Opinion ID: 1086355
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Exclusion based on Culpability and Deterrence

Text: Up to this point we have considered only whether reliance by law enforcement personnel on out-of-circuit or distinguishable authority, by itself, suffices for purposes of the good faith exception. Per the previous discussion, we hold that such reliance is insufficient to support a per se finding of good faith.20 The Supreme Court in Herring and single decision had come too late in the process and was, ultimately, distinguishable. Such arguments would be disastrously disruptive to lower courts if we were to hold that reliance on out-of-circuit authority could, by itself, suffice for purposes of the good faith exception. How up-to-date must law enforcement be regarding the state of relevant legal principles? What if a decision were issued but either (a) was late in being added to a reporter/electronic database or (b) did not get sufficiently wide-spread exposure to bring it to the attention of police departments half-way across the country? Not only would district courts be forced to tally the authorities on either side of an issue like so many chit marks, but they would also have to decide whether decisions had come too late, or were perhaps too obscure. 20 We note that some of our sister circuits have ruled otherwise, holding that, per Davis, pre-Jones warrantless GPS searches qualify for protection under the good faith exception. See United States v. Sparks, 711 F.3d 58 (1st Cir. 2013); United States v. Andres, 703 F.3d 828 (5th Cir. 2013); United States v. Pineda-Moreno, 688 F.3d 1087 (9th Cir. 2012). These cases, however, do not deter us from our conclusion. To begin with, all three courts relied on binding precedent within their own circuits. The Ninth Circuit noted that the 46 police could rely on, among other things, McIver for the proposition that “placing an electronic tracking device on the undercarriage of a car was neither a search nor a seizure under the Fourth Amendment.” Pineda-Moreno, 688 F.3d at 1090. The Fifth Circuit, which devoted a single paragraph to the discussion, based its conclusion on the presence of Michael, and its holding that “„reasonable suspicion is adequate to support warrantless beeper installation‟ on a suspect‟s vehicle parked in a public space.” Andres, 703 F.3d at 835 (quoting Michael, 645 F.2d at 257). Finally, the First Circuit based its decision to apply the good faith exception on the presence of “clear and apposite” authority, including a First Circuit decision that found “„the lessened expectancy of privacy associated with motor vehicles justifies the use of beepers without a warrant to track vehicles . . . only if the officers have probable cause at the time.‟” Sparks, 711 F.3d at 65 (quoting United States v. Moore, 562 F.2d 106, 112-13 (1st Cir. 1977)). At the same time, however, the First Circuit was far from certain that out-of-circuit precedent could support a finding of good faith, noting that “the two appellate courts to consider the question since Davis have read Davis to require reliance on the case law of the jurisdiction.” Id. at 6364 & 63 n.2 (internal quotation marks omitted). Moreover, both the First and Fifth Circuits based their good faith exception determinations on cases dealing with beepers, with the First Circuit in Sparks going so far as to hold that Knotts was sufficiently “clear and apposite” so as to support a finding of good faith. Sparks, 711 F.3d at 65. As our foregoing discussion suggests: we disagree with this position. The difference between beepers and GPS trackers is one of kind, not degree. Any time technology shifts in this way, 47 Davis, however, recognized that the good faith exception inquiry requires more. That is, in determining whether law enforcement personnel acted “with an objectively „reasonable good-faith belief‟ that their conduct [was] lawful,” we must consider whether the totality of circumstances is greater than the sum of its attendant parts. See Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2427 (quoting Leon, 468 U.S. at 909). We therefore undertake the balancing test outlined in Herring and Davis, and ask whether — in light of all the circumstances — the police activity in this case rises to the level of a “deliberate, reckless, or grossly negligent” violation of the Fourth Amendment. See Herring, 555 U.S. at 144; Tracey, 597 F.3d at 151. We hold that it does. Per the Government‟s argument, the legal landscape in this case predominantly consisted of the out-of-circuit GPS cases, the Supreme Court‟s beeper decisions, and the overarching privacy expectation framework for Fourth Amendment analysis adopted in Katz and deemed to be the sole rubric for analysis until Jones.21 (See, e.g., Appellant Br. courts should expect that law enforcement will tread lightly and will refrain from reasoning by (potentially ill-fitting) analogy. Cf. Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 35-36 (2001) (discussing the Court‟s reticence to “leave the homeowner at the mercy of advancing technology”). 