting United States v. Calandra, 414 U. S. 338, 354 (1974)), and the use of the fruits of a past unlawful search or seizure "'work[s] no new Fourth Amendment wrong,'" Leon, supra, at 906 (quoting Calandra, supra, at 354).
906; Calandra, supra, at 348. As with any remedial device, the rule's application has been restricted to those instances where its remedial objectives are thought most efficaciously served. Leon, supra, at 908; Calandra, supra, at 348. Where "the exclusionary rule does not result in appreciable deterrence, then, clearly, its use ... is unwarranted." United States v. Janis, 428 U. S. 433, 454 (1976).
In Leon, we applied these principles to the context of a police search in which the officers had acted in objectively reasonable reliance on a search warrant, issued by a neutral and detached Magistrate, that later was determined to be invalid. 468 U. S., at 905. On the basis of three factors, we determined that there was no sound reason to apply the exclusionary rule as a means of deterring misconduct on the part of judicial officers who are responsible for issuing warrants. See Illinois v. Krull, 480 U. S. 340, 348 (1987) (analyzing Leon, supra). First, we noted that the exclusionary rule was historically designed "'to deter police misconduct rather than to punish the errors of judges and magistrates.' " Krull, supra, at 348 (quoting Leon, supra, at 916). Second, there was "'no evidence suggesting that judges and magistrates are inclined to ignore or subvert the Fourth Amendment or that lawlessness among these actors requires the application of the extreme sanction of exclusion.''' Krull, supra, at 348 (quoting Leon, supra, at 916). Third, and of greatest importance, there was no basis for believing that exclusion of evidence seized pursuant to a warrant would have a significant deterrent effect on the issuing judge or magistrate. Krull, supra, at 348.
able officer would and should act in similar circumstances. Excluding the evidence can in no way affect his future conduct unless it is to make him less willing to do his duty.'" Leon, supra, at 919-920 (quoting Stone, supra, at 539-540 (White, J., dissenting)).
Respondent also argues that Whiteley v. Warden, Wyo.
State Penitentiary, 401 U. S. 560 (1971), compels exclusion of the evidence. In Whiteley, the Court determined that the Fourth Amendment had been violated when police officers arrested Whiteley and recovered inculpatory evidence based upon a radio report that two suspects had been involved in two robberies. Id., at 568-569. Although the "police were entitled to act on the strength of the radio bulletin," the Court determined that there had been a Fourth Amendment violation because the initial complaint, upon which the arrest warrant and subsequent radio bulletin were based, was insufficient to support an independent judicial assessment of probable cause. Id., at 568. The Court concluded that "an otherwise illegal arrest cannot be insulated from challenge by the decision of the instigating officer to rely on fellow officers to make the arrest." Ibid. Because the "arrest violated [Whiteley's] constitutional rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments; the evidence secured as an incident thereto should have been excluded from his trial. Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643 (1961)." Id., at 568-569.
remedial objectives of the rule are thought most efficaciously served, see Calandra, supra, at 348.
Our approach is consistent with the dissenting Justices' position in Krull, our only major case since Leon and Sheppard involving the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule. In that case, the Court found that the good-faith exception applies when an officer conducts a search in objectively reasonable reliance on the constitutionality of a statute that subsequently is declared unconstitutional. Krull, supra, at 346. Even the dissenting Justices in Krull agreed that Leon provided the proper framework for analyzing whether the exclusionary rule applied; they simply thought that "application of Leon's stated rationales le[d] to a contrary result." 480 U. S., at 362 (O'CONNOR, J., dissenting). In sum, respondent does not persuade us to abandon the Leon framework.
Applying the reasoning of Leon to the facts of this case, we conclude that the decision of the Arizona Supreme Court must be reversed. The Arizona Supreme Court determined that it could not "support the distinction drawn ... between clerical errors committed by law enforcement personnel and similar mistakes by court employees," 177 Ariz., at 203, 866 P. 2d, at 871, and that "even assuming ... that responsibility for the error rested with the justice court, it does not follow that the exclusionary rule should be inapplicable to these facts," ibid.
clined to ignore or subvert the Fourth Amendment or that lawlessness among these actors requires application of the extreme sanction of exclusion. See Leon, supra, at 916, and n. 14; see also Krull, supra, at 350-351. To the contrary, the Chief Clerk of the Justice Court testified at the suppression hearing that this type of error occurred once every three or four years. App. 37.
