Court Opinion

ID: 9741762
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:01:35.397492+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:26.081327
License: Public Domain

SHIELDS, Presiding Judge,
dissenting.
I dissent. United States v. Leon (1984), 468 U.S. 897, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677, while formulating the good faith exception to the federal exclusionary rule, also recognizes that suppression remains an appropriate remedy in certain circumstances. Those circumstances include:
The exception we recognize today will also not apply in cases where the issuing magistrate wholly abandoned his judicial role in the manner condemned in Lo-Ji Sales, Inc. v. New York, 442 U.S. 319, 99 S.Ct. 2319, 60 L.Ed.2d 920 (1979); in such circumstances, no reasonably well trained officer should rely on the warrant. Nor would an officer manifest objective good faith in relying on a warrant based on an affidavit “so lacking in indi-cia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable.”
Id. at 923, 104 S.Ct. at 3421 (quoting Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 610-611, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 2265, 45 L.Ed.2d 416 [1975]).
In the instant case, a search warrant for a private residence was issued based solely upon a probable cause affidavit that contains the stale information that on May 12, 1987, William Cook told a confidential informant that he, Cook, burglarized Tolen’s Pharmacy. Critically, the affidavit is totally devoid of any nexus between Cook and the burglary and the residence sought to be searched. While I do not question the magistrate’s subjective integrity, it is nevertheless my opinion that objectively the affidavit is so unquestionably deficient that the issuing magistrate loses the protective cloak of the presumption that he or she is a detached and neutral magistrate. Otherwise stated, the warrant could have been issued only by a magistrate who had wholly abandoned his or her judicial role. For that reason, the good faith exception is unavailing. Therefore, in my opinion the trial court erred in refusing to exclude items seized and statements taken pursuant to the search warrant. Accordingly, I vote to reverse Williams’s conviction and remand the cause for a new trial.