Opinion ID: 1533372
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Good Faith Exception Inapplicable

Text: During the same term that it decided Segura, the United States Supreme Court announced the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule. United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 905-25, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 3411-211, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984). In Leon, police officers obtained a search warrant and conducted a search for narcotics in a drug-trafficking investigation. Id. at 902, 104 S.Ct. at 3409. The United States District Court for the Central District of California held that the affidavit was insufficient to establish probable cause and suppressed the evidence. Id. at 903, 104 S.Ct. at 3410. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed. United States v. Leon, 701 F.2d 187 (9th Cir.1983). The Supreme Court modified the exclusionary rule to include an exception for good faith reliance on a search warrant which is later held to be invalid. See United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. at 913, 104 S.Ct. at 3415. We find that Leon is not applicable to the questions presented in this appeal. First, the precise issue framed in Leon was whether the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule should be modified so as not to bar the use in the prosecution's case in chief of evidence obtained by officers acting in reasonable reliance on a search warrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate but ultimately found to be unsupported by probable cause. Id. at 900, 104 S.Ct. at 3409. It is unquestioned that the police had probable cause to search Mason's apartment during the day. The problem here is that the police failed to satisfy the requirements of 11 Del.C. § 2308. This section requires the articulation in the Search Warrant Application and Affidavit of facts which will satisfy the reviewing judicial officer that a nighttime search is necessary in order to prevent the escape or removal of the person or thing to be searched for. 11 Del.C. § 2308. Moreover, the magistrate did not make a specific finding that a nighttime search was necessary as required by 11 Del.C. § 2310(c). These statutory provisions do not relate to probable cause, but to the necessity to search a residence at night. See id. Leon held that the courts must also insist that the magistrate ... `perform his `neutral and detached' function.' United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. at 914, 104 S.Ct. at 3416 (quoting Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 111, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 1512, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1964)). Second, Leon deals with the exclusionary rule's application to violations of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Id. at 900, 104 S.Ct. at 3409. In this case, the Court is confronted with not only violations of the Fourth Amendment but also with violations of Article I, Section 6 of the Delaware Constitution, and violations of specific Delaware statutes. The police officers' actions must be consistent with all three. Even if the law enforcement activity in this case was found to comport with the federal Constitution under Leon, it would still have to be found to satisfy the Delaware Constitution and statutes in order to be reasonable. As indicated above, this cannot be done. If this Court were to find a good faith exception, under the circumstances of this case, it would be doing so in a situation where the police did not have exigent circumstances justifying a warrantless entry, failed to allege sufficient facts to satisfy the statutory requirements for a nighttime search of a residence and then failed to receive a search warrant that concluded its nighttime execution was necessary. To render such a decision would not only be an unprecedented break with more than two hundred years of history in this area of the law, but also would be tantamount to a judicial repeal of a specific Delaware statute that for more than one hundred years has set the standards by which applications for nighttime searches of a residence are to be judged by impartial magistrates.