Opinion ID: 2738861
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Suppression is inappropriate because the

Text: agents acted under an objectively reasonable good faith belief that their conduct was lawful.
not control the issue. Alternatively, even if we were to accept Appellees’ argument that factual dissimilarities disqualify Knotts and Karo from being “binding appellate precedent” which could reasonably be relied on under Davis, our inquiry would not end there. In advancing their contrary position, the District Court and Appellees improperly elevate Davis’ holding above the general good faith analysis from whence it came. Davis is but one application of the good faith exception that applies when police “conduct a search in objectively reasonable reliance on binding judicial precedent.” Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2428. Undoubtedly, Davis is the most analogous Supreme Court decision to the instant circumstances. However, even if Davis did not mandate the application of the good faith exception, we can still apply the exception for another good reason. Cf. United States v. Knights, 534 U.S. 112, 117 (2001) (rejecting the “dubious logic . . . that an opinion upholding the constitutionality of a particular search implicitly holds 25 unconstitutional any search that is not like it”). The whole of our task is not to determine whether Davis applies, nor to “extend” either the good faith exception or Davis’ holding. Even where Davis does not control, it is our duty to consider the totality of the circumstances to answer the “objectively ascertainable question whether a reasonably well trained officer would have known that the search was illegal.”9 Leon, 468 U.S. at 906–07, 922 n.23 (noting that exclusion inquiries “must be resolved by weighing the costs and benefits of [suppression]” (emphasis added)). To exclude evidence simply because law enforcement fell short of relying on binding appellate precedent would impermissibly exceed the Supreme Court’s mandate that suppression should occur in only “unusual” circumstances: when it “further[s] the 9 The District Court noted that the Supreme Court’s good faith decisions generally involved reliance on some “unequivocally binding” authority, which does not include non-binding case law. Katzin, 2012 WL 1646894, at ; see also supra note 7. However, in the Supreme Court’s many enunciations of the governing standard, it has never made such authority a condition precedent to applying the good faith exception. See, e.g., Herring, 555 U.S. at 137 (noting that suppression “turns on the culpability of the police and the potential of exclusion to deter wrongful police conduct”); Evans, 514 U.S. at 13–14 (suppression appropriate “only if the remedial objectives of the rule are thought most efficaciously served”); Leon, 468 U.S. at 918 (good faith exception requires “objectively reasonable belief that . . . conduct did not violate the Fourth Amendment”). We do no more than apply the good faith exception as articulated by the Supreme Court. 26 purposes of the exclusionary rule.” Id. at 918; see also Duka, 671 F.3d at 346. Davis supports this conclusion. In reaching its holding, Davis reiterates the analytical steps for evaluating suppression challenges. 131 S. Ct. at 2426–28. For example, we must limit operation of the exclusionary rule “to situations in which [its] purpose,” deterring future Fourth Amendment violations, is “most efficaciously served.” Id. at 2426 (quoting United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 348 (1974)). Our analysis must account for both “[r]eal deterrent value” and “substantial social costs,” and our inquiry must focus on the “flagrancy of the police misconduct” at issue. Id. at 2427 (quoting Leon, 468 U.S. at 907, 911). Only when, after a “rigorous weighing,” we conclude that “the deterrence benefits of suppression . . . outweigh its heavy costs,” is exclusion appropriate. Id. Importantly, we must be prepared to “appl[y] this ‘good-faith’ exception across a range of cases.”10 Id. at 2428. 10 Moreover, we note that Justice Sotomayor understood Davis explicitly to leave open the question “whether the exclusionary rule applies when the law governing the constitutionality of a particular search is unsettled.” Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2435 (Sotomayor, J., concurring). Similarly, Justice Breyer did not read Davis to limit the good faith exception only to “binding appellate precedent.” Id. at 2439 (Breyer, J., dissenting) (arguing that culpability rationale could similarly excuse as good faith a search which an officer “believes complies with the Constitution but which . . . falls just outside the Fourth Amendment’s bounds [or] where circuit precedent is simply suggestive rather than ‘binding,’ 27 Davis did not begin, nor end, with binding appellate precedent. Rather, binding appellate precedent informed— and ultimately determined—the Supreme Court’s greater inquiry: whether the officers’ conduct was deliberate and culpable enough that application of the exclusionary rule would “yield meaningfu[l] deterrence,” and “be worth the price paid by the justice system.” Id. at 2428 (alteration in original) (quoting Herring, 555 U.S. at 144) (internal quotation marks omitted). We must conduct the same analysis on the facts before us, even in the absence of binding appellate precedent.11 The District Court acknowledged the argument that the “general good faith exception language” could permit an “individualized determination” of whether the agents’ where it only describes how to treat roughly analogous instances, or where it just does not exist”). 