21 Our dissenting colleague points to a number of other decisions and Fourth Amendment doctrines which add further sauce to the Government‟s good faith goose. (See Dissent at 20-29 (discussing, for example, privacy considerations in the exterior of an automobile).) While we do not disagree that these too were part of the relevant legal landscape at the time the police executed their search, we nevertheless hold that — 48 at 44, 50, 55 n.21; Oral Argument Tr. at 23.) Taken together, the Government contends, these sources of legal authority would lead a reasonable law enforcement officer to conclude that he was acting within the confines of the constitution when attaching a GPS tracker to the undercarriage of Harry Katzin‟s van. We find that, on balance, this collection of authority does not warrant applying the good faith exception. Try as we might to allay our concerns, we remain supremely discomfited by the lack of binding appellate guidance underlying the police action at issue in this case. Therefore, we hold that the police acted with sufficient constitutional culpability to require exclusion and, more importantly, that suppression in this case would help deter future Fourth Amendment violations. Law enforcement personnel can rightly rely on a number of sources for Fourth Amendment guidance — including on-point decisions by the Supreme Court and this Circuit, warrants, and statutes. We, both as a Court and as a society, expect that law enforcement officers will consult in light of our forthcoming discussion — such authority gets further and further afield of the relevant police conduct and could only supply marginal support to justify the police action. The only possible exception is the advisory commentary on Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41. (Dissent at 32.) However, for the reasons articulated below, see infra note 24, we find that this commentary would not help the Government‟s position — even assuming the Government had seen fit to cite (let alone mention) the language in its briefs or at oral argument. 49 these sources — it is a part of how we expect reasonable officers to act. Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2429. Deterring such activity, therefore, would not serve the purposes of the exclusionary rule. Id. This case, as we have just mentioned, is different. Nothing in a law enforcement officer‟s duties forces him to either rely on non-binding precedent or to conduct the Fourth Amendment calculus himself by extrapolating from, or analogizing to, existing case law. Where an officer decides to take the Fourth Amendment inquiry into his own hands, rather than to seek a warrant from a neutral magistrate — particularly where the law is as far from settled as it was in this case — he acts in a constitutionally reckless fashion. Here, law enforcement personnel made a deliberate decision to forego securing a warrant before attaching a GPS device directly to a target vehicle in the absence of binding Fourth Amendment precedent authorizing such a practice. Indeed, the police embarked on a long-term surveillance project using technology that allowed them to monitor a target vehicle‟s movements using only a laptop, all before either this Circuit or the Supreme Court had spoken on the constitutional propriety of such an endeavor. (That the surveillance lasted only a few days is mere coincidence.22) 22 We therefore reject the Government‟s attempts to distinguish Maynard. While it is true that the surveillance in Maynard lasted for nearly a month as compared to the several days in this case, it remains equally true that when the police attached their GPS device to Harry Katzin‟s van, they had no way of knowing when the next Rite Aid robbery would take place. We likewise disagree with our Dissenting colleague‟s assessment of Maynard. (Dissent at 29-31.) The good faith 50 True, the police did not act in a total vacuum, but their chosen course of action when presented with such a novel constitutional situation is nonetheless troubling: In lieu of a binding proclamation from either this Circuit or the Supreme Court — and instead of seeking approval from a neutral magistrate — law enforcement personnel looked to other (non-binding or distinguishable) authorities like our sister circuits‟ decisions. Essentially, they extrapolated their own constitutional rule and applied it to this case. We fail to see how this absolves their behavior. The assumption by law enforcement personnel that their own self-derived rule sanctioned their conduct — to say nothing of their unstated belief that this Circuit would automatically side with a majority of the minority of our sister circuits — was constitutionally culpable.23 exception analysis cannot be post-hoc, and the police action at issue must be analyzed under the circumstances as they existed at the time the action was taken — in this case, before the police knew when their GPS surveillance would end. 23 The Government suggests that the good faith exception should apply because the police sought confirmation from “experienced government attorneys.” (Appellant Br. at 56.) The Government cites Messerschmidt v. Millender, 132 S. Ct. 1235 (2012), for the proposition that it shows good faith on the part of an officer if he obtains “approval of the warrant application from a superior and a prosecutor before submitting it to a magistrate.” (Appellant Br. at 57.) However, Messerschmidt is inapposite. That case considered good faith in the context of an officer relying on a warrant that had been based on an allegedly paltry affidavit. Thus, the opinion of a third party tended to demonstrate that the officer 51 The decisions in Knotts and Katz do not remedy the situation. The Government suggests that in this case law enforcement personnel