CO: State good faith exception statute saved search unreasonable under Gant

While the vehicle search violated Gant, the “technical violation” prong of the state good faith exception statute applied, so the search was not suppressed. People v. Key, 2010 Colo. App. LEXIS 361 (March 18, 2010):

The trial court determined, and we agree, that the search of the car was permissible under our supreme court’s pre-Gant jurisprudence. This major premise leads us to a minor premise: the officers who conducted the search acted reasonably in good faith when they relied on this jurisprudence. We complete this syllogism by concluding that, although Gant indisputably overrules our supreme court’s jurisprudence in this area, in this case its effect is only to render the search a good-faith “technical violation” of the law, which means that the evidence remains admissible under section 16-3-308, C.R.S. 2009.

In reaching this conclusion, we recognize that the exclusionary rule is a “judicially created remedy designed to safeguard Fourth Amendment rights generally through its deterrent effect, rather than a personal constitutional right of the party aggrieved.” United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 348, 94 S. Ct. 613, 38 L. Ed. 2d 561 (1974). Therefore, in order to understand the contours of the exclusionary rule, and any potential constitutional effect that those contours might have on section 16-3-308, we must discuss how the United States Supreme Court and our supreme court have interpreted the exclusionary rule and the good faith exception to the rule. It is important to do so here because (1) the United States Supreme Court has not yet considered whether the good faith exception applies when the police rely on a judicial precedent that is later overruled; and (2) our supreme court has only considered such applicability where, unlike here, the case involved a stricter standard under the Colorado Constitution than that required by the United States Constitution.