Opinion ID: 2629109
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: good-faith exception for objectively reasonable reliance on a statute

Text: We interpret § 15 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights to provide the same protection from unlawful government searches and seizures as the Fourth Amendment to the federal Constitution. Henning, 289 Kan. at 145, 209 P.3d 711; State v. Wood, 190 Kan. 778, 788, 378 P.2d 536 (1963). [R]egardless of whether the statute is challenged under the federal or state Constitution, we consider ourselves bound by United States Supreme Court precedent. Henning, 289 Kan. at 145, 209 P.3d 711. In the past, this court has recognized that while it could extend state constitutional protections under § 15 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights beyond the federal guarantees provided by the Fourth Amendment, it has declined to do so. Hoeck, 284 Kan. at 463, 163 P.3d 252; State v. Schultz, 252 Kan. 819, 824, 850 P.2d 818 (1993). As noted above, the United States Supreme Court has held the exclusionary rule may not apply to evidence obtained by police acting in objectively reasonable reliance upon a statute that was subsequently found to violate the Fourth Amendment. Krull, 480 U.S. at 349, 107 S.Ct. 1160 (The approach used in Leon is equally applicable to the present case.). The Supreme Court reasoned that excluding evidence obtained when police are enforcing a statute that is later determined to be unconstitutional would not serve the rule's purpose because it would have no deterrent effect on law enforcement. 480 U.S. at 349, 107 S.Ct. 1160. The Krull Court explained: Unless a statute is clearly unconstitutional, an officer cannot be expected to question the judgment of the legislature that passed the law. If the statute is subsequently declared unconstitutional, excluding evidence obtained pursuant to it prior to such a judicial declaration will not deter future Fourth Amendment violations by an officer who has simply fulfilled his responsibility to enforce the statute as written. To paraphrase the Court's comment in Leon: `Penalizing the officer for the [legislature's] error, rather than his own, cannot logically contribute to the deterrence of Fourth Amendment violations.' [Citation omitted.] 480 U.S. at 349-50, 107 S.Ct. 1160. Beyond looking to the deterrent effect on police, the Supreme Court also rejected an argument that applying the exclusionary rule in this context would deter legislators from enacting unconstitutional statutes. It said; [W]e are not willing to assume now that there exists a significant problem of legislators who perform their legislative duties with indifference to the constitutionality of statutes they enact. 480 U.S. at 352 n. 8, 107 S.Ct. 1160. The Supreme Court also noted legislators had not previously been the focus of the judicially created exclusionary rule, that legislators' role in the criminal justice system was to enact laws for the purpose of establishing and perpetuating that system, and that legislators' deliberations about statutes were significantly different from the judgments made by law enforcement in combating crime. 480 U.S. at 351, 107 S.Ct. 1160. The Court then said: Before assuming office, state legislators are required to take an oath to support the Federal Constitution. [Citation omitted.] Indeed, by according laws a presumption of constitutional validity, courts presume that legislatures act in a constitutional manner. [Citations omitted.] 480 U.S. at 351, 107 S.Ct. 1160. Despite these assumptions, the Supreme Court was not blind to the possibility that situations might arise in which an obviously unconstitutional statute could be enacted by a legislature yielding to the temptation offered by the Court's good-faith exception. 480 U.S. at 366, 107 S.Ct. 1160 (O'Connor, J., joined by Brennan, Marshall, and Stevens, JJ., dissenting) (Providing legislatures a grace period during which the police may freely perform unreasonable searches in order to convict those who might have otherwise escaped creates a positive incentive to promulgate unconstitutional laws.). As a safeguard, the Krull majority required the good-faith exception to be dependent upon whether the officer could demonstrate objectively reasonable reliance on the statute at issue, explaining: A statute cannot support objectively reasonable reliance if, in passing the statute, the legislature wholly abandoned its responsibility to enact constitutional laws. Nor can a law enforcement officer be said to have acted in good-faith reliance upon a statute if its provisions are such that a reasonable officer should have known that the statute was unconstitutional. [Citation omitted.] As we emphasized in Leon, the standard of reasonableness we adopt is an objective one; the standard does not turn on the subjective good faith of individual officers. [Citation omitted.] 480 U.S. at 355, 107 S.Ct. 1160. In applying these principles to the facts in Krull to determine whether the officer's reliance on the statute in question was objectively reasonable, the Court noted that prior case law had supported similar statutes, the statute appeared to be aimed at a legitimate state purpose, and the constitutional infirmity with the statute was not sufficiently obvious as to render a police officer's reliance upon the statute objectively unreasonable. 480 U.S. at 358-59, 107 S.Ct. 1160. Based on these findings, the Supreme Court determined the officer relied, in objective good faith, on a statute that appeared legitimately to allow a warrantless search. 480 U.S. at 360, 107 S.Ct. 1160. We find our case law tying the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights, § 15 provisions to United States Supreme Court precedent compels our recognition of the good-faith exception articulated in Krull. Hoeck, 284 Kan. at 463, 163 P.3d 252; Schultz, 252 Kan. at 824, 850 P.2d 818. Krull is a logical extension of Leon, which we have not hesitated to apply in Kansas in the context of search warrants issued by a magistrate. And while we recognize that Justice O'Connor's concerns expressed in Krull are legitimate, the safeguards required by Krull for a court to examine whether law enforcement reliance on a particular statute was objective and reasonable under the circumstances militate against the possibility for legislative mischief that might seek to take unfair advantage of this exception. So with the determination made to recognize the good-faith exception articulated in Krull, we next consider in this case whether the officer could objectively and reasonably rely on K.S.A. 22-2501(c) for his warrantless search of Daniel's vehicle and purse.