properly reasoned that the GPS search did not require a warrant by analogizing to Knotts‟ discussion of electronic tracking devices. Doing so, the Government adds, was imminently reasonable given the prevailing Fourth Amendment framework at the time — the privacy theory from Katz. That is, the Government contends that because law enforcement personnel were aware that a search occurs when the police intrude upon a target‟s reasonable expectation of privacy, they acted in good faith by relying on our sister circuits‟ GPS decisions as well as Knotts‟ statement that, among other things, “[a] person travelling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another.” Knotts, 460 U.S. at 281. We find such reasoning had not acted with knowledge of the affidavit‟s deficiency. In the instant case, the police lack even an affidavit. Moreover, a government attorney‟s approval, standing alone, cannot and should not suffice to demonstrate good faith. Cf. Leon, 468 U.S. at 914 (“[T]he courts must also insist that the magistrate purport to perform his neutral and detached function and not serve merely as a rubber stamp for the police. . . . [A magistrate] who acts instead as an adjunct law enforcement officer cannot provide valid authorization for an otherwise unconstitutional search.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Thus, while we agree that it is another “factor to consider,” (Oral Argument Tr. at 51-52; Dissent at 33), we nonetheless hold that, in this case, seeking the advice of a “government attorney[]” does not offer much support to the Government‟s position. 52 dangerous for the reasons already articulated above: Law enforcement can always derive some constitutional principle from existing decisions — which is particularly true when they also look directly to a generalized baseline case like Katz. It cannot be that the good faith exception applies in every instance when the police act in reliance on such a selfderived principle. If it did, then all Fourth Amendment protections would be rendered ineffective — the police could intrude upon anyone‟s Fourth Amendment rights without fear of suppression merely by relying on a particularly broadsweeping, self-derived constitutional principle. We fear that accepting the Government‟s position, in effect, would lead to the good faith exception swallowing the exclusionary rule.24 24 The Dissent argues that Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41 — particularly the 2006 advisory committee notes to that rule — further supports a finding that the law enforcement officers in this case acted with an objectively good faith belief that their conduct was constitutional. (Dissent at 32.) In particular, the Dissent points to the following language from the 2006 advisory committee notes: “If . . . the officers intend to install and use [a tracking device] without implicating any Fourth Amendment rights, there is no need to obtain a warrant.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 41(b) advisory committee‟s note (2006) (citing Knotts, 460 U.S. 276). This language, however, stands for nothing more than the unremarkable proposition that the police need not obtain a warrant if their action does not violate the Fourth Amendment. Without our (or the Supreme Court‟s) having ruled on the matter, however, the police could not reasonably say that the use of a GPS tracker would not “implicat[e] . . . Fourth Amendment rights.” Indeed, even under the most generous rationale, this 53 Moreover, since such constitutionally reckless action was the Government‟s default choice in this case, we hold that applying the exclusionary rule aptly serves its intended purpose: to “deter future Fourth Amendment violations.” Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2426; see also id. at 2435 (Sotomayor, J., concurring) (“[W]hen police decide to conduct a search or seizure in the absence of case law (or other authority) specifically sanctioning such action, exclusion of the evidence obtained may deter Fourth Amendment violations . . . .”). The police practice at issue here effectively disregarded the possibility that we could find a GPS search to constitute a Fourth Amendment violation requiring a warrant. But a Fourth Amendment violation is a Fourth Amendment violation. While the police may feel free to act with impunity, confident in the illusory protection of non-binding precedent, each search could still be violating the Constitution. Thus, where we have not yet ruled on the constitutionality of a police tactic, law enforcement personnel have two choices: (a) assume that their conduct violates the Fourth Amendment and that we will require them to obtain a warrant, or (b) gamble, at the risk of having evidence excluded, that we will find no Fourth Amendment violation in language could only have favored the Government‟s argument if the GPS search occurred prior to the Maynard decision (i.e., before any circuit had suggested that GPS searches violated the Fourth Amendment). However, once the circuits split on the issue of whether using a GPS tracker constitutes a search, law enforcement officials were on notice that such devices could “implicat[e] . . . Fourth Amendment rights” and the commentary became borderline irrelevant for good faith purposes. 