Opinion ID: 1917628
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: did the officers rely on settled law?

Text: The government argues that a substantial majority of those informed in constitutional law would have concluded that, as of the time of Debruhl's arrest, Belton, as commonly interpreted, permitted the search and seizure directed at Debruhl. Accordingly, says the government, whether Gant was a clarification [37] of Belton, as Justice Stevens opined for the majority, or an overruling, [38] as Justice Alito wrote for the four dissenters, it was enough of a surprise that Officers Eglund and Cepeda could not be faulted for acting in accord with Belton's traditional interpretation and searching Debruhl's passenger compartment. Their behavior, concludes the government, was objectively reasonable, and thus in good faith, consistent with the exclusionary rule exception announced in United States v. Leon . [39] It is not possible to answer this ultimate, good-faith question without understanding in more detail how police-officer reliance on appellate opinions works, and whether these opinions would provide the settled law justifying a search that, say, the clear authority of a warrant offers. First, how is settled law defined? Is it merely the applicable rule, such as Justice Stewart's bright-line articulation of the auto compartment search in Belton? What if the rule is quite general, such as the totality of the circumstances formula for finding probable to cause to arrest based on an informant's tip in Illinois v. Gates ? [40] Or, focusing more broadly, is settled law always an applicable rule as applied to a particular pattern of facts, such that an appellate opinion will not reflect settled law for good-faith exception purposes unless the facts are close, in all material respects, to those confronted by the police officer? Second, what appellate opinions are relevant for determining settled law? Only those in the officer's own jurisdiction? What if opinions from this court and from the D.C. Circuit germane to the search are in conflict? What about opinions from other jurisdictions more directly applicable to the facts of the officer's case? Do Supreme Court opinions in tension with those in the officer's local jurisdiction undermine the judicial authority on which the officer would otherwise rely? How do Supreme Court hints, through concurrences and dissents showing dissatisfaction with the Court's own previous rulings, factor inif at all? In short, what is the jurisprudential universe from which a police officer is to discern settled law, applicable to the anticipated search, that would justify the good-faith exception to suppression of evidence seized unlawfully? The discussion begins with Chimel v. California , [41] governing warrantless searches incident to arrest. The Court held in Chimel that police officers may conduct such searches only within the space under the suspect's immediate control, defined as the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence. [42] That test became problematic for searches of vehicles incident to the arrest of the driver or other occupants in the vehicle, the issue before the Court in Belton.
In Belton, after stopping the car for speeding, a police officer came upon four men in the car and, while conversing with them, smelled burnt marijuana and saw an envelope inside the vehicle, which he associated with that substance. [43] The officer ordered all four out of the car, placed them under arrest for unlawful possession of marijuana, patted each of them down, split them into four separate locations on the Thruway, and searched the passenger compartment. [44] There he found marijuana in the envelope and cocaine in a jacket on the back seat belonging to Belton, who moved to suppress that evidence after his indictment for criminal possession of a controlled substance. [45] The New York Court of Appeals reversed the lower courts' denial of Belton's suppression motion, ruling that a warrantless search of the zippered pockets of an unaccessible jacket may not be upheld as a search incident to a lawful arrest where there is no longer any danger that the arrestee or a confederate might gain access to the article. [46] The Supreme Court reversed, announcing a bright line rule intended to approximate, as closely as possible, the scope of a search permitted by Chimel. Wrote Justice Stewart: [C]ourts have found no workable definition of `the area within the immediate control of the arrestee' when that area arguably includes the interior of an automobile and the arrestee is its recent occupant. . . . Accordingly, we hold that when a policeman has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile, he may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of that automobile. [47]
Years later, in United States v. Harris, [48] this court applied Belton to a situation in which police officers stopped a car for running a red light. After discovering that the driver did not possess a valid driver's license, the officers arrested him for that offense, searched and handcuffed him, and locked him in the police cruiser. [49] The two passengers were then ordered out of the car. [50] As the front passenger began to step out of the car, one of the officers saw a handgun at the passenger's feet. The officers looked further and found a bag containing ammunition on the floorboard between the passenger's legs. [51] After the front passenger, Harris, had been indicted for weapons offenses, the motions judge granted his motion to suppress, ruling that the officers had no basis for searching the vehicle after [the driver's] arrest for a traffic violation, nor did the officers reasonably fear for their safety. [52] Furthermore, the search had come well after the arrest of the driver and was therefore not contemporaneous with `potentially threatening circumstances confronting the officer.' [53] We reversed, relying on Belton and an earlier decision of this court, Staten v. United States, [54] where we had affirmed a conviction for weapons offenses based on a search of an automobile's glove compartment after the driver (arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol) and two passengers had been removed from the vehicle. None of the three was sequestered in a patrol car before the search. Harris focused primarily on the contemporaneous incident language in Belton [55] while Staten dealt mainly with the passenger's contention that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the glove compartment where the gun was found. Each, therefore, was what we shall call a pure Belton case in that both concerned searches and seizures of evidence before all occupants of the car had been removed and secured; as in Belton, the risk to police safety and loss of evidence had not entirely abated at the time of the search.
