Opinion ID: 2179687
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Leon Distinguished

Text: Ten years after Rickards, the United States Court held the federal exclusionary rule applicable to the States. Since the Fourth Amendment's right of privacy has been declared enforceable against the States through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth, it is enforceable against them by the same sanction of exclusion as is used against the Federal Government. [73] The United States Supreme Court, however, adopted the federal exclusionary rule on the basis of a different rationale than the basis for this Court's holding in Rickards. [74] The United States Supreme Court has characterized its recognition of the federal exclusionary rule as a judicially created remedy designed to safeguard Fourth Amendment rights generally through its deterrent effect, rather than a personal constitutional right of the party aggrieved. [75] The prime purpose of the federal exclusionary rule is to deter future unlawful police conduct. [76] Accordingly, in Leon, the United States Supreme Court modified the federal exclusionary rule to include an exception for good faith reliance by the police on a search warrant which is later held to be invalid for lack of probable cause. [77] The minority contends that this Court should overrule Rickards and adopt the Leon good faith exception in construing the unambiguous mandate in Delaware's Constitution that no search warrant shall issue without probable cause. [78] The suggestion that we should adopt the rationale of Leon does not present an issue of first impression. In Mason, this Court explained why, even though the Delaware Constitution's requirement of probable cause did exist, there could be no good faith exception to the enhanced statutory requirements for the issuance of a nighttime search warrant. [79] Our decision in Mason explained how the history of search and seizure in Delaware is different from that of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Delaware's independent interest in protecting its citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures did not diminish after the adoption of the Fourth Amendment.... [80] For almost 150 years, a Delaware statute has required more than probable cause for the issuance of a nighttime search warrant. [81] In addition to probable cause, a nighttime search warrant requires the affiant to allege that it is necessary to prevent the escape or removal of the person or thing to be search for. [82] In Mason, the State argued that since the police demonstrated probable cause and had acted in good faith, their failure to establish the enhanced specific statutory requirements for the issuance of a nighttime search warrant should not result in the exclusion of the illegally seized items from evidence. [83] This Court held: If this Court were to find a good faith exception, under the circumstances of this case, it would be doing so in a situation where the police did not have exigent circumstances justifying a warrantless entry, failed to allege sufficient facts to satisfy the statutory requirements for a nighttime search of a residence and then failed to receive a search warrant that concluded its night-time execution was necessary. To render such a decision would not only be an unprecedented break with more than two hundred years of history in this area of the law, but also would be tantamount to a judicial repeal of a specific Delaware statute that for more than one hundred years has set the standards by which applications for nighttime searches of a residence are to be judged by impartial magistrates. [84] A fortiori, there can be no good faith exception when the probable cause requirement in the Delaware Constitution is absent  as in this case. The Delaware Constitution requires actual probable cause for the issuance of a search warrant not a good faith belief in probable cause. This Court cannot disregard the probable cause requirement explicitly set forth in the Delaware Constitution. The entire purpose of having a police officer present his or her belief in probable cause to a neutral magistrate is to protect Delaware's citizens against the issuance of search warrants without probable cause. The preservation of diversity in the legal and governmental systems of each state was expressly contemplated when the United States Constitution was framed and adopted. [85] The United States Supreme Court has acknowledged that state constitutional rights are frequently different from and broader than the federal Bill of Rights. [86] A great many state supreme courts, more recently Iowa, [87] have concluded that the rationale in Leon is inconsistent with state constitutional dimensions to the enforcement of the exclusionary rule. [88] In Jones, this Court again held that those dimensions are correlative to fundamental Delaware state constitutional rights and to preserving the integrity of the judicial system in Delaware. [89]