54 a particular situation.25 This is in line with the Supreme Court‟s suggestion that law enforcement officials should be incentivized to “err on the side of constitutional behavior.” United States v. Johnson, 457 U.S. 537, 561 (1982).26 25 We do not hold, of course, that the police can never make assumptions about our future Fourth Amendment rulings. We merely hold that where law enforcement personnel choose to take the constitutional analysis into their own hands, they effectively do so without a safety net: If their analysis is correct and we ultimately affirm the constitutionality of a search, then the police are rewarded with full use of any evidence derived from the search. If their analysis is wrong, however, and the search is ultimately held to be unconstitutional, then the police cannot avoid the cost of suppression by relying on the good faith exception. Just as the police enjoy the benefits when they are correct, so, too, do they bear the costs when they are wrong. Of course, the police can avoid this entire issue by requesting a warrant in the first instance. 26 Johnson addressed retroactive application of Fourth Amendment decisions. In discussing the matter, the Court stated: If, as the Government argues, all rulings resolving unsettled Fourth Amendment questions should be nonretroactive, then, in close cases, law enforcement officials would have little incentive to err on the side of constitutional behavior. Official awareness of the dubious constitutionality of a practice would be counterbalanced by official certainty that, so long as the Fourth Amendment law in the area remained unsettled, evidence obtained through the questionable practice would be excluded only in the one case definitively resolving 55 Excluding the evidence in this case would incentivize just that and would therefore result in “appreciable deterrence” of future Fourth Amendment violations. Leon, 468 U.S. at 909 (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, heeding the Supreme Court‟s views in Herring and Davis, and after considering the Government‟s various arguments, we find that the “deterrent effect of suppression [in this case is] substantial and outweigh[s] any harm to the justice system.” Herring, 555 U.S. at 147. The police acted in the face of unsettled law at a time when courts were becoming more attuned to the argument that warrantless GPS surveillance violated the Fourth Amendment. Excluding the evidence here will incentivize the police to err on the side of constitutional behavior and help prevent future Fourth Amendment violations. We therefore conclude that the police actions taken here do not qualify under the good faith exception and hold that the exclusionary rule should apply in this case.27 the unsettled question. Failure to accord any retroactive effect to Fourth Amendment rulings would encourage police or other courts to disregard the plain purport of our decisions and to adopt a let‟s-wait-until-it‟s-decided approach. Johnson, 457 U.S. at 561 (footnote and internal quotation marks omitted). 27 It bears noting that we do not deal here with a situation where some on-point binding precedent exists. That is, we are not presented with a case wherein law enforcement personnel were asked to apply on-point binding appellate law to a new factual scenario. Indeed, we recognize that applying 56 V. STANDING AND THE KATZIN BROTHERS Fourth Amendment rights are personal rights, and a defendant seeking to suppress evidence must therefore demonstrate a violation of his own Fourth Amendment rights before he can be granted any form of relief. See Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U.S. 83, 88 (1998); United States v. Mosley, 454 F.3d 249, 253 (3d Cir. 2006). Thus, having held that the District Court rightly suppressed the evidence found in Harry Katzin‟s van, we must now consider whether all three of the brothers had standing to challenge the admissibility of this evidence. The Government would have us divide the stop into two distinct incidents: (1) the stop of Harry Katzin and (2) the stop of Mark and Michael Katzin, with each stop presenting a different constitutional situation. For the reasons discussed below, we hold that the stop of Harry Katzin‟s van must be treated as a single incident implicating the Fourth Amendment rights of all three brothers and, consequently, we find that all three had standing. existing precedential frameworks to subtle factual permutations is something that police officers — and other law enforcement personnel — do all the time. We have no occasion (or desire) to curtail such practices in this opinion. Thus, for example, we do not purport to limit the ability of an officer to decide whether a particular situation gives rise to exigent circumstances while standing outside an apartment door with suspicious sounds emanating from within. Such a case could lead to a different outcome under the Herring and Davis balancing test given that, unlike here, the officer would not be leaping recklessly into an unexplored constitutional situation. 