Opinion ID: 1927291
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: failure to decide probable cause

Text: When reviewing the validity of a search based on a search warrant, the preferred practice, for a trial court as well as for an appellate court, is to first determine if the warrant contains probable cause and, if not, then determine if there was good faith adequate to justify the search under United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984). By first determining whether the warrant contained probable cause, appellate courts will give guidance both to lower courts and to law enforcement agencies. The majority may be conveying the message that judges do not have to make difficult decisions concerning probable cause; if the probable cause issue is difficult for a judge to decide, the judge may simply conclude that police officers applying for the warrant, who presumably know less about probable cause than judges, must have acted with objective good faith. If other judges reviewing search warrants follow our lead, the determination of probable cause may become an unnecessary anachronism. A reviewing judge will merely have to ascertain if the search warrant is so totally lacking in any indicia of probable cause that there could be no objective good faith by the applicant. There is also the danger that some judges or magistrates may follow this Court's approach to the instant case when they issue search warrants and not feel the need to carefully analyze whether probable cause exists as long as the police are acting in good faith. This danger will be even more likely to occur if judges and magistrates believe that the adequacy of the probable cause for the search warrant will not be reviewed or scrutinized. At the very least, we should explain to other judges reviewing and issuing search warrants with difficult probable cause issues like the one side-stepped by this Court today that they should not follow the approach of this State's highest Court to merely look to the good faith of the police officers seeking the warrant.