CA1: SW was in good faith where affidavit was accidentally not filed with court

The Postal Inspector here prepared the search warrant affidavit, and the affidavit was to be incorporated with the warrant. The warrant was filed, however, by the USAO without the affidavit attached. The good faith exception applies. The officer did nothing wrong. This was at worst just an isolated act of negligence, and the district court erred in suppressing the search. United States v. Medina, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 952 (1st Cir. Jan. 15, 2025):

An essential fact here is that Inspector Atwood was the agent who drafted the affidavits, applied for the warrants, and executed the searches. Thus, Inspector Atwood knew that he had submitted to the USAO the exhibits that were needed to ensure that the affidavits were sufficient.

What is more, Inspector Atwood’s reliance on the USAO to file the completed warrant applications properly was reasonable. This fact has decretory significance because it is the executing officer’s conduct that is the focus when evaluating whether that officer acted in good faith. After all, “[t]o trigger the exclusionary rule, police conduct must be sufficiently deliberate that exclusion can meaningfully deter it.” Herring, 555 U.S. at 144.

It is true that “[w]e do not read Herring to require an additional or individualized assessment of the deliberateness and culpability of police conduct,” Sheehan, 70 F.4th at 54, and unintentional mistakes may still preclude the application of the good faith exception. Even so, it remains relevant to our inquiry that the warrant application was not filed by Inspector Atwood but, rather, by the USAO and that Inspector Atwood lacked any awareness of the error. Moreover — as the government has pointed out — sometimes reliance on prosecutors is, itself, evidence of good faith. See, e.g., United States v. Matthews, 12 F.4th 647, 656 (7th Cir. 2021) (“Consulting with [a] prosecutorial officer certainly is one step a responsible and diligent officer can take, and such consultation is, in many respects, exactly what Leon’s good-faith exception expects of law enforcement.”). Encouraging such steps holds weight in the cost-benefit analysis of suppression.

This entry was posted in Exclusionary rule, Good faith exception, Warrant papers. Bookmark the permalink.

Comments are closed.