Cases in other jurisdictions began to address the question whether Belton's bright-line rule was being stretched too far, in derogation of Chimel, when passenger compartments were searched after all the occupants of a car had been handcuffed and locked in a squad car away from their vehicle. [56] At the time of the search, could these sequestered occupants still be deemed to occupy space, as Chimel required, under their immediate control, that is, the area from within which [the occupants] might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence? [57] Courts began to say No. [58] That question, as we have seen, eventually came to the Supreme Court in Gant, where a 5-to-4 majority also answered No. For the Court, Justice Stevens wrote: The safety and evidentiary justifications underlying Chimel's reaching-distance rule determine Belton's scope. Accordingly, we hold that Belton does not authorize a vehicle search incident to a recent occupant's arrest after the arrestee has been secured and cannot access the interior of the vehicle.[ [59] ] Because Debruhl had been arrested for a traffic violation, handcuffed, and held by police officers away from his car while it was searched, the government does not contest that, under Gant, the search violated the Fourth Amendment.
Five years before Debruhl's arrest, a Supreme Court majority in Thornton v. United States [60] had signaled its unease with Belton. The supposed bright line rule was cracking; its application had become uncertain. In Thornton, decided in 2004, police officers on patrol who were suspicious of a passing car discovered, after a radio check, that the tags and the car did not match. [61] Before the officers could stop the car, the driver pulled into a parking lot and got out of the car. [62] The officers approached and arrested the driver, patted him down, and found marijuana and cocaine. [63] The police handcuffed him, put him in the patrol car, then searched his car and found a handgun. [64] In affirming the denial of the motion to suppress, the Supreme Court rejected the defense argument that a Belton search was limited to situations in which the police initiated contact with a suspect while he was still in the car. [65] On the facts, therefore, Thornton reflects an extension of Belton (although not on the security issue addressed in Gant ). In reaching its result, however, the Thornton Court fractured, with one justice concurring dubitante, [66] two justices concurring only in the judgment on an alternative theory, [67] and two justices dissenting. [68] A Court majority, therefore, concluded that Belton, as commonly interpreted, had come to undermine the traditional limitation on searches incident to arresta limitation that Belton's bright line rule had supposedly been fashioned to protect. Without doubt, a Court majority telegraphed its belief that Belton lay on a shaky foundation, [69] had become a swollen rule, [70] indeed a rule stretched beyond its breaking point. [71] In short, by 2004 five sitting justices had strongly advocated either revision or abandonment of Belton, with some pointing out the very flaws stressed five years later in the Court's corrective decision in Gant. Careful Court watchers could not have failed to notice. We hasten to add that we are not at all suggesting that these ruminations from a majority of the justices amount to a formal rejection of Belton. Thornton's interpretation of Belton remained good law until the Court itself ruled in Gant. [72] We cite the justices' disquiet, however, simply to demonstrate that bright-line rules do not easily remain radiant. Although Belton was announced as a bright-line rule intended for simple, clear cut application, it is evident from Belton's history that such rules are often likely to remain truly bright line only for a limited period of time as factual scenarios test their limits. [73] Belton has become a classic case of a rule beclouded over time by exceptions generated by unique facts that pushed decisions beyond the bright line licenseas evidenced by the three federal circuits that anticipated Gant. [74] Consequently, the likelihood of a police officer's finding settled law attributable to Belton has diminished over time as new factual scenarios outpace Belton -type decisions that do not quite tell an officer what is, and is not, allowed in the new situation the officer faces. Belton's rule is not yet as amorphous a rule as those reflecting the totality of the circumstances or excusing the warrant requirement for exigent circumstances. But it has been heading in that opaque direction; it has been losing its currency. Accordingly, an appellate court confronted by the government's argument that the good-faith exception applies in a particular case Belton -type or otherwisemust be very careful in appraising whether a police officer has relied on truly settled law in the jurisdiction meaning settled as to the material facts at issue. Two federal circuits have recently applied that strict limitation when applying the good-faith exception. United States v. Davis [75] concerned a pre- Gant search of an automobile after all the occupants had been secured with handcuffs and placed in a patrol car. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, ruling after Gant came down, applied the exception and allowed admission of the seized firearm. The court stressed, however, that the governing law in this circuit unambiguously allowed Sergeant Miller to search the car. [76] Added the court: Relying on a court of appeals' well-settled and unequivocal precedent is analogous to relying on a statute [citing Krull ]. [77] In United States v. McCane, [78] a similar case concerning suspects secured in a patrol car, the Tenth Circuit emphasized that the police officers, in seizing a firearm from the occupants' car, had relied on settled case law factually indistinguishable from the instant case. [79] To repeat: there is a crucial predicate that must be satisfied before the warrantless search of an automobile under Belton law can be a candidate for the good-faith exception. The tribunal's interpretation of the Supreme Court's rule on which the officer relies