Finally, and most important, there is no basis for believing that application of the exclusionary rule in these circumstances will have a significant effect on court employees responsible for informing the police that a warrant has been quashed. Because court clerks are not adjuncts to the law enforcement team engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime, see Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10, 14 (1948), they have no stake in the outcome of particular criminal prosecutions. Cf. Leon, supra, at 917; Krull, supra, at 352. The threat of exclusion of evidence could not be expected to deter such individuals from failing to inform police officials that a warrant had been quashed. Cf. Leon, supra, at 917; Krull, supra, at 352.
The judgment of the Supreme Court of Arizona is therefore reversed, and the case is remanded to that court for proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
JUSTICE O'CONNOR, with whom JUSTICE SOUTER and JUSTICE BREYER join, concurring.
The evidence in this case strongly suggests that it was a court employee's departure from established recordkeeping procedures that caused the record of respondent's arrest warrant to remain in the computer system after the warrant had been quashed. Prudently, then, the Court limits itself to the question whether a court employee's departure from such established procedures is the kind of error to which the exclusionary rule should apply. The Court holds that it is not such an error, and I agree with that conclusion and join the Court's opinion. The Court's holding reaffirms that the exclusionary rule imposes significant costs on society's law enforcement interests and thus should apply only where its deterrence purposes are "most efficaciously served," ante, at 11.
5 The Solicitor General, as amicus curiae, argues that an analysis similar to that we apply here to court personnel also would apply in order to determine whether the evidence should be suppressed if police personnel were responsible for the error. As the State has not made any such argument here, we agree that "[t]he record in this case ... does not adequately present that issue for the Court's consideration." Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 13. Accordingly, we decline to address that question.
police were innocent of the court employee's mistake, they mayor may not have acted reasonably in their reliance on the recordkeeping system itself Surely it would not be reasonable for the police to rely, say, on a recordkeeping system, their own or some other agency's, that has no mechanism to ensure its accuracy over time and that routinely leads to false arrests, even years after the probable cause for any such arrest has ceased to exist (if it ever existed).
This is saying nothing new. We have said the same with respect to other information sources police use, informants being an obvious example. In Illinois v. Gates, 462 U. S. 213 (1983), the Court indicated that where an informant provides information about certain criminal activities but does not specify the basis for his knowledge, a finding of probable cause based on that information will not be upheld unless the informant is "known for [his] unusual reliability." Id., at 233, citing United States v. Sellers, 483 F.2d 37, 40, n. 1 (CA5 1973) (involving informant who had provided accurate information "in more than one hundred instances in matters of investigation"); see generally 1 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 3.3(b) (2d ed. 1987 and Supp. 1995). Certainly the reliability of recordkeeping systems deserves no less scrutiny than that of informants. Of course, the comparison to informants may be instructive the opposite way as well. So long as an informant's reliability does pass constitutional muster, a finding of probable cause may not be defeated by an after-the-fact showing that the information the informant provided was mistaken. See 2 id., § 3.5(d), at 21, n. 73 (citation omitted); see also 1 id., § 3.2(d), at 575 ("It is axiomatic that hindsight may not be employed in determining whether a prior arrest or search was made upon probable cause").
ment mechanisms comes the burden of corresponding constitutional responsibilities.
JUSTICE SOUTER, with whom JUSTICE BREYER joins, concurring.
In joining the Court's opinion, I share JUSTICE O'CONNOR'S understanding of the narrow scope of what we hold today. To her concurrence, which I join as well, I add only that we do not answer another question that may reach us in due course, that is, how far, in dealing with fruits of computerized error, our very concept of deterrence by exclusion of evidence should extend to the government as a whole, not merely the police, on the ground that there would otherwise be no reasonable expectation of keeping the number of resulting false arrests within an acceptable minimum limit.
