Opinion ID: 2738861
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Applying the Good Faith

Text: Exception To reiterate, the exclusionary rule is a prudential doctrine designed solely to deter future Fourth Amendment violations. Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2426. Marginal deterrence is, however, insufficient for suppression; rather, deterrence must be “appreciable,” Leon, 468 U.S. at 909, and outweigh the heavy social costs of suppressing reliable, probative evidence, Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2427. This balancing act pivots upon the fulcrum of the “flagrancy of the police misconduct” at issue. Id. (quoting Leon, 468 U.S. at 911). Thus, “[w]hen the police exhibit deliberate, reckless, or grossly negligent disregard for Fourth Amendment rights, the deterrent value of exclusion is strong and tends to outweigh the resulting costs.” Id. (quoting Herring, 555 U.S. at 144) (internal quotation marks omitted). However, “when the police act with an objectively reasonable good-faith belief that their conduct is lawful . . . the deterrence rationale loses much of its force and exclusion cannot pay its way.” Id. at 2427–28 (quoting Leon, 468 U.S. at 907 n.6, 909, 919) (internal quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, we must determine whether—on these particular facts—the agents acted with a good faith belief in the lawfulness of their conduct that was “objectively reasonable.” Id. If so, suppression is unwarranted. If, on the other hand, the agents “had knowledge, or may properly be charged with knowledge, that the search was unconstitutional 35 under the Fourth Amendment,” suppression is warranted. Krull, 480 U.S. at 348–49. When answering these questions, we consider “all of the circumstances” and confine our inquiry to the “objectively ascertainable question whether a reasonably well trained officer would have known that the search was illegal” in light of that constellation of circumstances. Leon, 468 U.S. at 922 n.23. We conclude that when the agents acted, they did so upon an objectively reasonable good faith belief in the legality of their conduct, and that the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule therefore applies. The constellation of circumstances that appeared to authorize their conduct included well settled principles of Fourth Amendment law as articulated by the Supreme Court, a near-unanimity of circuit courts applying these principles to the same conduct, and the advice of an AUSA pursuant to a DOJ-wide policy. Given this panoply of authority, we cannot say that a “reasonably well trained officer would have known that the search was illegal,” id., nor that the agents acted with “deliberate, reckless, or grossly negligent disregard for [Appellees’] Fourth Amendment rights,” Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2427 (quoting Herring, 555 U.S. at 144) (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, suppression is inappropriate because it would not result in deterrence appreciable enough to outweigh the significant social costs of suppressing reliable, probative evidence, upon which the Government’s entire case against Appellees turns. See Leon, 468 U.S. at 909.
Knotts and Karo are seminal cases on the intersection of electronic surveillance of vehicles and the Fourth 36 Amendment. Before Jones, their conclusion that the Fourth Amendment was not implicated by the installation and use of a beeper to surveil vehicles on public thoroughfares, and the rationale that supported it, was hornbook law. See, e.g., Aguiar, 737 F.3d at 261 (“Karo’s brushing off of the potential trespass fits logically with earlier Supreme Court decisions concluding that ‘the physical characteristics of an automobile and its use result in a lessened expectation of privacy therein.’” (quoting Class, 475 U.S. at 112)); Sparks, 711 F.3d at 67 (“Knotts was widely and reasonably understood to stand for the proposition that the Fourth Amendment simply was not implicated by electronic surveillance of public automotive movements . . . .”). The agents would have been objectively reasonable to conclude that monitoring Harry Katzin’s van was constitutional, in large part, because it fell squarely within Knotts and Karo’s well-accepted rationale. Their targets were “person[s] travelling in an automobile on public thoroughfares,” who had “no reasonable expectation of privacy in [their] movements from one place to another.” Knotts, 460 U.S. at 281. It is undisputed that Appellees “voluntarily convey[ed]” to any observer the “particular roads” over which they traveled, their “particular direction,” their stops, and their “final destination.” Id. at 281–82. At no time did the GPS permit the agents to monitor inside “a private residence” or other area “not open to visual surveillance.” Karo, 468 U.S. at 714, 721. Additionally, the agents would have been objectively reasonable to believe that installing the GPS device implicated no Fourth Amendment rights. The Supreme Court had repeatedly stated that persons do not enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy in the exterior of their vehicles. Class, 475 U.S. at 114; see also Cardwell, 417 U.S. at 591. It was 37 also objectively reasonable for the agents to believe that installing a GPS was safe from a trespass challenge. Katz clearly stated that Fourth Amendment inquiries did not “turn upon the presence or absence of a physical intrusion.” 389 U.S. at 353. The trespass doctrine had been “discredited.” Santillo, 507 F.2d at 632. The agents also benefitted from Supreme Court precedent addressing trespass in the context of electronic surveillance of vehicles on public roads. Although Karo did not address direct installation, its renunciation of the trespass theory was broad enough for agents reasonably to conclude that the installation was “only marginally relevant” to Appellees’ Fourth Amendment rights and alone was “neither necessary nor sufficient to establish a constitutional violation.” 468 U.S. at 712–13. They could have reasonably believed that the only constitutionally significant act they engaged in was monitoring. Id. at 713 (rejecting trespass theory and noting that privacy violation, if any, was “occasioned by the monitoring of the beeper”). And, as discussed, the agents had no reason to believe the monitoring was illegal.
