Court Opinion

ID: 9524447
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:52:46.866149+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:10:24.338719
License: Public Domain

BRADFORD, Judge,
dissenting.
While I agree, in the abstract, with the majority’s conclusion that the Indiana Supreme Court’s decision in Litchfield v. State, 824 N.E.2d 356 (Ind.2005), applies retroactively,7 I must respectfully dissent, as I conclude that the good faith exception applies in this case. Consequently, I would affirm the trial court in all respects.
A. Case Law Good Faith Exception
The Indiana Supreme Court first adopted the exclusionary rule in Callender v. State, 193 Ind. 91, 96, 138 N.E. 817, 818 (1923), in which it held that “[i]f the property was secured by search and seizure under the pretext of a search warrant, which was invalid for any reason, then the property so seized could not be used as evidence against the appellant and its admission over his objection was prejudicial error.”8 In 1984, the United States Supreme Court firmly established the so-called “good faith exception” to the exclusionary rule in the context of search warrants, holding that “the marginal or nonexistent benefits produced by suppressing evidence obtained in objectively reasonable reliance on a subsequently invalidated search warrant cannot justify the substantial costs of exclusion.” Leon, 468 U.S. at 922, 104 S.Ct. 3405. The Leon court identified several situations, however, where *364exclusion would still be appropriate, including where a warrant is based “on an affidavit ‘so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable.’ ” Id. at 923,104 S.Ct. 3405 (citation omitted).
The majority concludes that, because Detective Earley’s reliance on the confidential informant’s tip was lacking in indi-cia of reliability, suppression is appropriate under Leon. In my view, however, Leon, as a search warrant case, simply does not apply here. As it happens, the Supreme Court had already recognized a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule in situations much like the one before this court today. In Michigan v. DeFillippo, 443 U.S. 31, 99 S.Ct. 2627, 61 L.Ed.2d 343 (1979), on which the Leon court relied, the Supreme Court noted that
[t]he purpose of the exclusionary rule is to deter unlawful police action. No conceivable purpose of deterrence would be served by suppressing evidence which, at the time it was found on the person of the respondent, was the product of a lawful arrest and a lawful search. To deter police from enforcing a presumptively valid statute was never remotely in the contemplation of even the most zealous advocate of the exclusionary rule.
Id. at 38 n. 3, 99 S.Ct. 2627 (emphasis added). This situation is directly analogous to the instant case, and, as such, I believe DeFillippo governs, not the warrant-specific rules of Leon. DeFillippo’s application leads to the conclusion that the good faith exception applies here. Because all agree that the trash pull here was legal when it was performed, no conceivable purpose of deterrence would be served by suppressing its fruits, and I therefore conclude that the good faith exception should apply.
B. Statutory Good Faith Exception
Indiana Code section 35-37-4-5(b)(l)(B) provides that evidence may not be suppressed if “it is obtained pursuant to ... a state statute, judicial precedent, or court rule that is later declared unconstitutional or otherwise invalidated[.]” The majority concludes that Indiana Code section 35-37-4-5(b)(l)(B) negates a “rule of constitutional law” in violation of section 1 — 1—2—1, which declares, in part, that “[t]he law governing this state is ...: First. The Constitution of the United States and of this state. Second. All statutes of the general assembly of the state in force, and not inconsistent with such constitutions.”
Having concluded that the trash pull evidence is admissible under DeFillippo, I would not even reach the question of whether Indiana Code section 35-37-4-5 violates the Indiana Constitution. I agree with the majority that “Indiana’s constitutional good faith exception to the exclusionary rule is identical to the federal ex-eeption[.]” I further believe that Indiana Code section 35-37-4-5 is merely a codification of the good faith exception as described in case law. In other words, Indiana Code section 35-37-4-5(b)(l)(B) applies to cases like this one and those described in DeFillippo, involving searches that were legal when they were performed, but, at some point afterwards, declared otherwise.9 Because I agree that the Indiana good faith exception is coextensive with the federal good faith exception and conclude that Indiana Code section 35-37-4-5 is merely a codification of well-settled case law in that area, the existence of such a codification is essentially irrelevant. We would be subject to the DeFillippo good *365faith exception (for searches that were legal when performed) even if section 35-37-4-5 had never been enacted. As such, I see little reason to address its constitutionality.

. As it happens, a curious result of the application of the good faith exception in this context is that it renders the question of retroactive application of Litchfield moot, at least for our purposes. In other words, even though any pre-Litchfield, Morarc-compliant trash pull unsupported by reasonable suspicion would run afoul of Article I, Section 11, the fruits of the pull would always be admissible by virtue of the good faith exception. In the end, at least in criminal cases, Litchfield may as well not be retroactive because its retroactive application will never help (whether it might help in the context of a civil rights action is, of course, a question for another day). The majority cites this result as one reason that the good faith exception should not apply here, but I do not believe that we should negate what I believe to be a textbook application of the good faith exception so that a question of retroactivity is rendered relevant.
The majority also concludes that application of the good faith doctrine here would deny Belvedere recourse to a new rule of substantive constitutional law. This is not, strictly speaking, true, although, as I explained above, it is true that it would do him little good here were my view to be adopted. I suppose, in a sense, that it might be considered unfair were Litchfield to benefit from his case being decided before Belvedere's, but "fairness,” I believe, is an inadequate basis upon which to decide such questions. In any event, one could just as easily argue that it is equally (or even more) unfair to confer a windfall on a convicted criminal in a case where all agree that no official misconduct occurred.

. Interestingly enough, this passage, as it appears on the www.westlaw.com database and in West Publishing’s printed North Eastern Reporter, includes a comma after the word "appellant” that does not appear in the official Indiana Reports. While one can only speculate at this point as to the source of this 1923 error, and while the error does not seem to alter the meaning of the passage, I, for one, will exercise caution in citing to non-official authorities in the future.

. On the other hand, Indiana Code section 3 5 — 37—4—5(b)(1)(A) applies to situations like those described in Leon, i.e., good faith reliance on facially valid search warrants.