JUSTICE GINSBURG has written an important opinion explaining why the Court unwisely departed from settled law when it interpreted its own jurisdiction so expansively in Michigan v. Long, 463 U. S. 1032 (1983). I join her dissent and her conclusion that the writ of certiorari should be dismissed. Because the Court has addressed the merits, however, I add this comment on its holding.
its personnel to avoid future violations. See Stewart, The Road to Mapp v. Ohio and Beyond: The Origins, Development and Future of the Exclusionary Rule in Search-andSeizure Cases, 83 Colum. L. Rev. 1365, 1400 (1983).
The exclusionary rule is not fairly characterized as an "extreme sanction," ante, at 11 (internal quotation marks omitted). As Justice Stewart cogently explained, the implementation of this constitutionally mandated sanction merely places the government in the same position as if it had not conducted the illegal search and seizure in the first place. 1 Given the undisputed fact in this case that the Constitution prohibited the warrantless arrest of respondent, there is nothing "extreme" about the Arizona Supreme Court's conclusion that the State should not be permitted to profit from its negligent misconduct.
1 See Stewart, The Road to Mapp v. Ohio and Beyond: The Origins, Development and Future of the Exclusionary Rule in Search-and-Seizure Cases, 83 Colum. L. Rev. 1365, 1392 (1983). I am fully aware of the Court's statements that the question whether the exclusionary rule should be applied is distinct from the question whether the Fourth Amendment has been violated. Indeed, the majority twice quotes the same statement from the Court's opinion in Illinois v. Gates, 462 U. S. 213, 223 (1983). See ante, at 10, 12. I would note that such eminent Members of this Court as Justices Holmes, Brandeis, Harlan, and Stewart have expressed the opposite view. See, e. g., Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438,470 (1928) (Holmes, J., dissenting); id., at 477-479 (Brandeis, J., dissenting); Whiteley v. Warden, Wyo. State Penitentiary, 401 U. S. 560 (1971) (Harlan, J.); Elkins v. United States, 364 U. S. 206 (1960) (Stewart, J.); Stewart, supra, at 1383-1385. The majority today candidly acknowledges that Justice Harlan's opinion for the Court in Whiteley "treated identification of a Fourth Amendment violation as synonymous with application of the exclusionary rule to evidence secured incident to that violation." Ante, at 13.
The Fourth Amendment's Warrant Clause provides the fundamental check on official invasions of the individual's right to privacy. E. g., Harris v. United States, 331 U. S. 145, 195-196 (1947) (Jackson, J., dissenting); see generally Kamisar, Does (Did) (Should) the Exclusionary Rule Rest on a "Principled Basis" Rather Than an "Empirical Proposition"?, 16 Creighton L. Rev. 565, 571-579 (1983). Leon stands for the dubious but limited proposition that courts should not look behind the face of a warrant on which police have relied in good faith. The Leon Court's exemption of judges and magistrates from the deterrent ambit of the exclusionary rule rested, consistently with the emphasis on the warrant requirement, on those officials' constitutionally determined role in issuing warrants. See 468 U. S., at 915917. Taken on its own terms, Leon's logic does not extend to the time after the warrant has issued; nor does it extend to court clerks and functionaries, some of whom work in the same building with police officers and may have more regular and direct contact with police than with judges or magistrates.
2 As JUSTICE O'CONNOR observed in her dissent in Illinois v. Krull, 480 U. S. 340 (1987): "[T]he Leon Court relied explicitly on the tradition of judicial independence in concluding that, until it was presented with evidence to the contrary, there was relatively little cause for concern that judicial officers might take the opportunity presented by the good-faith exception to authorize unconstitutional searches." Id., at 365. I joined that dissent, and I take exception to the majority's pronouncement that today's opinion is "consistent with" it. Ante, at 14.
The Phoenix Police Department was part of the chain of information that resulted in respondent's unlawful, warrantless arrest. We should reasonably presume that law enforcement officials, who stand in the best position to monitor such errors as occurred here, can influence mundane communication procedures in order to prevent those errors. That presumption comports with the notion that the exclusionary rule exists to deter future police misconduct systemically. See, e. g., Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465, 492 (1976); Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S. 200, 221 (1979) (STEVENS, J., concurring); see generally Kamisar, 16 Creighton L. Rev., at 659662; Stewart, 83 Colum. L. Rev., at 1400. The deterrent purpose extends to law enforcement as a whole, not merely to "the arresting officer." Compare ante, at 15, with Whiteley v. Warden, Wyo. State Penitentiary, 401 U. S. 560, 568 (1971). Consequently, the Phoenix officers' good faith does not diminish the deterrent value of invalidating their arrest of respondent.
