Opinion ID: 1911026
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Good Faith Exception

Text: The State next raises the argument that even if the warrant is invalid, the fruits of the search should be admissible based on the good faith exception of United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 909, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 3413, 82 L.Ed.2d 677, 689-90 (1984). In assessing Fourth Amendment violations, this court is bound by federal law. See Jamison, 482 N.W.2d at 413. Because the United States has seen fit to recognize a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule, we consider its effect on the violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution found in division IV of this opinion. We also note that we have not yet recognized a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule under the Iowa Constitution, article I section 8, and have held that there is no good faith exception to our statutory requirements for issuance of a search warrant under Iowa Code sections 808.3 and 808.4 (1995). See State v. Beckett, 532 N.W.2d 751, 755 (Iowa 1995). In United States v. Leon , the Court reiterated the following: The deterrent purpose of the exclusionary rule necessarily assumes that the police have engaged in willful, or at the very least negligent, conduct which has deprived the defendant of some right. By refusing to admit evidence gained as a result of such conduct, the courts hope to instill in those particular investigating officers, or in their future counterparts, a greater degree of care toward the rights of an accused. Where the official action was pursued in complete good faith, however, the deterrence rationale loses much of its force. Leon, 468 U.S. at 919, 104 S.Ct. at 3418, 82 L.Ed.2d at 696 (quoting United States v. Peltier, 422 U.S. 531, 539, 95 S.Ct. 2313, 2318, 45 L.Ed.2d 374, 382 (1975)). The Court continued to state that the basis for the exclusionary rule would not be present in cases where the officer had acted with a good faith belief the search was constitutional: If the purpose of the exclusionary rule is to deter unlawful police conduct, then evidence obtained from a search should be suppressed only if it can be said that the law enforcement officer had knowledge, or may properly be charged with knowledge, that the search was unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 919, 104 S.Ct. at 3419, 82 L.Ed.2d at 696 (quoting Peltier, 422 U.S. at 542, 95 S.Ct. at 2320, 45 L.Ed.2d at 374). The State claims the evidence seized from Thomas should be admitted under this rule based on the officers' good faith reliance on the warrant they obtained. We do not believe the good faith exception of Leon to be applicable to this situation. As this court has previously recognized, Leon does not provide an across-the-board reward for good faith. Jamison, 482 N.W.2d at 413; see also State v. Iowa Dist. Court, 472 N.W.2d 621, 624-25 (Iowa 1991). Under Leon, exclusion of such evidence is only to be denied on an ad hoc basis in situations in which the officer's good faith motivation casts doubt on the deterrent effect of an exclusionary rule in the particular situation.  Id. Commentators have also likened this rule to a case-by-case approach where exclusion is only denied where a refusal to do so would not serve the purposes of the Fourth Amendment. See Abraham S. Goldstein, The Search Warrant, the Magistrate, and Judicial Review, 62 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 1173, 1204-05 (1987); Donald Dripps, Living With Leon, 95 Yale L.J. 906 (1986). The Court itself in Leon even set forth certain situations in which evidence should still be excluded. One of these situations exists when the warrant is so overbroad as to be facially deficient. Leon, 468 U.S. at 923, 104 S.Ct. at 3421, 82 L.Ed.2d at 699. The warrant in this case, authorizing the search of all persons located inside the premises ... at the time the Warrant is signed, and departing thereafter was clearly facially deficient on this basis. Another situation in which Leon calls for exclusion is when the warrant application is so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable. Id. Again, as the warrant application is utterly lacking any allegations to establish a nexus between the defendant and any alleged criminal activity, it is certainly lacking sufficient indicia of probable cause so as to make official belief in its validity unreasonable. A reasonably experienced officer could not have reasonably believed in good faith a search of everyone present in a legally licensed public establishment during normal business hours would be valid under the Fourth Amendment.