11 Appellees’ warning not to “fabricate” a new good faith ground exemplifies this misreading of Davis. (Appellee En Banc Br. at 4.) The Davis Court did not “fabricate” binding appellate precedent as a ground for applying the good faith exception. The facts involved binding appellate precedent, but the ground for applying the good faith exception was—as it has been since Leon—that the deterrence rationale was unsatisfied. Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2428–29 (noting the “absence of police culpability” and that excluding evidence would deter only “objectively reasonable law enforcement activity” (quoting Leon, 468 U.S. at 919)). The factual circumstances before us differ, but we ground our application of the good faith exception in the same time-tested considerations. 28 conduct was objectively reasonable. Katzin, 2012 WL 1646894, at . This determination would have been properly informed by its conclusion that the agents’ inadvertent Fourth Amendment violation was neither “calculated” nor the result of a “deliberately cavalier or casual” attitude toward Appellees’ Fourth Amendment rights, and that the agents were likely “surprise[d]” by Jones.” Id. at  n.15; see also Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2429 (noting that the Supreme Court has “‘never applied’ the exclusionary rule to suppress evidence obtained as a result of nonculpable, innocent police conduct” (quoting Herring, 555 U.S. at 144)). However, the District Court declined to apply the good faith exception on the theory that doing so would implicate or “extend” the “strict Davis holding.” Id. at –10. This conclusion prevented the District Court from answering, as was its duty, the “objectively ascertainable question whether a reasonably well trained officer would have known that the search was illegal . . . . [under] all of the circumstances . . . .” Leon, 468 U.S. at 922 n.23.
In applying the good faith exception analysis to the agents’ conduct, we initially address the precise conduct at issue and the legal landscape at the time the agents acted. The agents magnetically attached a battery-operated GPS onto the undercarriage of Harry Katzin’s van and tracked its movements for two days. As noted above, we analyze the reasonableness of the agents’ conduct as would a pre-Jones court, namely, by separately considering installation and surveillance. E.g., Karo, 468 U.S. at 711–18. 29 Application of the good faith exception turns on whether the agents, at the time they acted, would have or should have known their installation of the GPS and their subsequent monitoring of Harry Katzin’s vehicle were unconstitutional. See Krull, 480 U.S. at 348–49. Relevant to this determination are the Supreme Court’s case law dealing with electronic surveillance and general searches of automobiles, subsequent treatment of GPS or GPS-like surveillance across the federal courts, and other considerations.
Until Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), the Supreme Court’s primary Fourth Amendment inquiry was whether the Government committed a physical trespass. See, e.g., id. at 352 (noting that the absence of trespass was once “thought to foreclose further Fourth Amendment inquiry”). Katz changed this, famously declaring that “the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places.” Id. at 351, 353 (“[T]he reach of [the Fourth] Amendment cannot turn upon the presence or absence of a physical intrusion . . . . [T]he ‘trespass’ doctrine . . . can no longer be regarded as controlling.”). Subsequently, Katz was widely regarded as having jettisoned reliance on physical trespass in resolving Fourth Amendment challenges. See, e.g., United States v. Santillo, 507 F.2d 629, 632 (3d Cir. 1975) (noting that the “trespassory concepts” relied upon in earlier Fourth Amendment cases have been “discredited”). After Katz, the dominant Fourth Amendment inquiry became whether the Government had intruded upon a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy. See Katz, 389 U.S. at 360 (Harlan, J., concurring); see also, e.g., Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 30 143 (1978) (noting that one’s “capacity” to invoke Fourth Amendment protections depends upon whether one has a legitimate expectation of privacy, not a property right, in the invaded place). In Knotts and Karo, the Supreme Court applied this rationale to electronic surveillance of vehicles. We incorporate our earlier discussion of these cases, pausing only to reiterate Knotts’ conclusion that “[a] person travelling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another,” 460 U.S. at 281, as well as Karo’s broad rejection of the trespass theory in the context of electronic surveillance of vehicles: “[A] physical trespass is only marginally relevant to the question of whether the Fourth Amendment has been violated, . . . for an actual trespass is neither necessary nor sufficient to establish a constitutional violation.” 468 U.S. at 712–13. Also relevant to the installation question are the Supreme Court’s conclusions that persons do not enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy in the exterior of their vehicles. New York v. Class, 475 U.S. 106, 114 (1986) (“The exterior of a car, of course, is thrust into the public eye, and thus to examine it does not constitute a ‘search.’”); Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U.S. 583, 591–92 (1974) (plurality opinion) (no privacy interest infringed where search examined tire on wheel and took paint scrapings from exterior of vehicle in public parking lot). Thus, at bottom, before Jones, Knotts and Karo established that no Fourth Amendment search occurred where officers used beeper-based electronics to monitor an 31 automobile’s movements on public roads because a person has no reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to that information. Additionally, the rationale they espoused informed the federal appeals courts’ subsequent treatment of direct installation of a GPS device onto the exterior of a vehicle.