3 "Q. In your eight years as a chief clerk with the Justice of the Peace, have there been other occasions where a warrant was quashed but the police were not notified?
"A. That does happen on rare occasions.
"Q. And when you say rare occasions, about how many times in your eight years as chief clerk?
"A. In my particular court, they would be like maybe one every three or four years.
"Q. When something like this happens, is anything done by your office to correct that problem?
on which to base a conclusion that computer error poses no appreciable threat to Fourth Amendment interests. For support, the Court cites a case from 1948. See ante, at 15, citing Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10. The Court overlooks the reality that computer technology has changed the nature of threats to citizens' privacy over the past half century. See post, at 26-28. What has not changed is the reality that only that fraction of Fourth Amendment violations held to have resulted in unlawful arrests is ever noted and redressed. As Justice Jackson observed: "There may be, and I am convinced that there are, many unlawful searches ... of innocent people which turn up nothing incriminating, in which no arrest is made, about which courts do nothing, and about which we never hear." Brinegar v. United States, 338 U. S. 160, 181 (1949) (dissenting opinion). Moreover, even if errors in computer records of warrants were rare, that would merely minimize the cost of enforcing the exclusionary rule in cases like this.
on that same day that it happened. Fortunately, they weren't all arrested." App.37.
have any power to discourage official error of this kind, it must be through application of the exclusionary rule.
The use of general warrants to search for evidence of violations of the Crown's revenue laws understandably outraged the authors of the Bill of Rights. See, e. g., Lo-Ji Sales, Inc. v. New York, 442 U. S. 319, 325 (1979); Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383, 389-391 (1914). "'It is a power, that places the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer.'" James Otis, quoted in 2 Works of John Adams 524 (C. Adams ed. 1850), quoted in turn in Illinois v. Krull, 480 U. S. 340, 363 (1987) (O'CONNOR, J., dissenting). The offense to the dignity of the citizen who is arrested, handcuffed, and searched on a public street simply because some bureaucrat has failed to maintain an accurate computer data base strikes me as equally outrageous. In this case, of course, such an error led to the fortuitous detection of respondent's unlawful possession of marijuana, and the suppression of the fruit of the error would prevent the prosecution of his crime. That cost, however, must be weighed against the interest in protecting other, wholly innocent citizens from unwarranted indignity. In my judgment, the cost is amply offset by an appropriately "jealous regard for maintaining the integrity of individual rights." Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643, 647 (1961). For this reason, as well as those set forth by JUSTICE GINSBURG, I respectfully dissent.
principles of a free society" in reaching its decision. This Court reviews and reverses the Arizona decision on the assumption that Arizona's highest court sought assiduously to apply this Court's Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. The Court thus follows the presumption announced in Michigan v. Long, 463 U. S. 1032 (1983): If it is unclear whether a state court's decision rests on state or federal law, Long dictates the assumption that the state court relied on federal law. On the basis of that assumption, the Court asserts jurisdiction to review the decision of the Arizona Supreme Court.
The Long presumption, as I see it, impedes the States' ability to serve as laboratories for testing solutions to novel legal problems. I would apply the opposite presumption and assume that Arizona's Supreme Court has ruled for its own State and people, under its own constitutional recognition of individual security against unwarranted state intrusion. Accordingly, I would dismiss the writ of certiorari.
Isaac Evans was arrested because a computer record erroneously identified an outstanding misdemeanor arrest warrant in his name. The Arizona Supreme Court's suppression of evidence obtained from this unlawful arrest did not rest on a close analysis of this Court's Fourth Amendment precedents. Indeed, the court found our most relevant decision, United States v. Leon, 468 U. S. 897 (1984), "not helpful." 177 Ariz. 201, 203, 866 P. 2d 869, 871 (1994). Instead, the Arizona court emphasized its comprehension of the severe curtailment of personal liberty inherent in arrest warrants.
