Opinion ID: 6110898
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Evolution of the Federal Good-Faith Exception

Text: The landmark decision establishing the federal good-faith exception was issued by the United States Supreme Court in United States v. Leon , 468 U.S. 897 , 913, 104 S.Ct. 3405 , 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984) (stating that the Court had not yet recognized any form of good-faith exception to the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule but that its evaluation of the costs and benefits of suppressing reliable physical evidence seized by officers reasonably relying on a warrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate leads to the conclusion that such evidence should be admissible in the prosecution's case in chief). In Leon , officers obtained a search warrant based on information provided by an unproven confidential informant. Id. at 901 , 104 S.Ct. 3405 . A thorough investigation ensued, after which officers obtained a facially valid search warrant for Leon's residence as well as residences belonging to other defendants. Id. at 901-02 , 104 S.Ct. 3405 . Based on the evidence recovered, Leon was indicted for conspiracy to possess and distribute cocaine and a variety of other criminal offenses. Id. at 902 , 104 S.Ct. 3405 . The defendants filed motions to suppress in the district court. Id. Although the trial court found that the officer had acted  in good faith, it nonetheless granted the motions. Id. at 903-04 , 104 S.Ct. 3405 . The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, concluding that the information in the affidavit was stale and also failed to establish the informant's reliability. Id. The United States Supreme Court granted the State's petition for writ of certiorari. The Leon Court noted that the exclusionary rule operates as 'a judicially created remedy designed to safeguard Fourth Amendment rights generally through its deterrent effect....'  Id. at 906 , 104 S.Ct. 3405 (quoting Calandra , 414 U.S. at 348 , 94 S.Ct. 613 ). In balancing the societal costs that accompany imposition of the exclusionary rule, the Court opined that the balancing approach that has evolved in various contexts-including criminal trials-'forcefully suggest[s] that the exclusionary rule 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.'  Id. at 909, 104 S.Ct. 3405 (quoting Gates , 462 U.S. at 255, 103 S.Ct. 2317 ). The Court, emphasizing that the purpose behind the exclusionary rule is the deterrent effect on police misconduct, stated, [W]here the officer's conduct is objectively reasonable, 'excluding the evidence will not further the ends of the exclusionary rule in any appreciable way; ... [e]xcluding the evidence can in no way affect his future conduct unless it is to make him less willing to do his duty.'  Id. at 919-20, 104 S.Ct. 3405 (quoting Stone v. Powell , 428 U.S. 465 , 539-40, 96 S.Ct. 3037 , 49 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1976) ) (White, J., dissenting). The Supreme Court has expanded the good-faith exception in other cases. In Massachusetts v. Sheppard , 468 U.S. 981 , 990, 104 S.Ct. 3424 , 82 L.Ed.2d 737 (1984), the Court declined to apply the exclusionary rule where a warrant was held invalid as a result of judge's clerical error, explaining, that  'the exclusionary rule was adopted to deter unlawful searches by police, not to punish the errors of magistrates and judges.'  Id. (quoting Illinois v. Gates , 462 U.S. 213 , 263, 103 S.Ct. 2317 , 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983) ) (White, J., concurring in judgment). In Illinois v. Krull , 480 U.S. 340 , 349-50, 107 S.Ct. 1160 , 94 L.Ed.2d 364 (1987), the Court extended the good-faith exception to searches conducted in reasonable reliance on subsequently invalidated statutes because legislators, like judicial officers, are not the focus of the rule. Later, reasonable reliance by police on erroneous information regarding an arrest warrant in a database maintained by judicial employees was held to not trigger the exclusionary rule. Arizona v. Evans , 514 U.S. 1 , 14, 115 S.Ct. 1185 , 131 L.Ed.2d 34 (1995). Herring , to be discussed at length infra , further extended Evans to apply to a warrant database that was maintained by police in a neighboring jurisdiction because isolated, nonrecurring police negligence ... lacks the culpability required to justify the harsh sanction of exclusion. Davis v. United States , 564 U.S. 229 , 239, 131 S.Ct. 2419 , 180 L.Ed.2d 285 (2011) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). In Davis , the Supreme Court expanded the good-faith exception and held that evidence obtained during a search conducted in reasonable reliance on binding precedent is not subject to the exclusionary rule. 564 U.S. at 241 , 131 S.Ct. 2419 . At the time of the vehicle stop and warrantless search, then-existing Supreme Court precedent permitted as constitutional contemporaneous vehicle searches incident to arrests of recent occupants of a vehicle. Id. at 235, 131 S.Ct. 2419 ; New York v. Belton , 453 U.S. 454 , 101 S.Ct. 2860 , 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981). During the pendency of the criminal case, the United States Supreme Court  released its opinion in Arizona v. Gant , 556 U.S. 332 , 129 S.Ct. 1710 , 173 L.Ed.2d 485 (2009), which called into question the Belton decision. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari and, in applying the good-faith exception to the facts, reiterated, We have stated before, and we reaffirm today, that the harsh sanction of exclusion 'should not be applied to deter objectively reasonable law enforcement activity.'  Davis , 564 U.S. at 241 , 131 S.Ct. 2419 (quoting Leon , 468 U.S. at 919, 104 S.Ct. 3405 ).