The agents’ conduct also conformed to practices authorized by a “uniform treatment” of “continuous judicial approval” of warrantless GPS installation and use across the federal courts. See Peltier, 422 U.S. at 540–42 & n.8 (holding exclusionary rule inapplicable where illegal search was conducted in good faith reliance on, in part, holdings and 38 dicta of various courts of appeals).14 Specifically, when the agents acted, the Seventh,15 Eighth,16 and Ninth17 Circuits had all held that the installation of GPS or GPS-like devices upon the exterior of vehicles and their subsequent monitoring either was not a search or, at most, was a search but did not require a warrant.18 Their rationales were based on the same Supreme Court precedents we outline above, particularly Knotts. 14 Although Peltier was applying the “old retroactivity regime” of Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U.S. 618 (1965), Leon “explicitly relied on Peltier and imported its reasoning into the good-faith inquiry.” Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2431–32. 15 Garcia, 474 F.3d at 997–98. 16 Marquez, 605 F.3d at 609–10. 17 Pineda-Moreno, 591 F.3d at 1215–17; McIver, 186 F.3d at 1126–27. 18 The D.C. Circuit in Maynard broke from this consensus and held that prolonged GPS surveillance of the defendant’s vehicle “24 hours a day for four weeks” was a Fourth Amendment search. 615 F.3d at 555. The D.C. Circuit explicitly tailored its holding to the fact that surveillance of the defendant lasted for a month. Id. at 558, 560 (“Applying the foregoing analysis to the present facts, we hold the whole of a person’s movements over the course of a month is not actually exposed to the public . . . .”). It also relied exclusively on a reasonable expectation of privacy rationale, giving no hint at Jones’ revival of the trespass theory. Id. at 559–61. We cannot conclude that from this sole departure from the consensus of the courts of appeals “a reasonably well trained officer would [or should] have known” that the more limited GPS surveillance in this case was illegal. Leon, 468 U.S. at 922 n.23. 39 By considering these non-binding decisions in our good faith analysis, we do no more than did the Supreme Court in Peltier. There, the Court considered the “constitutional norm” established by the courts of appeals when determining whether an officer “had knowledge, or [could] properly be charged with knowledge, that [a] search was unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment.” Id. at 542 (“[U]nless we are to hold that parties may not reasonably rely upon any legal pronouncement emanating from sources other than this Court, we cannot regard as blameworthy those parties who conform their conduct to the prevailing . . . constitutional norm.”).19
Finally, the agents’ consultation with the AUSA also supports our conclusion that a reasonable agent would have believed in good faith that the installation and surveillance of Harry Katzin’s vehicle was legal. Of course, the AUSA approved their conduct. But more importantly, the AUSA’s advice was given pursuant to a DOJ-wide policy— presumably based upon the legal landscape we describe above—that the agents’ conduct did not require a warrant. 19 This Court has also previously noted—albeit in limited ways—supportive out-of-circuit decisions in its good faith analyses. See, Pavulak, 700 F.3d at 664 (holding that officer relied in good faith upon warrant and noting that “the affidavit’s allegations would have been sufficient in the Eighth Circuit at the time”); Duka, 671 F.3d at 347 n.12 (concluding that objective reasonableness of reliance on statute was “bolstered” by out-of-circuit decisions reviewing particular provision and declaring it constitutional). 40 Prosecutors are, of course, not “neutral judicial officers.” Leon, 468 U.S. at 917. We do not place undue weight on this factor, but we have previously considered it in our good faith analysis. Tracey, 597 F.3d at 153; see also United States v. Otero, 563 F.3d 1127, 1134–35 (10th Cir. 2009). In light of the aforementioned legal landscape, when the agents installed the GPS device onto the undercarriage of Harry Katzin’s vehicle, and then used that device to monitor his vehicle’s movements on public thoroughfares for two days, we believe those agents exhibited “an objectively ‘reasonable good-faith belief’ that their conduct [was] lawful.” Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2427 (quoting Leon, 468 U.S. at 909). Given the panoply of authority authorizing their actions, we cannot conclude that a “reasonably well trained officer would have known that the search was illegal,” Leon, 468 U.S. at 922 n.23, nor that the agents acted with a “deliberate, reckless, or grossly negligent disregard for [Appellees’] Fourth Amendment rights,” Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2427 (quoting Herring, 555 U.S. at 144) (internal quotation marks omitted). Prior to Jones’ unforeseeable revival of the “discredited” trespass theory, Santillo, 507 F.2d at 632, a reasonable police officer would have concluded that the agents’ conduct did not require a warrant. Suppression in this case would only deter “conscientious police work.” Id. at 2429. Accordingly, suppression of the evidence discovered as a result of the agents’ conduct would not “outweigh the resulting costs,” and “exclusion cannot ‘pay its way.’” Id. at 2427–28 (quoting Leon, 468 U.S. at 907 n.6).20 20 Our sister circuits’ complementary conclusions support this result. See Brown, 744 F.3d at 478 (Knotts and Karo are binding appellate precedent for purposes of consensual GPS 41