York, 461 U. S. 961, 961-963 (1983) (STEVENS, J., respecting denial of petitions for writs of certiorari) ("My vote to deny certiorari in these cases does not reflect disagreement with JUSTICE MARSHALL'S appraisal of the importance of the underlying issue .... In my judgment it is a sound exercise of discretion for the Court to allow the various States to serve as laboratories in which the issue receives further study before it is addressed by this Court.").
"The dissent laments the 'high costs' of the exclusionary rule, and suggests that its application here is 'purposeless' and provides 'no offsetting benefits.' Such an assertion ignores the fact that arrest warrants result in a denial of human liberty, and are therefore among the most important of legal documents. I t is repugnant to the principles of a free society that a person should ever be taken into police custody because of a computer error precipitated by government carelessness. As automation increasingly invades modern life, the potential for Orwellian mischief grows. Under such circumstances, the exclusionary rule is a 'cost' we cannot afford to be without." Id., at 204, 866 P. 2d, at 872.
Thus, the Arizona court did not consider this case to involve simply and only a court employee's slip in failing to communicate with the police, or a police officer's oversight in failing to record information received from a court employee. That court recognized a "potential for Orwellian mischief" in the government's increasing reliance on computer technology in law enforcement. The Arizona Supreme Court concluded that Leon's distinction between police conduct and judicial conduct loses force where, as here, the error derives not from a discretionary judicial function, but from inattentive recordkeeping. Application of an exclusionary rule in the circumstances Evans' case presents, the Arizona court said, "will hopefully serve to improve the efficiency of those who keep records in our criminal justice system." Ibid.
2 The Long presumption becomes operative when two conditions are met: (1) the state-court decision must "fairly appea[r] to rest primarily on federal law, or to be interwoven with the federal law"; and (2) "the adequacy and independence of any possible state law ground [must] not [be] clear from the face of the opinion." 463 U. S., at 1040-1041.
3 I recognize, in accord with Long on this point, that there will be cases in which a presumption concerning exercise of the Court's jurisdiction should yield, i. e., exceptional instances in which vacation of a state court's judgment and remand for clarification of the court's decision is in order. See id., at 1041, n. 6 ("There may be certain circumstances in which clarification is necessary or desirable, and we will not be foreclosed from taking the appropriate action."); Capital Cities Media, Inc. v. Toole, 466 U. S. 378, 379 (1984) (per curiam) (post-Long decision vacating statecourt judgment and remanding for such further proceedings as the state court might deem appropriate to clarify the ground of its decision).
over 23 million records, identifying, among other things, persons and vehicles sought by law enforcement agencies nationwide. See Hearings before the Subcommittee on the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies of the House Committee on Appropriations, 102d Cong., 2d Sess., pt. 2B, p. 467 (1992). NCIC information is available to approximately 71,000 federal, state, and local agencies. See Hearings before the Subcommittee on the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies of the House Committee on Appropriations, 103d Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 2A, p. 489 (1993). Thus, any mistake entered into the NCIC spreads nationwide in an instant.
4 See also Finch v. Chapman, 785 F. Supp. 1277, 1278-1279 (ND Ill. 1992) (misinformation long retained in NCIC records twice caused plaintiff's arrest and detention), affirmance order, 991 F.2d 799 (CA7 1993).
"Because of the inaccurate listing in the NCIC computer, defendant was a 'marked man' for the five months prior to his arrest .... At any time ... a routine check by the police could well result in defendant's arrest, booking, search and detention .... Moreover, this could happen anywhere in the United States where law enforcement officers had access to NCIC information. Defendant was subject to being deprived of his liberty at any time and without any legal basis." United States v. Mackey, 387 F. Supp. 1121, 1124 (Nev. 1975).
In the instant case, the Court features testimony of the Chief Clerk of the Justice Court in East Phoenix to the effect that errors of the kind Evans encountered are reported only "on[c]e every three or four years." Ante, at 15 (citing App. 37). But the same witness also recounted that, when the error concerning Evans came to light, an immediate check revealed that three other errors of the very same kind had occurred on "that same day." See ante, at 21-22, and n. 3 (STEVENS, J., dissenting).
carelessness of other governmental actors.5 Whatever federal precedents may indicate-an issue on which I voice no opinion-the Court's conclusion is not the lesson inevitably to be drawn from logic or experience.