57 We begin by stating the obvious: There is not, nor can there be, any dispute as to whether Harry Katzin — as the owner of the van — has standing to challenge the constitutionality of the GPS search as well as the stop and subsequent search of his van, and to seek suppression of any evidence discovered within the vehicle. Indeed, the Government concedes as much. (Appellant Br. at 69.) Certainly, then, the District Court rightly suppressed the evidence as against Harry Katzin. The Government does challenge the standing of Mark and Michael Katzin. (Id. at 67-74.) Since “a search of a car does not implicate the rights of non-owner passengers,” the Government contends that such passengers are “generally held to lack „standing‟ to object to evidence discovered in a search of a vehicle.” Mosley, 454 F.3d at 253 (citing Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 147 (1978)). This much is true. However, we have also held that “when a vehicle is illegally stopped by the police, no evidence found during the stop may be used by the government against any occupant of the vehicle unless the government can show that the taint of the illegal stop was purged.” Id. at 251.28 28 We explicitly noted in Mosley that courts “should not be distracted by the fact that this case involves evidence found in a car.” Mosley, 454 F.3d at 253. As Mosley explained, the constitutional violation stems not from the “search of the car . . . [but] the seizure of [the passenger].” Id. at 253 & n.6 (“[A] Fourth Amendment seizure of every occupant occurs the moment that vehicle is pulled over by the police.”) The same is true of the case at bar: while the police did search Harry Katzin‟s van, this was done only after pulling the van to the side of the road, thereby “seizing” all three brothers. 58 This Court in United States v. Mosley considered the illegal stop and subsequent search of a vehicle carrying three individuals, during the course of which the police discovered several firearms from the car. We held that the stop and subsequent search of the car was to be treated as a single event, thereby rejecting an approach that would split the inquiry between several “individual constitutional violations, each with [its own] victim, each of whom may seek to suppress only the fruits of the violation of his individual rights.” Id. at 257-58. In part, this conclusion was occasioned by our holding that “[t]he relationship between the seizure of a passenger in a moving vehicle, which necessarily occurs when that vehicle is stopped by the police, and the subsequent discovery of evidence during that stop, is one of ineluctable and undeniable correlation.” Id. at 266. Additionally, while we acknowledged that “Fourth Amendment rights are personal rights,” we also expressly rejected “blind adherence to a phrase which at most has superficial clarity and which conceals underneath that thin veneer all of the problems of line drawing which must be faced in any conscientious effort to apply the Fourth Amendment.” Id. at 267 (quoting Rakas, 439 U.S. at 147). In light of our decision in Mosley, Mark and Michael Katzin argue that they have standing to challenge the admissibility of evidence seized from Harry Katzin‟s van by virtue of being subjected to an illegal stop that thereby rendered any evidence discovered in Harry Katzin‟s van fruit of the poisonous tree. Id. at 256 (“Where the traffic stop itself is illegal, it is simply impossible for the police to obtain the challenged evidence without violating the passenger‟s Fourth Amendment rights.”) We agree.29 29 It bears noting that Mark and Michael Katzin challenge the 59 True, precedent exists to support the proposition that an individual cannot challenge the legality of a search which was executed based on information obtained as a consequence of some illegal search or seizure of a third party. See, e.g., United States v. Chase, 692 F.2d 69, 70-71 (9th Cir. 1982). Such holdings are premised on the principle underlying the Government‟s position: Fourth Amendment rights “are personal and may be enforced by exclusion of evidence only by one whose own legal rights and interests were infringed by the search and seizure.” Id. (discussing Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128). The presence of Mosley, however, alters this analysis. The Government effectively contends that we must treat the stop of Harry Katzin‟s van as constituting two stops: The first, a stop (i.e., seizure) of Harry Katzin himself as a result of the GPS search. The second, a stop of Mark and Michael Katzin based on the probable cause developed through use of information derived from the GPS search. The Government would have us evaluate the legality and attendant Fourth Amendment consequences (if any) of each stop individually. We rejected this individualized approach in Mosley, holding instead that “an illegal traffic stop of a car occupied by a driver and a passenger [constitutes] a single constitutional violation, with [multiple] victims, each of whom can seek to suppress all fruits of that violation.” Mosley, 454 F.3d at 257-58; id. at 267 (“It defies common stop of Harry Katzin‟s van, not the GPS search itself. That in the course of challenging the stop this Court must necessarily consider the constitutionality of the GPS search is merely incidental: Mark and Michael seek to vindicate their own rights, not those of their brother. 60 sense and common experience to transmute one action into three, and we will not endorse a Fourth Amendment approach that relies on such a transmutation.”) In effect, then, the illegality of the stop as it related to Harry Katzin is extended to his brothers (passengers). Consequently, we hold that Mark and Michael had standing to contest the stop and that the District Court rightly suppressed the evidence as to all three brothers. VI. CONCLUSION For the reasons discussed above, we will affirm the District Court‟s suppression of evidence discovered inside of Harry Katzin‟s van. 61