Opinion ID: 2973671
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Panel Misconstrues Leon

Text: Starting at the beginning, Leon is not even directly on point in this case. As demonstrated above, Leon addressed a situation of entirely lawful police investigation culminating in good-faith reliance on a magistrate’s erroneous determination that probable cause existed to issue the search warrants. That is, there was (1) a lawful investigation, (2) an application for a warrant, (3) a magistrate’s determination that the affidavit contained probable case and the warrants were issued, (4) searches conducted and objective good-faith reliance on the magistrate’s determination, and (5) a court’s later determination that the magistrate erred in determining that the facts in the affidavit amounted to probable cause. In Leon, the police did not ever violate the law. They simply relied in good faith on a magistrate’s error. In this case, however, there was (1) first an illegal warrantless search of the defendant’s home, then (2) additional surveillance based on the information obtained as a result of the illegal search, and (3) a warrant application relying entirely on the evidence obtained as a result of the first illegal search and the fruits obtained therefrom. The panel’s decision fails to account for this crucial and determinative difference between Leon and the case before us. The second crucial error is the panel’s failure to distinguish, as Leon instructs, between errors by judges and magistrates, and errors by police officers. The deterrence rationale, Leon holds, is not applicable to errors by judges and magistrates. When police misconduct occurs, however, the deterrence rationale is at its apex. “Good faith is not a magic lamp for police officers to rub whenever they find themselves in trouble.” United States v. Reilly, 76 F.3d 1271, 1280 (2d Cir. 1996). In this case, the police conducted a warrantless and presumptively unconstitutional search No. 04-5887 United States v. McClain, et al. Page 5 of the defendant’s home. Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 585 (1980). This is a clear Fourth Amendment violation by police officers. Leon instructs us to pay “[c]lose attention” to the “remedial objectives” of the exclusionary rule, and apply it only in those cases where the purpose of deterrence can be furthered. Leon, 468 U.S. at 908, 918. This is precisely such a case.3 It is not, as Leon was, a case where “an officer acting with objective good faith has obtained a search warrant from a judge or magistrate and acted within its scope.” Id. at 920-21. The panel further errs in this respect by acknowledging the deterrence rationale — by paying lip service to it — but failing to discuss its relevance to this case. Instead, the panel decision provides the police with their magic lamp. Without going any further than Leon itself, the panel should have suppressed the evidence obtained during the illegal search of the defendant’s home. The panel notes, however, as have many courts, that an additional “wrinkle,” exists — reconciling the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine, see Nardone v. United States, 308 U.S. 338, 341 (1939); Segura v. United States, 468 U.S. 796, 804 (1984), with the good-faith exception. This is because the evidence obtained from the unconstitutional warrantless search of the home was used to conduct additional surveillance and ultimately in an affidavit seeking a warrant to search4 123 Imperial Point and five other properties identified through the investigation and surveillance. With this in mind, it is helpful to turn to our precedent and other courts’ precedent reconciling these two doctrines.