must be settled as applied to all the material facts the officer faces. Short of satisfying that strict requirement i.e., a requirement of explicit protection or cover from the court on which the officer relieswe cannot say that the officer's search would be objectively reasonable enough for the good faith exception to apply. Otherwise that officer, conducting a search later held unlawful by the Supreme Court, would be in no better position than that of the officer in a typical mistake-of-law situation who arguably makes a reasonable, but ultimately incorrect, guess at the lawfulness of the search. It is important to emphasize that we are not defining settled law to mean case law that has addressed facts identical to those confronting the officer who conducts the search. We are referring, rather, only to the material factsto the handful of variables, material to ascertaining a lawful Belton search, that police officers permissibly take into account. These include the degree to which the search is contemporaneous with the arrest, [80] the proximity of the occupant to the vehicle, both temporally and spatially, when the officer makes a lawful arrest; [81] the need to search the vehicle in relation to the offense that justified the stop, [82] and, the extent of sequestering the suspect and other occupants in relation to the search. [83]
The government argues that the police officers who seized the incriminating evidence from Debruhl's car satisfied the good-faith test by taking objectively reasonable [84] action in doing so. They adhered, says the government, to the traditional understanding of the Supreme Court's authoritative decision in Belton and this court's application of that authority in Harris [85] and Staten [86] case law in effect at the time of Debruhl's arrest a few months before Gant was decided. Even according to Justice Stevens for the Gant majority, notes the government, Belton has been widely understood to allow a vehicle search incident to the arrest of a recent occupant even if there is no possibility the arrestee could gain access to the vehicle at the time of the search. [87] Therefore, says the government, exclusion of the evidence from Debruhl's trial would not deter police misconduct because the officers, applying the correct law at the timeindeed, engaging in a practice they never expected to be invalidated [88] did nothing wrong. Counsel for the government was asked at oral argument whether the universe of appellate opinions that yields the settled law for this case is limited to the jurisprudence of this court (as we have interpreted Belton ), or embraces the larger universe that includes relevant case law from other jurisdictions, as well as Supreme Court developments. Counsel replied that this court is the proper source of settled law for good-faith purposes (although he acknowledged that the relevant universe would not necessarily be limited to local case law if it was so obviously incorrect that the police should favor sound law found elsewherea remote possibility, he said, not presented here). We agree with the government: we need not definitively resolve how broadly the universe of settled law might extend in unusual circumstances; we are satisfied that Belton, as interpreted by this court as of the time of the officers' search, is the law on which this case should turn. [89] We do not believe that our case law supports the government's position in light of the strict requirements for appraising settled law for good-faith exception purposes. If we focus carefully on this court's Belton decisions before Gant, it is possible to saycontrary to the government's contention that this court might well have held the search of Debruhl's car unlawful and the evidence inadmissible. We say this because Debruhl's facts differ from those in Staten and Harris in a legally significant way, indeed in the very way that became determinative in Gant. In neither Staten nor Harris had all the occupants been removed from the car and secured with handcuffs before the search; they were, as we have noted, pure Belton cases, legally indistinguishable from Belton on the facts. [90] In Debruhl's case, like Gant's, all occupants of the car had been removed and secured before the search, a factual distinction from Belton which, as we have repeated, caused three federal circuits before Gant to rule that Belton did not apply. [91] Therefore, if Debruhl's counsel had litigated his motion to suppress before Gant was decided, counsel might well have persuaded the Superior Court, and then this court, that on the facts here the law was unsettled in this jurisdiction; that Staten and Harris were therefore not controlling; and that in light of the case law from other jurisdictions reflecting Chimel's limitation on Belton's reach, Belton should not be read to permit the search of Debruhl's car. [92] (In this hypothetical case, of course, as explained in Part IV., the officers would have relied on a mistake of law, and the good-faith exception would not have applied.) We are not saying to a certainty that, before Gant, every division of this court would unanimously have found an unlawful search based on the facts here. We are saying, however, that the facts matter in determining what is settled law, and that the police officer's reliance on Staten and Harris on pure Belton  casesto justify the search of Debruhl's car would have been reliance on relevant but not on settled law; the case was one of first impression in this jurisdiction. All things considered, therefore, it is not possible to conclude that Officers Eglund and Cepeda relied on settled law authorizing their search of Debruhl's car. Even if, as Justice Stevens acknowledged, Belton may have been widely understood [93] to allow warrantless searches of vehicle passenger compartments without limitation incident to an arrest, momentum against such a sweeping interpretation on facts such as those in Debruhl's case had been accelerating in the courts for years before his arrest. And no decision by this court had held that a police officer had a right, under Belton, to search a car after all its occupants had been removed and secured.