S.D.Ohio: Def’s arrest under a warrant for murder produced a gun; deterrence no value here

Defendant’s arrest under a warrant for murder also produced a gun, for which he was indicted in federal court. This is not an appropriate case for suppression because there’s no deterrence value. United States v. Gray, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 133369 (S.D. Ohio July 16, 2021):

Under the facts of this case, the Court finds it difficult to see the deterrence value of suppression. Defendant’s arrest warrant indicates that he killed two people, not that he was a felon in possession of firearms. It is doubtful that the suppression of evidence in an unrelated federal case would encourage the officers who obtained and executed the warrant to be more careful in their future investigations of violent state crimes. Granting Defendant’s Motion in this case would have no legal impact on the state murder case for which the warrant in question was actually issued, and would, therefore, be unlikely to deter the officers investigating that case from using similar methods in the future. Suppression of the evidence in this case would exact all of the costs of the exclusionary rule—it would incur “a costly toll upon truth-seeking and law enforcement objectives,” id. at 141—while failing to implicate any of the benefits. The Court, therefore, will not suppress the evidence obtained from the Task Force’s entry into Defendant’s home based on the arrest warrant issued by the Cleveland Municipal Court.