Opinion ID: 774752
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Objective Good Faith Exception

Text: 13 In United States v. Leon, the Supreme Court carved out a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule in Fourth Amendment cases. 468 U.S. 897 (1984). Reasoning that the exclusionary rule was a judicial remedy created to guard individual rights through its deterrent effect against police misconduct, the Court held that evidence should not be suppressed where police officers rely in reasonable good faith on a properly obtained warrant, that proves to be invalid. Id. at 906, 916, 920. 14 We have extended the holding of Leon, to uphold a search conducted pursuant to a warrant completely lacking a description of the premises to be searched. United States v. Curry, 911 F.2d 72 (8th Cir. 1990). Curry directly controls this case. There, due to a clerical error, the police conducted a search relying on a search warrant that did not contain any address or description of the place to be searched. Id. at 76. The application for the warrant and accompanying affidavit contained accurate and specific descriptions of the target location. Id. The court in Curry held, as we do today, that the warrant was facially invalid and that the affidavit was not incorporated into the warrant because the warrant lacked any suitable words of reference. Id. at 76-77. 15 Although Leon contains language suggesting that a warrant might be so facially invalid that no officer could have relied on it in good faith (and thus the good faith exception would not prevent suppression), 468 U.S. at 923, we held in Curry that this did not apply to every case where a warrant is found invalid on the ground that it is insufficiently particular. Curry, 911 F.2d at 77. Thus, although no officer could have reasonably believed the warrant in Curry described the premises to be searched, the court upheld the search on the Leon objective good faith rule. 16 There were several factors justifying application of the Leon exception to the exclusionary rule. First, the application and supporting affidavit both contained the correct address of the location to be searched. Id. at 78. Second, there was no evidence of bad faith on the part of the officer obtaining the warrant. Id. Third, the search was executed by the same officer who had prepared the affidavit, all but eliminating the chance the wrong location would be searched. Finally, the responsibility for this type of error in the warrant lies with the issuing judge. Id. Because the exclusionary rule was designed to deter officers (and would be ineffectiveagainst neutral judges), applying the rule in Curry would not have furthered the purpose of the rule. Id. 17 The only difference between the present case and Curry is that here, the warrant contained an incorrect address while in Curry the warrant contained no address. The above reasons justifying the decision in Curry apply with equal force to the present situation. Appellant argues that the present case is distinguishable because a mere reading of the warrant would have revealed the error. The same is true of the warrant in Curry. Appellant also argues that in the present case the error on the face of the warrant was the error of Officer Harris. It is true that Officer Harris made an error in this case by submitting the warrant prepared earlier with the incorrect address. However, this is not sufficient to change the fact that the issuing judicial officer bears the primary responsibility for ensuring the accuracy of the warrant as the final reviewing authority. Cf. id. at 78 ('The responsibility for the inadvertent omission of the address on the warrant itself, must be borne by the [issuing official], as the final reviewing authority') (quoting United States v. Bonner, 808 F.2d 864, 867 (1st Cir. 1986) (alteration in original). We do not see a significant difference on the issue of responsibility for the error between the present case and Curry. 18 The fact that the warrant here contained an incorrect address, thus increasing the likelihood of searching the incorrect residence, does give us pause. However, this increased danger was mitigated not only by the fact that Officer Harris, who had personal knowledge of the location to be searched, both obtained and executed the warrant, but also by the fact that the intended location was under surveillance while he secured the warrant. See Gitcho, 601 F.2d at 372 (upholding search because, although warrant contained slightly incorrect address, agent executing warrant personally knew which premises to search and premises were under constant surveillance while warrant was obtained). 19 Appellant argues that the good faith exception should not apply because the issuing judge abandoned his neutral role and just acted as a rubber stamp, evidenced by the fact that the error was so obvious. The district court found the issuing judge had not abandoned his neutral role, and that conclusion was not clearly erroneous.