After Knotts and Karo, what resulted was a nearly uniform consensus across the federal courts of appeals that addressed the issue that the installation and subsequent use of a GPS or GPS-like device was not a search, or, at most, was a search but did not require a warrant. See, e.g., United States v. Marquez, 605 F.3d 604, 609–10 (8th Cir. 2010) (reasoning that GPS installation and use requires only reasonable suspicion, since monitoring on public roads is not a search); Pineda-Moreno, 591 F.3d at 1215–16 (holding that mobile tracking device installation and use was not a search); United States v. Garcia, 474 F.3d 994, 997 (7th Cir. 2007) (holding that GPS installation and use was not a search), abrogation recognized by United States v. Brown, 744 F.3d 474 (7th Cir. 2014); United States v. McIver, 186 F.3d 1119, 1126–27 (9th Cir. 1999) (holding that GPS installation was not a search); see also United States v. Michael, 645 F.2d 252, 256–58 (5th Cir. 1981) (en banc) (holding that beeper installation and use requires only reasonable suspicion, since monitoring on public roads is not a search).12 12 Michael was also Eleventh Circuit law. See Bonner v. City of Prichard, 661 F.2d 1206, 1209 (11th Cir. 1981) (en banc) (Fifth Circuit decisions before October 1, 1981 bind Eleventh Circuit). Michael was decided May 11, 1981. 645 F.2d at 252. 32 The lone dissenting voice was United States v. Maynard, 615 F.3d 544 (D.C. Cir. 2010), decided four months prior to the agents’ conduct here. Maynard (which became Jones on appeal to the Supreme Court) held that prolonged GPS surveillance of a vehicle “24 hours a day for four weeks” was a Fourth Amendment search because it invaded the defendant’s reasonable expectation of privacy. Id. at 555. The D.C. Circuit reasoned that Knotts held only that a person travelling by vehicle on public roads had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements, not that “such a person has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements whatsoever, world without end.” Id. at 557. Maynard thus focused on the quality and quantity of information gathered during the extended surveillance. Id. at 562 (noting that prolonged surveillance, unlike short-term surveillance, exposes “what a person does repeatedly, what he does not do, and what he does ensemble,” thereby revealing more information than an isolated trip). It reasoned that the defendant’s movements were “not actually exposed to the public because the likelihood a stranger would observe all those movements is not just remote, it is essentially nil.” Id. at 560. Thus, at the time the agents acted, in addition to the “beeper” authority of Knotts and Karo, three circuit courts expressly approved their use of a GPS or GPS-like device, and the lone dissenting voice involved surveillance of a far longer duration.
