Opinion ID: 1917628
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: mistake of law v. good-faith exception

Text: Proponents of the good-faith exception over the years have assumed that it would apply in all Fourth Amendment cases, not just in situations where retroactive application of a Fourth Amendment ruling is at issue. Justice White, for example, has written without reference to retroactivity that the exclusionary rule should be more generally modified to permit the introduction of evidence obtained in the reasonable good-faith belief that a search or seizure was in accord with the Fourth Amendment. [32] That generalization, however, reflects serious overstatement. When asking whether the good-faith exception is available to a police officer who relied on particular case law to justify the warrantless search of an automobile, it is important to recognize that we are considering only a situation in which the Supreme Court has modified a settled rule of law on which the officer relied before the high Court ruled. The exception is not available in the typical mistake-of-law scenario confronted regularly in the local trial and appellate courts; and it is very important to understand the distinction here. If the good-faith exception is not properly circumscribed, it can legitimate the very dangers that mistake-of-law analysis has been developed to prevent.
Mistake-of-law cases do not involve modifications whether clarifications or overrulingsby a higher court. More simply, they concern whether an officer's unlawful actions can be excused by a good-faith but erroneous understanding of the law (without the additional complication of a Supreme Court intervention). For example, assume that Debruhl's case came to this court before Gant, and that the arresting officersaware, presumably, of this court's decisions applying Belton  searched Debruhl's car after escorting him away from it in handcuffs. [33] Further assume that when the case came before this court, it was a case of first impression in the sense that this fact pattern (a secured suspect) had not appeared for decision in any of our previous Belton -type cases. And assume, finally, that we decided (foreshadowing Gant ) that the officers had relied improperly on Belton, that the search had violated the Fourth Amendment, and thus that the evidence seized must be suppressed. In this situation, the officer's mistake of law in relying on Belton -type cases that did not consider the crucial, factual distinction between Debruhl and Belton would not excuse an unconstitutional search or prevent the resulting suppression of evidence. This is true even if we were to conclude that the officers, in light of earlier cases, had a reasonable if not conclusive basis for believing that a judge would rule in their favor. As to the facts the officers confronted, the law was not settled until this court ruled, contrary to the officers' expectations. Courts are explicit: The justifications for the good-faith exception do not extend to situations in which police officers have interpreted ambiguous precedent or relied on their own extrapolations from existing caselaw  (emphasis added). [34] To create an exception here would defeat the purpose of the exclusionary rule, for it would remove the incentive for police to make certain that they properly understand the law that they are entrusted to enforce and obey. [35] To be clear: the good-faith exception cannot excuse a police officer's mistake of law; the exception applies only when a Supreme Court ruling upsets clearly settled law on which the officer had reasonably relied before the high Court's decision placed the mistake of law on the lower court, not on the officer.
We turn now to the good-faith exception as it applies to the situation actually before us: Debruhl's case came to this court after Gant. The government argues that the officers acted in reasonably objective (good faith) reliance on Belton and this court's interpretations of it. If our cases interpreting Belton, as the government suggests, had settled that the officers were allowed to conduct a warrantless search on the facts they encountered in Debruhl  that is, if our case law was not ambiguous as to that situationthen, theoretically, the test for the good-faith exception would have been met. The law would have been settled as explicitly as the permission reflected in a judicially-approved warrant ( Leon ) or an unambiguous statute ( Krull ), because all material facts presented in Debruhl would have been congruent with those in which previous warrantless searches had received this court's blessing. On the other hand, if our case law on which the officers relied was ambiguous, as applied to the factual scenario at issue in Debruhl, then the officers would not have relied on settled law, and the good-faith exception would not apply. [36] Indeed, if the exception were to apply in this situation, we would be legitimating a mistake-of-law basis for the good-faith exception. More specifically, if this court were to grant the officer slack in determining what facts were material, we would be delegating to the officer, not reserving to the court, interpretation of the facts and law controlling application of the Fourth Amendment and the exclusionary rule. Put still another way, this court would be allowing the officer to rely on relevant, but not controlling, case law to authorize admission of evidence that the court itself might well have suppressed before the Supreme Court announced modification of Belton in Gant. We turn, therefore, to the question whether the officers here relied on settled law that, before Gant, would have permitted their search of Debruhl's car.