In this electronic age, particularly with respect to recordkeeping, court personnel and police officers are not neatly compartmentalized actors. Instead, they serve together to carry out the State's information-gathering objectives. Whether particular records are maintained by the police or the courts should not be dispositive where a single computer data base can answer all calls. Not only is it artificial to distinguish between court clerk and police clerk slips; in practice, it may be difficult to pinpoint whether one official, e. g., a court employee, or another, e. g., a police officer, caused the error to exist or to persist. Applying an exclusionary rule as the Arizona court did may well supply a powerful incentive to the State to promote the prompt updating of computer records. That was the Arizona Supreme Court's hardly unreasonable expectation. The incentive to update promptly would be diminished if court-initiated records were exempt from the rule's sway.
5 It has been suggested that an exclusionary rule cannot deter carelessness, but can affect only intentional or reckless misconduct. This suggestion runs counter to a premise underlying all of negligence law-that imposing liability for negligence, i. e., lack of due care, creates an incentive to act with greater care.
That the mistake may have been made by a clerical worker does not alter the conclusion that application of the exclusionary rule has deterrent value. Just as the risk of respondeat superior liability encourages employers to supervise more closely their employees' conduct, so the risk of exclusion of evidence encourages policymakers and systems managers to monitor the performance of the systems they install and the personnel employed to operate those systems. In the words of the trial court, the mistake in Evans' case was "perhaps the negligence of the Justice Court, or the negligence of the Sheriff's office. But it is still the negligence of the State." App. 51.
The debate over the efficacy of an exclusionary rule reveals that deterrence is an empirical question, not a logical one. "It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U. S. 262, 311 (1932) (Brandeis, J., dissenting). With that facet of our federalism in mind, this Court should select a jurisdictional presumption that encourages States to explore different means to secure respect for individual rights in modern times.
Rediscovering the States' Bills of Rights, 9 U. BaIt. L. Rev. 379, 382 (1980). The drafters of the Federal Bill of Rights looked to provisions in state constitutions as models. Id., at 381. Moreover, many States that adopted constitutions after 1789 modeled their bills of rights on pre-existing state constitutions, rather than on the Federal Bill of Rights. Ibid. And before this Court recognized that the Fourteenth Amendment-which constrains actions by States-incorporates provisions of the Federal Bill of Rights, state constitutional rights, as interpreted by state courts, imposed the primary constraints on state action. Brennan, State Constitutions and the Protection of Individual Rights, 90 Harv. L. Rev. 489, 501-502 (1977).
federalism does not touch or concern state courts interpreting state law.
Under Long, when state courts engage in the essential process of developing state constitutional law, they may insulate their decisions from this Court's review by means of a plain statement of intent to rest upon an independent state ground. The plain statement option does not, however, make pleas for reconsideration of the Long presumption much ado about nothing.6 Both on a practical and on a symbolic level, the presumption chosen matters.
The presumption is an imperfect barometer of state courts' intent. Although it is easy enough for a state court to say the requisite magic words, the court may not recognize that its opinion triggers Long's plain statement requirement. "[A]pplication of Long's presumption depends on a whole series of 'soft' requirements: the state decision must 'fairly appear' to rest 'primarily' on federal law or be 'interwoven' with federal law, and the independence of the state ground must be 'not clear' from the face of the state opinion. These are not self-applying concepts." P. Bator, D. Meltzer, P. Mishkin, & D. Shapiro, Hart and Wechsler's The Federal Courts and the Federal System 552 (3d ed. 1988) (hereinafter Hart and Wechsler); cf. Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U. S. 722, 735-740 (1991) (declining to apply Long presumption to summary dismissal order).
