Court Opinion

ID: 9569186
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:11:18.709362+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:16:05.417858
License: Public Domain

Sears, Justice,
dissenting.
Because I conclude that State v. Stringer1 requires this Court to hold that Harvey’s arrest pursuant to an invalid bench warrant constituted an arrest without probable cause, and because the good-faith exception to the federal exclusionary rule is not applicable in this state, I dissent to the majority’s holding that the Court of Appeals correctly affirmed the trial court’s denial of Harvey’s motion to suppress.
1. In Stringer, Stringer was arrested pursuant to a 21-month-old state-court bench warrant for two misdemeanor shoplifting charges. During custodial interrogation, Stringer implicated himself in a murder and armed robbery. Stringer filed a pre-trial motion to suppress the confession, on the ground that he was arrested on an invalid warrant. The trial court granted Stringer’s motion, holding that there was evidence that Stringer had made several court appearances on the bench warrant and that the warrant had been recalled by another judge. This Court affirmed. We noted that “[t]he state stipulated that Stringer’s arrest was not based upon probable cause but rather mere rumor,”2 and then held that “if the bench warrant from the state court was not valid, then his arrest and the resulting statement must be suppressed.” Id. at 605. We ruled that, for various reasons, the *677warrant had lost its validity over a year before his arrest and could not be relied on to validate Stringer’s arrest.
We also rejected the state’s contentions that the officers acted in good faith in relying on the bench warrant and that therefore the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule should be applied to Stringer’s arrest.3 Critical to our holding in Stringer that good faith was not established was our finding that the arresting officer knew or should have known that the bench warrant was not valid.4 Because we concluded that good faith did not exist, we did not have to decide whether the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule should exist in Georgia. However, some four years later, when squarely presented with that issue, we held that the good-faith exception is not applicable in this state.5
2. The relevant facts of the present case are indistinguishable from Stringer. Harvey, as Stringer, was arrested pursuant to a bench warrant that the arresting officers thought to be valid but which was not. The majority makes several unavailing attempts to distinguish Stringer.
First, the majority at 673 states that “[t]he officer in [Stringer] obtained no reliable information from the NCIC or any other source that the bench warrant was still valid.” As our opinion in Stringer is silent regarding the source of the officer’s information regarding the bench warrant, it is difficult to understand how the majority can affirmatively state that the officer in Stringer had no reliable information. More significantly, however, the record in Stringer reveals that the officer was acting on information he received from the Georgia Crime Information Center,6 a source as reliable as the NCIC.
The majority further attempts to distinguish Stringer by stating that in Stringer “the State stipulated that probable cause for the arrest did not exist;” by stating that there is no such stipulation in this case; and by then concluding that the invalid bench warrant provided probable cause for Harvey’s arrest. The majority misses the mark in this interpretation of Stringer.
Because an arrest must always be supported by probable cause7 (anything less would be unconstitutional), the state could not have been stipulating that probable cause for Stringer’s arrest was completely lacking. Such a stipulation would have ended this Court’s inquiry into the issue and would have required this Court to summarily *678affirm the trial court’s grant of Stringer’s motion to suppress. Instead, the state’s stipulation to which this Court referred in Stringer must necessarily have been a more limited concession regarding probable cause, unrelated to the bench warrant.8 Further, because the state relied on the bench warrant to support Stringer’s arrest on appeal, and because probable cause is necessary to support any arrest, the state was necessarily contending that the warrant provided probable cause for Stringer’s arrest. For this same reason, this Court, in evaluating the merits of that contention, was necessarily evaluating whether the bench warrant provided probable cause.
In addressing the state’s contention that the bench warrant supported Stringer’s arrest, we began with the premise that “if the bench warrant from the state court was not valid, then [Stringer’s] arrest and the resulting statement must be suppressed.”9 As previously stated, we concluded that the warrant was not valid and could not, by itself, support the arrest. Further, conclusively demonstrating that probable cause was at issue in Stringer, we held in Stringer that the “[m]ere receipt of a bulletin or ‘computer hit’ does not provide probable cause justifying an arrest if the information in the computer system is inaccurate.”10
In sum, Stringer holds that receipt of information that a person is the subject of an outstanding bench warrant does not provide probable cause to arrest if that information is invalid. Although we also evaluated whether Stringer’s motion to suppress could be denied based upon the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule, our decision in Gary v. State11 precludes the application of the Leon good-faith exception in the present case.
Accordingly, the rationale and holdings in Stringer compel the conclusion that Harvey’s invalid bench warrant cannot be relied upon to hold that probable cause existed for his arrest. Further, because the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule is inapplicable, the trial court should have granted Harvey’s motion to suppress the evidence discovered pursuant to his arrest.
For these reasons, I dissent to the majority opinion. I am authorized to state that Chief Justice Benham and Presiding Justice Fletcher join in this dissent.
*679Decided April 29, 1996 —
Reconsideration denied May 17, 1996.
Steve W. Reighard, for appellant.
Lewis R. Slaton, District Attorney, Juliette W. Scales, Assistant District Attorney, for appellee.
Colette B. Resnik, Davis, Zipperman, Kirschenbaum & Lotito, Nicholas A. Lotito, amicus curiae.

 258 Ga. 605 (372 SE2d 426) (1988).

 Id. at 605.

 See United States v. Leon, 468 U. S. 897 (104 SC 3405, 82 LE2d 677) (1984).

 Id. at 606-607.

 Gary v. State, 262 Ga. 573 (422 SE2d 426) (1992).

 See OCGA §§ 35-3-30 to 35-3-40.

 Burnham v. State, 265 Ga. 129 (2) (453 SE2d 449) (1995); Clark v. State, 217 Ga. App. 113 (456 SE2d 672) (1995).

 For example, the state could have been stipulating that the information the arresting officers had regarding Stringer’s participation in the murder did not provide probable cause for an arrest.

 Id. at 605.

 Stringer, 258 Ga. at 607.

 262 Ga. 573.