33 Finally, the agents consulted with, and received approval from, an AUSA on their proposed conduct. It was DOJ policy at the time that a warrant was not required to install a battery-powered GPS on a vehicle parked on a public street and to surveil it on public roads. We have previously considered reliance on government attorneys in our good faith calculus and concluded that, based upon it in combination with other factors, “[a] reasonable officer would . . . have confidence in [a search’s] validity.”13 United States v. Tracey, 597 F.3d 140, 153 (3d Cir. 2010); see also United States v. Fama, 758 F.2d 834, 837 (2d Cir. 1985) (same). Jones fundamentally altered this legal landscape by reviving—after a forty-five year hibernation—the Supreme Court’s prior trespass theory. 132 S. Ct. at 952 (declaring that reasonable expectation of privacy inquiry did not substitute for “common-law trespassory test”). As the Ninth Circuit recently stated: “The agents in Jones labored under the misconception that the ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’ test exclusively marked the [Fourth] Amendment’s boundaries. Cases fostering that impression were ubiquitous.” United States v. Thomas, 726 F.3d 1086, 1094 n.8 (9th Cir. 2013) (citation omitted) (citing numerous Supreme Court cases). 13 At oral argument before the original panel, counsel for Appellee Mark Katzin conceded that we may properly consider the AUSA consultation in the totality of circumstances informing our good faith analysis. Transcript of Oral Argument at 52, United States v. Katzin, 732 F.3d 187 (3d Cir. 2013), vacated by United States v. Katzin, No. 122548, 2013 WL 7033666 (3d Cir. Dec. 12, 2013) (No. 122548). 34 With this legal landscape in mind, we turn now to our application of the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule.
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
Appellees argue that excluding the evidence against them would achieve appreciable deterrence because it would prevent investigators and prosecutors from “engaging in overly aggressive readings of non-binding authority” and deter law enforcement from “‘act[ing] in a constitutionally installation and subsequent surveillance); Aguiar, 737 F.3d at 261 (same, for purposes of nonconsensual installation and subsequent surveillance); Sparks, 711 F.3d at 67 (Knotts is binding appellate precedent where police install GPS and surveil vehicle’s movements). Although the Seventh Circuit left open the question of nonconsensual GPS installation, it strongly suggested that applying the good faith exception would be appropriate based upon out-of-circuit authority. Brown, 744 F.3d at 478 (doubting deterrent effect of prohibiting police from relying on out-of-circuit authority “just because the circuit . . . lacks its own precedent”). We also note that the First Circuit did not clearly distinguish where its reliance on Knotts ended and reliance on its own precedent began. See Sparks, 711 F.3d at 67 (relying on both Knotts and United States v. Moore, 562 F.2d 106 (1st Cir. 1977), abrogation recognized by United States v. Oladosu, 744 F.3d 36 (1st Cir. 2014)). However, it relied on Knotts for the same reasons we highlight. See id. at 66–67 (declaring that Knotts was “widely and reasonably understood” to mean electronic surveillance of vehicles on public roads did not implicate Fourth Amendment and that it “clearly authorized” use of GPS in place of beeper). Finally, as noted earlier, our sister circuits have routinely concluded, as we do on these facts, that there is no relevant distinction between beepers and GPS devices for good faith purposes. 42 reckless fashion’ by taking constitutional inquiries into their own hands.” (Appellee En Banc Br. at 5 (quoting Katzin, 732 F.3d at 212).) To so hold would lead to the same result as the District Court’s erroneous application of Davis: the good faith exception would not apply unless our own Court had established binding appellate precedent directly on point and approving the officer’s conduct. Put differently, all innocently (though later deemed illegally) gathered evidence would be excluded unless the police conduct discovering it was expressly permitted at the time the conduct occurred. But the purpose of the exclusionary rule is to deter “wrongful police conduct.” Herring, 555 U.S. at 137. And exclusion is only appropriate when doing so “most efficaciously serve[s]” that purpose. Calandra, 414 U.S. at 348. The mere act of deciding that conduct is lawful based upon a “constitutional norm” rather than binding appellate precedent is unlike the highly culpable conduct that helped establish the exclusionary rule. See, e.g., Herring, 555 U.S. at 143 (listing cases and noting that “the abuses that gave rise to the exclusionary rule featured intentional conduct that was patently unconstitutional”). No doubt, sometimes officers’ reliance on non-binding authorities will fall short of an “objectively reasonable” good faith belief in the legality of their conduct. Suppression may then be appropriate to deter such reliance. It is