6 Long has generated many pages of academic commentary, some supportive, some critical of the presumption. See, e. g., P. Bator, D. Meltzer, P. Mishkin, & D. Shapiro, Hart and Wechsler's The Federal Courts and the Federal System 553, n. 3 (3d ed. 1988) (citing commentary).
rely on those precedents merely for guidance and do not consider our results bound by those decisions." State v. Ball, 124 N. H. 226, 233, 471 A. 2d 347, 352 (1983). See also State v. Kennedy, 295 Ore. 260, 267, 666 P. 2d 1316, 1321 (1983) ("Lest there be any doubt about it, when this court cites federal opinions in interpreting a provision of Oregon law, it does so because it finds the views there expressed persuasive, not because it considers itself bound to do so by its understanding of federal doctrines."). This Court's stated reluctance to look beneath or beyond the very state-court opinion at issue in order to answer the jurisdictional question, see Long, 463 U. S., at 1040, may render such blanket declarations ineffective. Cf. Hart and Wechsler 553 ("[T]he Court's protestations-that its presumption shows greater respect for state courts than asking them to clarify their opinions-ring hollow: Long simply puts the burden of clarification on the state court in advance.").
Application of the Long presumption has increased the incidence of nondispositive United States Supreme Court determinations-instances in which state courts, on remand, have reinstated their prior judgments after clarifying their reliance on state grounds. Westling, Advisory Opinions and the "Constitutionally Required" Adequate and Independent State Grounds Doctrine, 63 Tulane L. Rev. 379, 389, and n. 47 (1988) (pre-Long, i. e., between January 1, 1978, and June 30, 1983, 14.3% of decisions (2 of 14) involving potentially adequate and independent state grounds were reinstated on state grounds upon remand; post-Long, i. e., between July 1, 1983, and January 1, 1988, 26.7% of such decisions (4 of 15) were reinstated on remand). Even if these reinstatements do not render the Supreme Court's opinion technically "advisory," see Hart and Wechsler 537, they do suggest that the Court unnecessarily spent its resources on cases better left, at the time in question, to state-court solution.
jurisdiction' unless 'the contrary appears affirmatively from the record.'" Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U. S. 673, 692 (1986) (STEVENS, J., dissenting) (quoting King Bridge Co. v. Otoe County, 120 U. S. 225, 226 (1887)). And it is out of sync with the principle that this Court will avoid constitutional questions when an alternative basis of decision fairly presents itself. Ashwander v. TVA, 297 U. S. 288, 346-347 (1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring). Most critically, as this case shows, the Long presumption interferes prematurely with state-court endeavors to explore different solutions to new problems facing modern society.
"a virtual about-face regarding the guidelines for determining the reviewability of state court decisions in situations where the state court opinion is not absolutely clear about the bases on which it rests. The traditional presumption was that the Court lacked jurisdiction unless its authority to review was clear on the face of the state court opinion. When faced with uncertainty, the Court in the past occasionally remanded such cases to the state court for clarification. But more commonly, the Court would deny jurisdiction where there was uncertainty." G. Gunther, Constitutional Law 56 (12th ed. 1991).
wise," Long, 463 U. S., at 1066 (STEVENS, J., dissenting),7 would also avoid premature settlement of important federal questions. The submission for the United States is telling in this regard. While filing in support of petitioner, the United States acknowledges the problem occasioned by "erroneous information contained in law enforcement computer-information systems," but does not see this case as a proper vehicle for a pathmarking opinion. The United States suggests that the Court "await a case in which relevant characteristics of such systems and the legal questions they pose can be thoroughly explored." Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 13.
The Arizona Supreme Court found it "repugnant to the principles of a free society," 177 Ariz., at 204, 866 P. 2d, at 872, to take a person "into police custody because of a computer error precipitated by government carelessness." Ibid. Few, I believe, would disagree. Whether, in order to guard against such errors, "the exclusionary rule is a 'cost' we cannot afford to be without," ibid., seems to me a question this Court should not rush to decide. The Court errs, as I see it, in presuming that Arizona rested its decision on federal grounds. I would abandon the Long presumption and dismiss the writ because the generally applicable obligation affirmatively to establish the Court's jurisdiction has not been satisfied.
7 For instances in which a state court's decision, even if arguably placed on a state ground, embodies a misconstruction of federal law threatening gravely to mislead, or to engender disuniformity, confusion, or instability, a Supreme Court order vacating the judgment and remanding for clarification should suffice. See Hart and Wechsler 554; see also supra, at 26, n.3.

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