equally elementary that close cases will be difficult.21 But in many 21 We are unpersuaded by Appellees’ warning that our holding will require a “complicated judgment about whether non-binding case law is sufficiently ‘settled’ and ‘persuasive.’” (Appellee En Banc Br. at 6.) The Fourth Amendment routinely requires courts to make difficult 43 other cases, law enforcement will likely correctly conclude, based upon a panoply of non-binding authority establishing a “constitutional norm,” Peltier, 422 U.S. at 542, that a particular police practice does not violate the Fourth Amendment. The value in deterring such conduct is low. Additionally, adopting such a bright-line rule may impermissibly avoid our duty to conduct in each case a “rigorous weighing” of suppression’s costs and benefits, Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2427, and to consider “all of the circumstances” to determine the “objectively ascertainable question whether a reasonably well trained officer would have known that the search was illegal,” Leon, 468 U.S. at 922 n.23. We would also risk “generat[ing] disrespect for the law and administration of justice” by applying the exclusionary rule so indiscriminately. Id. at 908 (quoting Stone, 428 U.S. at 491). Because such a bright-line rule would supplant the required balancing act, we would have to be confident that in every conceivable future case, the substantial costs of suppression would be outweighed by the value of deterring police from relying on a “constitutional norm” simply because it had yet to be expressly established by precedential opinion in the Third Circuit. We have no such confidence and Appellees do little to assuage our concerns. Appellees’ good faith calculus conspicuously fails to confront the “cost” side of the equation, which they dismiss as “minimal.” (Appellee En Banc Br. at 8.) However, the Supreme Court has routinely determinations of reasonableness. See, e.g., Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 383 (2007) (noting that the Fourth Amendment requires courts to “slosh . . . through the factbound morass of ‘reasonableness’”). 44 stated the opposite; the cost of suppression is “substantial,” Leon, 468 U.S. at 907, because it often excludes “reliable, trustworthy evidence” of a defendant’s guilt, “suppress[es] the truth and set[s] [a] criminal loose in the community without punishment,” Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2427. Here, by all appearances, the Government’s evidence against Appellees is substantial, and it is uncontested that the Government would have no case without it. The costs of exclusion are high. The boundaries of the good faith exception are a sufficient deterrent to the conduct Appellees find objectionable. Law enforcement personnel will either tread cautiously or risk suppression.22 The legal authority relied upon must support an “objectively reasonable good faith belief” that specific conduct is constitutional. Id. (quoting Leon, 468 U.S. at 909) (internal quotation mark omitted). Consequently, nothing in our holding today conflicts with the Supreme Court’s instructions to executive officers to “err on 22 As the Supreme Court noted in Leon, “the possibility that illegally obtained evidence may be admitted in borderline cases is unlikely to encourage police instructors to pay less attention to fourth amendment limitations. . . . [nor] encourage officers to pay less attention to what they are taught, as the requirement that the officer act in ‘good faith’ is inconsistent with closing one’s mind to the possibility of illegality.” 468 U.S. at 919 n.20 (quoting Jerold Israel, Criminal Procedure, the Burger Court, and the Legacy of the Warren Court, 75 Mich. L. Rev. 1319, 1412–13 (1977)). The Supreme Court has also recognized the “increasing evidence that police forces across the United States take the constitutional rights of citizens seriously.” Hudson, 547 U.S. at 599. 45 the side of constitutional behavior,” United States v. Johnson, 457 U.S. 537, 561 (1982), and in “doubtful or marginal case[s]” to obtain a warrant, Leon, 468 U.S. at 914 (quoting United States v. Ventresca, 380 U.S. 102, 106 (1965)). We do not believe this case to be either doubtful or marginal.23 In any event, just because law enforcement officers may one day unreasonably rely on non-binding authority does not absolve us of our duty to decide whether, under these facts, the agents’ conduct was “sufficiently deliberate” that deterrence will be effective and “sufficiently culpable” that deterrence outweighs the costs of suppression. Herring, 555 U.S. at 144. In this case neither standard is satisfied. Future decisions may reveal that applying the good faith exception to reliance on non-binding authority should be extremely rare, perhaps as rare as tectonic shifts in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence such as Jones. See Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2433 (noting the infrequency with which the Supreme Court overrules its Fourth Amendment precedents). But that is a question for another day.